It’s no surprise that Butler County Sheriff Jones wants to restart his ICE contract during the second Trump presidency. The thing is, Butler County Jail officers abused immigrants and violated the jail’s contract with ICE repeatedly during the first Trump administration. A lawsuit to hold this jail accountable for abuses against immigrants remains pending in federal court.
Said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance: “All people deserve basic human dignity. And law enforcement officials have to follow the law. Sheriff Jones has shown he doesn’t think the law applies to him, or that people detained in jail have human rights. There’s been a lawsuit pending against the Butler County Jail, due to violence and abuse against immigrants detained for ICE, since 2020. Many people — immigrants and U.S. citizens — have exposed similar injustices. No court should let someone with such little respect for the law, or human life, restart his ICE contract.”
ICE detention is purportedly “civil” confinement, but takes place in punitive settings like county and private jails. The federal government may detain immigrants awaiting a decision on their civil immigration cases in facilities with which it establishes contracts. Jailers are legally obligated to provide immigrants with medical care, decent food, legal access, and freedom of religion, as well as to not cause them harm. Since immigrants are not serving court-ordered, temporal sentences, but waiting for a bureaucratic process to conclude, the loss of freedom is indefinite. There is a growing movement calling for an end to ICE detention. In the meantime, facilities are required to ensure the basic human and civil rights of people it incarcerates for ICE.
Following is a timeline of events that lead to the cancellation of Butler’s ICE contract following the first Trump administration. The civil rights lawsuit can be found here.
February 2020: Immigrants and allies warn the Department of Homeland Security and Morrow County Health District about the egregious lack of COVID protocols followed in the Morrow County Jail, which also incarcerated immigrants for ICE.
May 2020: Oscar Lopez, an immigrant detained in Morrow for ICE, dies of COVID shortly after being released. U.S. District Judge Sarah D. Morrison — a Trump appointee — issues a stunning rebuke of Morrow County Jail’s operations in an ACLU of Ohio lawsuit. Morrison orders the release of several people detained for ICE, including Mory Keita.
June 2020: Morrow County Jail becomes the first correctional facility in the United States documented at 100% COVID positive. Quarantine measures, barely used in the preceding weeks, are completely abandoned.
August 2020: Morrow County Jail stops incarcerating immigrants for ICE, with some being allowed to go home and others transferred to the Butler County Jail.
September 2020: Over fifty men detained in the Butler County Jail for ICE send a letter (p. 30) to lawyers and human rights organizations about gross medical neglect, racism, and other inhumane treatment at the jail. They even sign their names. A couple examples from the letter:
Immigrants detained for ICE have no access to the outside, and are kept in their cells 20 hours a day.
Butler County Jail guards engage in illegal conduct, such as blocking immigrants from medical care and physically assaulting them.
October 2020: Men detained in Butler County publish a second letter about abuses there.
December 2020: Attorneys John C. Camillus and Amy Norris and Anna Nathanson with Norris Law Group file a lawsuit against the Butler County Jail, and specific corrections officers, for repeated acts of violence, racism, and other abuse against African and Muslim men detained for ICE. (The jail has a pattern and practice of civil rights violations like these, as evident in complaints filed by people who are not immigrants, as well as those who are.)
Advocates file a concurrent civil rights complaint with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, including gross medical neglect of people with life-threatening illnesses like cancer, and numerous other violations of detention standards under the Butler County-ICE contract.
Cincinnati leaders, including the organization now known as Ignite Peace, stand vigil outside the Butler County Jail, demanding an end to its relationship with ICE.
Mory Keita, a key witness in the Butler County jail lawsuit, is deported.
May 2021: Immigrants and allies celebrate the end of the Butler County and Morrow County-ICE contracts. D.D. and A.L., two men who were deported after being detained in Butler, bravely share their experiences. Both were deported despite having lived in the U.S. for decades, and were forced to leave U.S. citizen children behind.
July 2021: Saidu Sow, another witness in the Butler County lawsuit, and an organizer who helped end two ICE contracts in Ohio, is deported.
2023: In response to questions about the state’s role in overseeing jails like his, which has been cited repeatedly in state inspections, Sheriff Jones says “They can’t tell me s—.”
August 2023: Following the NPR story, “Government’s own experts found ‘barbaric’ and ‘negligent’ conditions in ICE detention,” Ohio Immigrant Alliance Organizer Saidu Sow says: “Finally, at least one government body has found that everything we were saying was true. They’re still missing some things; this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is no fixing this system. ICE detention should not exist.”
October 2024: Despite his clearly skewed messaging, Sheriff Jones admits immigrants do not commit more crimes than other residents.
November 2024: Jones announces his office is “prepping right now in this county to start housing prisoners again for ICE.” He does not mention the civil rights lawsuit pending against his jail.
January 2025: Butler County Commissioner Don Dixon admits that ICE detention is a cash cow, plain and simple. “Obviously, the more prisoners we have, the more revenue it produces,” he says.
“What price do you put on a life?” asked OHIA’s Tramonte. “Everyone deserves to have their basic human dignity respected. Butler County paid $285,000 in a weak atonement for a death the jail should have prevented. Other preventable death cases are still pending, as well as the immigrants’ civil rights lawsuit. There’s no amount of money that can undo the harms visited upon people who spend time in the Butler County Jail. The court, Butler County, and Jones himself have a duty to follow the law and protect the public, including people incarcerated in this facility. It’s clear that Jones doesn’t see immigrants’ basic humanity, but the courts and County must.”
Read more about the campaigns that ended two ICE contracts in Ohio here.