And all hat, no cattle, as they say. Here are a few takeaways from the Cincinnati CityBeat inside scoop on the Butler County Jail, now that it’s got an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract again.
Lies, lies, and damn lies
Remember how Jones told the world (via NBC Nightly News) that the immigrants in his jail are the worst of the worst? Well, it seems, they’re not so bad after all:
On the same point, Jones’ deputy offered a little more honesty.
Jones also has a flexible relationship with the truth when it comes to why his ICE contract ended in 2021. Last year, he told the Journal-News, “I fired ’em because they were going to fire me.” Now, he’s telling CityBeat that he left because President Biden “let people get raped, killed and the drugs came in. I woke up one morning and I said, ‘Tell ICE we’re done.’ That’s how easy it was.”
Certainly Jones — who claims to want to protect people from dangerous criminals — would have kept his ICE contract as long as possible if that were the case. Oh wait … no … because immigrants aren’t actually the people we need to be worried about, as even Jones and his jailers admit.
Can you see the gaslights dimming? Perhaps the truth is that Jones didn’t want to provide medical care and basic human rights to immigrants in his jail, while getting paid peanuts. Yep, that tracks.
We need to talk about that “tough-guy sheriff” shtick
Jones’ fake bravado is, as the kids say, cringe. The cowboy hat, the “Illegal Aliens Here” sign, the walrus mustache and potbelly. And then there’s his “sue me all you want” swagger. “I’ve been sued my whole career. I’ve been doing this 48 years. I get sued often,” he said. That’s true. But he’s also had to pay up for violating human rights, like letting people die preventable deaths.
There’s actually a there there, which makes it all the more confusing why Butler County agreed to let Jones back into the ICE business with a lawsuit already pending. We are ready to go back into court and expand the case, the moment we hear of additional violations.
Jones can deny everything in the immigrants’ 2020 civil rights lawsuit and additional complaint. He can claim his deputies didn’t push Bayong down the stairs, beat up Ahmed in booking, or force people to soil themselves while waiting in line for video hearings. (Since Jones claims that never happened, I look forward to it not happening again. Again, we’ll be watching.)
There were many witnesses to all of this. And while Jones claims he has video footage of everything in his jail, the lawsuit has been going on for over five years and the court never received a thing — other than photos of Bayong and Ahmed’s injuries, which our side provided. If Jones has exculpatory evidence, you’d think he’d have provided it by now.
Or does he just like to grand stand, with taxpayers on the hook for his mounting legal bills? No need to answer that.
So-called “civil detention” should not exist
From the CityBeat article, we also learned that people detained for ICE don’t get pillows; they may not even get underwear. And “outdoor” recreation looks like this. These people are not being charged with crimes. They are being put in jail for alleged civil immigration law violations, many of whom have paths to legal status, like a family-based immigrant visa or asylum.
Instead of letting them pursue those paths, ICE is ripping them from their families, homes, and jobs and warehousing them in Ohio jails. At our expense. So they and their families can suffer and lose hope, and agree to give up on their cases.
