BRUNERSBURG, Ohio — The governing board of the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio voted Wednesday morning to keep the regional jail’s contract to hold detainees for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, rejecting another request to cancel the agreement, The Crescent News reported.
The board turned back the cancellation request during its regular meeting in Brunersburg on Wednesday, October 28, according to The Crescent News. The board did agree to take a closer look at the contract, asking CCNO officials for more scrutiny of the arrangement even as it left the deal in place, The Crescent News reported.
CCNO is the multi-county jail that houses inmates and detainees for five northwest Ohio counties — Defiance, Fulton, Henry, Lucas and Williams. Its governing board is made up of a commissioner and the sheriff from each of those five counties, and the board’s meetings have drawn repeated public pressure over the ICE contract since it was approved.
As the Toledo Free Press reported when the board approved the contract in February 2025, the agreement pays CCNO a per diem of $117 per day per detainee, reimburses transportation at the federal mileage rate plus officer wages including overtime, and was built around an expected average stay of roughly 40 to 45 days per detainee. The contract also allows CCNO to refuse detainees who pose a security risk to the facility, the Toledo Free Press reported.
Opposition to the contract has been led from Lucas County. Commissioner Pete Gerken and Sheriff Mike Navarre have voted and spoken against the detention arrangement since it was first approved, arguing that separating families is wrong, while supporters on the board have pointed to the federal revenue the contract brings in for otherwise empty beds. Wednesday’s vote means that divide remains unresolved heading into the contract’s second year.
The decision also keeps CCNO among the small group of Ohio facilities holding ICE detainees. The ACLU of Ohio has counted six locations in the state with ICE detention arrangements, including the Butler, Geauga, Mahoning and Seneca county jails, the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center and CCNO, which the ACLU lists as covering Defiance, Fulton, Henry, Lucas and Williams counties.
For residents of the five counties, the practical effect is that nothing changes at the jail this week: detainees will continue to be held under the existing terms while the board’s requested closer look at the contract proceeds. Advocacy groups that have organized outside past CCNO board meetings have said they will keep pressing the board to end the contract entirely.
What happens next is the follow-up the board itself requested — a closer examination of the ICE contract by CCNO officials — and the board’s next regular meeting, where the contract’s critics have said the cancellation question will be raised again.
Photo: Antony-22, CC BY-SA