Business is booming. The number of ICE detainees at the facility fluctuates, but it often fills up more than half of the jail’s 860-bed capacity.
Most of the inmates held under the ICE contract aren’t facing violent criminal charges. This news outlet analyzed the jail roster on July 10. Of the 384 inmates detained for ICE that day, less than 8% had any charges other than immigration law violations. Other charges that were listed ranged from traffic violations to drug charges, domestic violence, assault, theft and non-ICE-related federal holds.
High-profile ICE-held detainees include Imam Ayman Soliman, a chaplain for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital with no criminal history whose asylum was revoked. Emerson Colindres, a recent Western Hills High School graduate, was held at the jail after being taken into custody during a routine check-in last month. He has since been deported.
Butler County is accused of civil rights violations for conditions at the jail in an ongoing federal lawsuit. The jail is the scene of frequent protests by people opposed to aggressive immigration enforcement.
This news outlet recently toured the jail, and talked to local leaders and critics about the facility on Hanover Street in Hamilton becoming a controversial regional centerpiece in the ongoing debate over immigration enforcement.
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Jail tour
A reporter toured the Butler County Jail earlier this month.
The jail is ran by Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, who has earned a national reputation for his tough stance on immigration and his cowboy swagger. Jones said the federal contract prohibits him from letting media access actual ICE inmates, just the building spaces that house them.
The jail features a central corridor with wings or buildings extending outward.
Its interior is akin to a large high school — cinderblock walls painted white with blue trim in the hallways. Each of the nine cellblocks, or pods, is similar. In the pods, the jail cells — which have solid blue doors with small windows — are on either side of a large common area.
Each cell, which is around 120 square feet, is complete with stacked bunks, stainless steel toilets and sinks, and small color televisions.
Jones called the TVs “the best babysitter in the world.”
“If they can sit in their cell and watch TV, that’s a good thing,” he said.
The sheriff said each prisoner receives a dietitian-approved meal three times a day and time in the recreation yard. He balks at the allegations of mistreatment of prisoners, saying those perceptions are misconceptions.
“They think that it’s like they see on TV, that it’s a giant hole somewhere, or it’s Alligator Alcatraz,” he said. “I’ve been in the prison and jail business for 48 years. I keep this place clean every single day. When you walk outside, it looks like a golf course. Inmates work inside, they can work outside.”
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Jail conditions
The federal lawsuit filed in 2020 alleges two refugees — Bayong Brown Bayong and Admed Adem — while housed at the Butler County Jail were repeatedly beaten and threatened during their ICE detainment.
Jones said the inmates were noncompliant while in the jail, and appropriate use of force was used, previously telling this news outlet the inmates “were seen by the infirmary and there is an investigation. That was done before any lawsuit was filed. We found no wrongdoing at all with our staff.”
Last week, Jones told this news outlet that if someone mistreats an inmate at his jail, “they’ll get fired.”
Ignite Peace Program Director Samantha Searls said her organization has begun gathering information from current detainees about the conditions inside the jail. From those accounts, she said, “Not much has changed” from the alleged conditions claimed in the lawsuit.
“We’re very much concerned about overcrowding and how people inside are being treated,” she said.
This suit has yet to be decided and the last filings in this lawsuit were motions in September 2024.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
The inmates
The number of immigrants being held for ICE fluctuates, as Jones said they could be in his jail for as few as a handful of days. A couple of weeks ago, there were as many as 450, and in recent days, the jail housed around 360 detainees.
Sheriff’s Office officials say they are in negotiations with ICE to charge a higher per-diem rate.
Under the ICE contract, agencies from around the region bring detainees to Butler County. In April, two immigrant were taken into custody on the same day in Delaware County, just north of Columbus, by ICE agents. Their only crime is being in the country illegally.
Other inmates on ICE holds are from Clark, Greene, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery and Warren counties.
This includes Jose Antonio Alvarenga of New Lebanon whose wife has court documents that appear to show he was arrested as a case of mistaken identity because he has the same name as a man wanted in connection to a 2001 homicide in El Salvador. Alvarenga did enter the country illegally in 2015 but his wife says his situation should make him eligible for asylum.
Jail records say he’s been there on a federal hold since March 3.
Armando Reyes Rodriguez of Tipp City was deported to Honduras after a monthslong stay at the Butler County Jail. The pastor of his church says Reyes was in the country with ICE’s permission and was tricked into coming to an ICE office where he was arrested despite his family’s pending asylum claim.
That case was one of several that led to protests, like Soliman, the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital chaplain. Soliman is still in the jail and will be allowed to stay in Ohio “for the time being” ahead of his immigration court case, according to U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman, a Democrat from Hamilton County whose district covers all of Warren County.
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
‘Empowering harassment’
Jones has not changed his stance on illegal immigration in more than two decades, and won’t back off despite organizations like Ignite Peace and others protesting his actions.
In June, 10 of his deputies received credentials to also serve as ICE agents, and he said last month he planned to have more credentialed.
A group of citizens on Tuesday addressed the ICE contract and the deputies being credentialed agents to the Butler County Commission.
Former school administrator and Seven Mile resident Anne Jantzen told the board of what she said were “concerns we believe should be your concerns.”
“Specifically, we have questions about the confinement, treatment and the due process of ICE detainees in the Butler County Jail,” she said.
Ann Brown, of Hamilton, said having the ICE contract is “empowering harassment, racial profiling, and a lack of trust in our officers and first responders.”
“Please get out of the deportation business,” she said, adding many of those detained for being in the U.S. illegally “are doing all kinds of necessary jobs” and “are driving the local economy.”
‘Fed up with it’
Searls said Jones, and any other local law enforcement agency, should “absolutely not” have federal police powers.
“We have layers of law enforcement for a reason. City police enforce city laws, county police enforce county laws, state troopers enforce state laws and we have federal agents to enforce federal laws. His deputies should be focused on enforcing the laws of the county and protecting the people of Butler County, not spending time and resources doing the federal government’s job.”
Searls said taxpayers should be concerned about how any local law enforcement agency uses tax dollars, especially when it comes to dealing with federal issues.
In January, the Trump administration had pushed for ICE to increase the number of arrests per day, from a few hundred to as many as 1,500 people. In June, Reuters reported that the initial trump quota increase was closer to 1,000 per day, but the White House wanted ICE to triple arrests of immigrants in the U.S. illegally to 3,000.
Jones said illegal immigration is a local issue, saying policing those living in the United States illegally is within his purview.
“We need to know who’s in our country, who’s in our community, and not everybody is here to help us, and to help us make us a better country,” he said. “It’s a local issue because it affects the people that hire me. It affects us every single day here in this community, and people are fed up with it.”
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