Last weekend, OIA tabled at Columbus's 934Fest, an annual community arts and mural festival hosted by 934Gallery. Between sponsoring "The Torchbearers," a new mural by local artist Luka Weinberger, and a day full of live music and spoken word, it was a powerful reminder of what art and organizing look like when they show up for each other.

Dayton artist Bill Franz's exhibition "and I quote" explores immigration through ten quotations, including the Fifth Amendment. Visit the October 1st opening reception to support local art and OIA's commissary fund for detained immigrants!

ICE agents shot Wilber Rafael Garces Perez in Austin yeterday. While Mr. Garces Perez did not die, he could have. The agent who shot him after ramming his car showed no regard for his life — all to enforce a civil law. Garces Perez was quickly released from the hospital but as of this writing, neither his wife nor his attorney know how he is or even where he is.

In the video, Lynn Tramonte says: "You don't kill people over deportation orders. Those are civil processes. You can't execute somebody on the streets of the United States over a deportation order. And I'm so tired of Congress letting this happen. I do not want to hear calls for more training for ICE officers. I don't want to hear it. That's not what we need. What we need is to take their guns. ICE officers enforcing civil laws should not have guns."

A new report from the Ohio Immigrant Alliance finds that the detention of Haitian-Americans in Ohio is up 142% at four immigration jails since the end of Temporary Protected Status. Prior to August, Haitian women comprised 2% of the female population incarcerated for ICE in these jails; in August, they made up 39%.

Read the full report and press release, with quotes from national, state, and local leaders, here.

That's just how it works. Immigration jail is a cold, terrible place. Jailers want immigrants to think they have no power and no one cares. But your commissary donations and letters let them know that is not the case. And immigrants take care of each other in immigration jail.

We've been putting money on commissary and phone accounts for detained immigrants since the first Trump administration, and there are a couple things we hear over and over again: "I wouldn't have survived without this. Thank you for helping me feel human again."

On Friday, September 4, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin held a press conference filled with lies, performative outrage, and multiple mistakes about immigration law.

“It was almost like a backwards version of two truths and a lie,” said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “But it was more like multiple lies and one truth — his name. When a government official lies constantly, the media can’t simply report what he says. Journalism has to function as the watchdog of the public interest, and correct every misstatement he makes.”

Ohio Immigrant Alliance issued an oped letter to Dr. Susan Edwards, the President of Wright State University.

Now is not the time for "thoughts and prayers." Now is the time for action. If you had taken my call, this is what I would have said: "Try to imagine how Pierre's family feels. Attempt, for one uncomfortable moment, to put yourself in their shoes. Students on your campus bullied him. They are adults. The J-ROTC office on your campus gave everyone a uniform, except him. They are also adults. And you are the president of a major university. Stop hiding behind an answering service and tell us what you are going to do, now, to address these factors that contributed to this young man's death."

Yesterday, a young man from Springfield died by suicide. According to his Instagram account and family, Pierre Damas Bel was devastated by the ankle shackle the Trump administration forced him to wear after taking his legal status from him.

He experienced bullying over it during his first week at Wright State University. Pierre was an honors student who graduated from Springfield High School in 2026 and a member of J-ROTC. He planned to go to medical school.

By Demba Ndiath: I spent four days in Springfield, Ohio, standing with members of the Haitian community during a period of extraordinary fear and uncertainty. I traveled as the Advocacy Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance to listen, assist, interpret, and show solidarity. I am not licensed to practice law, and my role was not to provide legal representation. Alongside other volunteers, I helped migrants complete their own requests asking immigration authorities to remove their ankle monitors or modify the conditions of their release.

Masked ICE agents are conducting aggressive enforcement operations throughout Springfield, stopping vehicles mid-street, going door-to-door, and using city property as a staging area. At this week’s City Commission meeting, residents testified about the terror gripping their community. 

How did Mayor Rue respond? By offering his thoughts and prayers.

In this post, Ohio Immigrant Alliance breaks down how police, Border Patrol, and ICE are really three branches of the same poisonous family tree.

The article quotes Cynthia Brown from the Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity and various Ohio Immigrant Alliance publications on the immigration agencies’ histories, the agents they hire, public safety and Flock cameras, as well as solutions.

From OIA’s Demba Ndiath:

In June, I had the opportunity to travel from Ohio to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend The Brave of Us: Midwest Democracy & Power Summit, organized by the Immigrant Defense Network. The gathering brought together advocates, organizers, community leaders, volunteers, and allies from across the Midwest who share a common commitment to defending democracy, protecting immigrant rights, and building collective power.

Trump's Afrikaner refugee policy is based on racism and outright lies. One of our partner organizations, the International Institute of Akron, recently made the difficult decision to reject federal funding for refugee resettlement because the Trump administration "essentially eliminated refugee arrivals."

ICE’s murderous, unaccountable agents are uniting the country in outrage from north to south. The editorial boards of the Houston Chronicle and the Maine Trust for Local News issued a joint editorial, following the killings of two fathers, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián in Maine. It begins: “The state of Maine and the city of Houston, Texas, have little in common. But today we find ourselves speaking in a united voice about the violence and chaos that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has brought to our respective corners of the country.”

Video recording, final report, data, and other content from the release of OIA’s new report, “The Worst of the Worst: 152 Sexually and Physically Abusive ICE and Border Agents; Implications for U.S. Communities and Actions Needed from Congress.”

Hamilton Journal-News is out with a bombshell in Luis Tenelanda’s lawsuit against the Butler County Jail.

Denise G. Callahan writes, “The personnel records of a Butler County Jail sergeant accused of injuring an ICE detainee indicate he has had one other excessive force complaint during his 11-year tenure on staff at the corrections facility.”

Sergeant Corneal Rowe punched a handcuffed inmate twice in the face, four months assaulting Luis in 2025. As with Luis' assault, "the deputy warden found Rowe blameless."

Last month the nation learned, in horror, about the many reasons ICE should not have hired David Brouillette — the agent who killed Johan Sebastián while he was driving. At the same time, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance published a report about 59 other ICE and Border Patrol agents with violent and/or sexually abusive criminal histories. As soon as we hit post in late July, the report became obsolete.

On August 18, at 11am ET, OIA will release a major update, with nearly 100 new names, alarming offenses, and a panel of experts to discuss what Congress must do to protect the public from the “worst of the worst” — criminal agents with guns and badges.

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.”

The Columbus City Council’s Public Safety & Criminal Justice Committee held a hearing on the city’s use of Flock cameras on August 10. Sixty members of the public signed up to speak.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance submitted this testimony, written by Executive Director Lynn Tramonte. Read it here.

The Youngstown and Akron-Canton airports are now part of a shadowy network that moves people from jail to jail and, eventually to other countries, in six point shackles, all because of the Trump administration’s incomprehensible immigration policy and Congress’ failure to enact reform. 

Ohioans are tired of our tax dollars being used to support a system we don’t agree with and the separation of families. They have been speaking out against ICE-local jail detention contracts and, on Saturday August 1, will gather at the Akron Canton Regional Airport to demand an end to ICE deportation flights from this airport.