Butler County’s all-Republican board of commissioners suggested this week that change could be coming to the county’s immigration enforcement efforts, even as its sheriff insisted the county’s partnership with federal immigration authorities will continue, according to reporting by The Cincinnati Enquirer.
"The country has said we’re going in the wrong direction with this and we’re going to make changes," Commissioner Don Dixon said at the board’s November 10 meeting in Hamilton, as reported by The Cincinnati Enquirer. Butler County, home to around 400,000 people north of Cincinnati, backed President Donald Trump in the last three elections, with 62.66 percent of its voters supporting him in 2024, The Enquirer reported.
The comments came exactly a week after the midterm election swept Democrats into power in Washington and in Ohio, and days after Trump himself suggested in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview that his administration’s deportation efforts might be too tough, The Enquirer reported. They also came amid growing online attention to the detention of Alberto Lira Razo, 39, of Hamilton, who is being held in the Butler County Jail.
The Butler County Sheriff’s Office stated Lira Razo was targeted because of a past criminal history and was Tased after resisting arrest, while Lira Razo’s wife alleged the agency shared false information, according to The Enquirer. Dixon said the situation surrounding the arrest would be discussed with the appropriate people, The Enquirer reported.
Butler County has a 287(g) contract that allows its officers to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Butler County Jail in Hamilton, about 35 miles north of Cincinnati, also houses ICE detainees, The Enquirer reported. Commissioner Cindy Carpenter said at the meeting that the national election results "gave us something to think about," as reported by The Enquirer, and said it was time to go to the table and listen.
Carpenter is nearing the end of her term after Republican Michael Ryan defeated her in the primary and won his race on November 3, The Enquirer reported. In an email to The Enquirer, Ryan said he is committed to supporting the agreement and the continued partnership between the sheriff’s office and ICE, and will discuss his colleagues’ concerns when he takes office in January.
Sheriff Richard Jones, a longtime hard-line voice on immigration, told The Enquirer on November 11 that the county would continue working with ICE and that "everything’s working fine." Jones also told the Journal-News, as reported by The Enquirer, that "you can’t deport 20 million people," while insisting his own enforcement views have not changed.
What happens next is genuinely unsettled. The Enquirer reported it is not clear what, if any, changes the county might actually make: the commissioners talked about listening and reviewing, the incoming commissioner backs the ICE agreement, and the sheriff says nothing is changing. Butler County residents on both sides of the contract will be watching the board’s next meetings for whether the talk turns into action.
Photo: Andrew Clyde Armstrong, CC BY-SA 4.0