Mahoning County is the latest county in Ohio to turn jail space over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The thing is, these Ohio jails are being used to detain people who are not being charged with crimes. It’s called civil detention, and its only purpose is to make it harder for immigrants to find lawyers and win their civil immigration court cases.
If you’re confused, it’s because you’ve been misled. The U.S. government calls every immigrant a criminal in order to justify deporting them. The immigration system doesn’t work the way most people think it does, or should. Long-term Ohio residents, with families, careers, and businesses are being deported — permanently banished from the people and communities who love them. Instead, there should be a process for them to obtain permanent immigration status.
Here are the facts about ICE jail in Ohio. Counties who participate are conducting family separations, leaving children without parents and businesses without workers. The Trump administration is even making people who have legal status in this country undocumented, in order to deport them. Here are just a few examples.
As Lucas County Sheriff Mike Navarre said about his opposition to the CCNO-ICE contract, “I know right from wrong. And separating children from their parents is absolutely the wrong thing to do. It’s been ignored by the federal government. Nobody has a viable solution to what will happen to these children. Until they figure it out, I will not support mass deportations.”
In other news, the Butler County Sheriff is planning to train his deputies to come into other jurisdictions in Ohio and conduct immigration raids. Butler County and the city of Fairfield recently agreed to pay a $1.2 million settlement to individuals whose constitutional rights were violated. Unleashing Butler deputies into Ohio communities to do the bidding of ICE, an agency that has no respect for the letter of the law, will have ramifications for communities across Ohio, local law enforcement in other jurisdictions, and Butler County taxpayers, forced to pay for the Sheriffs’ mistakes.