This story is part of CityBeat’s “ICE Age” series about the Trump administration’s crackdown on community members who are undocumented.
The mattress in a Butler County Jail cell for immigrant detainees slowly released air when this writer tested it out.
“How is it?” the officer escort asked.
“No pillows, right?” CityBeat replied.
“Correct.”
Apart from the soft hum of the slowly deflating mattress, it was dead quiet in the roughly 112-square-foot cell for two. This cell is one of 48 that make up a “pod” in the Butler County Jail, located on Hanover Street in Hamilton. CityBeat was given a tour of a pod that’s reserved for immigrant detainees brought to the jail by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. There were 15 ICE detainees in custody at the jail when CityBeat interviewed Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones on March 7; that number is up to 60 as of March 13.
Ever since President Donald Trump was elected in 2024, he’s sought to deliver on his campaign promise to carry out the “largest deportation in the history of our country,” and Jones has enthusiastically opened his doors to help.
“I believe we started getting inmates Monday — today is Friday — that’s very, very quick,” Jones told CityBeat. “And everything changes with, right now, with ICE, because the president wants this done.”
Jones is able to keep ICE detainees in his jail because of a special contract with the federal government. Undocumented immigrants who are detained by ICE face civil immigration charges with the threat of deportation, something the criminal system isn’t set up to process without the ICE agency. But ICE needs county jails to meet the high deportation quotas set by the Trump administration.
“They depend on sheriffs,” Jones said. “There’s 3,300 sheriffs in the United States, 3,300 counties, and they depend on sheriffs for jail space. And so that was the process that started.”
Butler County will be paid $68 per day to house each ICE inmate, plus $36 per hour to transport detainees to airports for deportation, according to county records. Jones previously had a contract during the first Trump administration but said he canceled it in June 2021 because then-President Joe Biden took office. He told CityBeat he voluntarily canceled the ICE partnership, which started in 2003, citing frustration with Biden’s border policies.
“He let everybody come across the border,” Jones said. “They didn’t want anybody deported. […] He 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.”
ICE agents deported fewer immigrants in February 2025 than they did under the Biden administration during the same month in 2024, according to ICE data obtained by NBC News.
The lawsuit
With Trump again in office, Jones has enthusiastically reopened his doors to ICE, but he’s still fighting a lawsuit filed by former ICE detainees who claim Jones’ officers were verbally and physically abusive. Jones has flatly denied every claim in the suit.
“I’ve been sued my whole career,” Jones said, denying the suit’s claims. “I’ve been doing this 48 years. I get sued often.”
The suit, filed in 2020 and still in litigation, alleges officers working the ICE pods called Black ICE detainees “racial epithets, including ‘dirty Africans,’ ‘monkeys,’ and ‘goats.’”
“They’re not permitted to use that type of language,” Jones told CityBeat. “Everything’s on video. There’s witnesses everywhere. If somebody does, they get punished for that. They’re not allowed to do that. Very simple.”
The plaintiffs also claim officers used excessive force against ICE detainees, including one instance when a man named Bayong Brown Bayong of Cameroon claims he was pushed down a set of stairs and told, “I hope you die, bitch” by a guard. Bayong claims the guard told him, “When you get down the stairs I’m going to beat all the teeth out of your mouth.” The lawsuit also alleges an officer repeatedly punched Bayong in the face and knocked out a tooth. Jones denies all of this.
“We sent him to the dentist,” Jones said. “And just so happened, he was born without that tooth. He had a gap in his teeth. It was never a tooth there.”
Complaints beyond the lawsuit
In 2020, dozens of former ICE detainees contributed to an administrative complaint letter sent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security alleging they were abused or mistreated while in the Butler County Jail.
The letter builds on the claims of the 2020 lawsuit, adding that some ICE detainees were denied necessary medical treatment during the COVID pandemic, and that an 81-year-old ICE detainee with stage 4 cancer was “denied a vital medication for months.”
Jones denies the allegation.
“We have a doctor, we have a dentist, we have paramedics, we have a nurse and we probably spend a million dollars a year on medication,” he said.
Jones said ICE detainees, like all his inmates, get the daily basics: three dietician-approved meals, up to five hours of recreation time outside their cell, a pair of underwear (though underwear is not standard-issue for male inmates outside the ICE pods), access to the law library, phone calls, in-person attorney visits, etc.
“I’ve been doing prisons and jails my whole career,” Jones said. “I inspect the jails. They have to be clean and the inmates have to be treated fairly.”
An immigration attorney speaks out
A Cincinnati area immigration attorney, who requested anonymity to protect his access to clients in the Butler County Jail, exclusively told CityBeat that he witnessed officers refuse bathroom access to ICE detainees. The alleged incident happened while this attorney and his client were waiting in line for a virtual court hearing — Ohio’s immigration court is in Cleveland — leading his client and others in line to soil themselves before court.
“They were in a line, about 12 to 15 sitting in chairs across from the room with his closed-circuit TV,” the attorney told CityBeat. “The sheriff’s deputies who were in the jail did what is expected, to let the attorneys use the bathroom. They didn’t let the immigrants use the bathroom. I spoke Spanish, so immigrants were like, it’s been three hours, four hours, I just ate lunch. I need to go to the bathroom. They were forced to urinate or defecate in their pants.”
The attorney told CityBeat he asked officers if the ICE detainees could use the restroom for the attorneys while they waited for their hearings.
“I asked one of the sheriff’s deputies, and he just refused to even think about it,” the attorney told CityBeat. “He said, ‘Let them do what they have to do. I’m not going to let them use the bathroom.’”
During a later visit to the jail, this attorney told CityBeat he was reprimanded by the warden for raising the bathroom issue with officers.
“He said, ‘You know, we could lose the ICE contract. We could stop this ICE contract if we have this kind of behavior from attorneys,’” the attorney said. “I don’t know [why my behavior of] trying to find a bathroom for people, immigrants, and also complaining to a sheriff’s deputy that he should help — I wasn’t that vociferous. I just, I didn’t understand their reaction.”
CityBeat asked Jones about this complaint, which, like all the complaints in the 2020 lawsuit and administrative letter, he denies.
“We don’t want to deal with somebody shitting in their pants or pissing on the floor, pissing on themselves, no more than they are embarrassed about doing it,” Jones said. “These people don’t cause us any issues. They’re the prisoners that my employees prefer to be in the pods with, and we treat them like humans, and we treat them firm and fair. We don’t make people poo-poo their pants or pee-pee their pants. That’s all horseshit, but people can say anything they want.”
“Preferred” prisoners
During CityBeat’s tour of an empty ICE pod, an officer said this is her preferred assignment.
“They’re typically not criminal,” she said. “They’re not, you know, super-”
“They’re being held civilly,” CityBeat responded.
“Right, yes.”
While Jones repeatedly defended his officers’ treatment of ICE detainees as no different than the U.S.-born inmates, he said the biggest difference between the two populations is behavior.
“ICE pods are the ones my officers prefer to work. You know why? They don’t cause any problems,” Jones said. “They like to play dominoes and cards, and they’re in a pod together and there’s no fights.”
“Why do you think that is?” CityBeat asked Jones.
“I don’t know,” Jones said. “But my officers prefer if they can get that pod, versus the homegrown criminal [where] somebody’s always fighting or screwing around with somebody.”
Jones has admitted before that undocumented immigrants don’t commit crimes at a higher rate than U.S.-born people. Immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens, according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.
But, to Jones, that doesn’t matter. During the Biden administration when Butler County did not have an ICE contract, Jones claims his jail held 1,400 undocumented immigrants, amounting to 2,000 crimes committed locally.
“I don’t need any country dumping people in here that are going to commit crime,” he said. “A majority [of immigrants] come to this country, they work hard, but there’s a percent that come across that does not, and they are the ones that we’re interested in. And the ones that have worked hard and come here, hey, you know, everybody wants to go to a country and to get away from [violence] and make more wages, okay, but there comes a point. […] It’s not pretty to get people out of this country, but you just can’t come here and stay.”
Nationally, ICE deported approximately 11,000 immigrants in February, but roughly half did not have any criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to data obtained by NBC.
Lynn Tramonte is the director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. She told CityBeat there’s no reason to detain immigrants in jail who have not been charged with a crime. Even though the Trump administration has declared undocumented immigrants are “criminals” because they entered the country illegally, they are not held criminally or charged with a crime once in ICE custody — the matter is civil.
“There’s no other area of civil law where you get put into jail while your case is pending,” Tramonte said. “Like, if I’m getting evicted from my home, they don’t put me in jail. If I don’t pay my taxes to my local government, they don’t throw me in jail, right? They give me a payment plan, and I work it out with them. That’s how immigration law should be.”
What next?
Jones is awaiting a separate contract from the federal government that would allow deputies to assist ICE on arrests and large-scale workplace raids, which Jones told CityBeat are coming.
“We’re going to do workplace raids, enforcement,” Jones said. “I’ve said it several times in 50 days. Hell, I had billboards up in the past that said it’s illegal to hire illegals and you’ll go to jail.”
Related
Welcome to the ICE Age: How Immigrant Advocates are Preparing for Trump’s Mass Deportations
Follow CityBeat’s staff news writer Madeline Fening on Instagram. Got a news tip? Email mfening@citybeat.com.
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This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.
