[content warning - domestic violence]
NEW in October 2026: Updates on Samuel Saxon federal sentencing
Samuel Saxon is the poster child of what a bad ICE agent is and looks like, because he seems so “normal.” That’s how bad guys blend in.
We’ve been talking about him for months now, because we find it beyond belief that Saxon’s bosses at ICE didn’t know he was beating, strangling, and breaking the bones of his domestic partner, the mother of his children, every other week. In fact, we know it’s not true, because one of his superiors asked the police to perform a welfare check. Police found him naked, behind the toilet with a knife, threatening to kill himself. That’s the guy ICE promoted to assistant field office director of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and sent to Cincinnati.
Said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, “Today, I am happy to say, Samuel Saxon no longer supervises people with authority over immigrants. According to Fox19, Samuel Saxon is no longer an employee of ICE. The government did not say whether Saxon resigned, retired, or was terminated. The answer matters, but what matters more is that he is gone.”
Saxon is (likely) the first ICE agent in the country to be incarcerated in his own ICE jail. He had been detained in the Butler County Jail, the most notorious ICE facility in Ohio, with an abusive track record, since December 2025. Saxon was transferred to the Campbell County Jail in Kentucky, which has also been the subject of horrific complaints from people detained there for ICE, and may have been released.
“Samuel Saxon and Andrew Golobic are the reasons we started looking into the backgrounds of ICE and Border Patrol agents in other parts of the country,” said Tramonte, referencing OIA’s report “The Worst of the Worst: 152 Sexually and Physically Abusive ICE and Border Agents.” The report shows that Saxon’s tenure at ICE is part of a larger pattern of hiring and promoting abusive agents, rather than firing them to protect the public.
“We are constantly being told lies about immigrants, when it’s actually these federal agents who are preying on our communities and even killing us on our streets and in ICE jail. And the tone is set from the top. That’s why Saxon leaving is important. There have to be consequences for his actions. And we have to keep going down the line until every federal agent who disrespects the badge and our people is caught, adjudicated, and held accountable,” said Tramonte.
On October 20, Saxon was set to be sentenced in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio, for lying to federal agents. This is just the first part of his criminal process. After this, he is supposed to stand trial on felony domestic violence, strangulation, and assault charges in Hamilton County. In the sentencing memorandum Saxon’s lawyers filed with the U.S. District Court, he minimizes the crime of lying to agents and then blames his victim — his former domestic partner and the mother of his children — for their “toxic relationship.”
The government’s own sentencing memorandum is filled with disgusting examples of Saxon’s ongoing abuse of a woman he claims to have started dating when she was “18” and he was in his 40s. Crucially, it also makes clear that Saxon’s employer WAS well aware of his violent history. Read Saxon’s reply to the sentencing memorandum for more of his tortured excuses, if you can stomach it. Fox 19 continues to cover the case, and the next hearing has been set for 10am on October 29. Saxon remains behind bars.
“Samuel Saxon prided himself on his ‘marksmanship,’ while repeatedly strangling his domestic partner over the course of years, nearly killing her,” added Tramonte. “Civil immigration enforcement should be a desk job, not one that attracts people like him. That’s how every other civil law enforcement agency works. The guns, the jails, the dangerous traffic stops — it’s all over the top. The people who want to work in environments like this are dangers to society. Make immigration enforcement boring again. Create ways that people can comply with the law. Lower the temperature, turn down the heat, and stop the deaths of our community members as well as abuse be agents, at home or in our streets.”
