And now he told the Journal-News he is sending 14 staffers to federal ICE training — free of charge for the county — to help deport illegal immigrants.
Credit: Greg Lynch
Credit: Greg Lynch
There will be 10 deputies on patrol and four processing paperwork in the jail.
“I’m just going to start out with 10, soon as I get the 10 in I’ll probably do 10 more,” Jones said. “I foresee it that we will be the police agency in Butler County and other surrounding counties that will enforce ICE laws as far as detaining. Someone’s detaining someone for speeding, drunk driving or any normal stop and our employees will be the ones that are trained to be able to enter the data, make the arrests on ICE charges and they’ll be incarcerated in my jail.”
Jones said his employees had the ability to handle deportation paperwork in the federal system when he had a contract with ICE previously but now they will be able to make arrests on ICE charges, “that’s never been done, never ever and we’ll be part of workplace enforcement.”
He said he can handle roughly 400 ICE detainees.
“Everything’s changing and it’s coming fast, I would not be surprised if my jail is filled up in a few weeks,” Jones said.
Capacity could get a little easier now that the county commissioners, at Jones’ request, agreed Tuesday to a due diligence process to potentially buy the Resolutions Jail in Hamilton from Community Behavioral Health. The tentative price is $200,000 and it would give them another 100 beds.
Chief Deputy Anthony Dwyer told the Journal-News they have had a shared use agreement with CBH for years. There are two buildings that are connected at the 2nd Street location in Hamilton, CBH owns the land and each party owns half the building.
“The purchase of that building was discussed well in advance of that, we’ve looked at that for some time now, because of the relationship we’re in there that’s kind of got us both in kind of a bind,” Dwyer said. “For years we’ve looked at that building and the unique arrangement we have with the other company and then when the ICE came along as another issue, that kind of stirred it a little bit more.”
The county owns two jail facilities outright, the main campus on Hanover Street in Hamilton that can hold 848 inmates, the Court Street facility holds 150 and they can house 170 people in their portion of the Resolutions Jail for a total of 1,168. On any given day the population tends to hover in the 600s. This week 195 of them were U.S. Marshals arrestees.
The sheriff houses inmates from county jurisdictions as well as those in cooperation with the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons. Dwyer has said they once housed 160 ICE detainees “on a fairly regular basis.”
The county will be paid $68 daily to house the detainees plus $36 per hour to transport them to court hearings and in the past they also took them to the airport.
Dwyer said the new ICE contract should be lucrative for the county.
“With what we’re doing you could see the potential of a $2 million increase, so that’s a pretty substantial 25% increase over our budgeted amount,” Dwyer said. “But with this there are unknowns, we were at whatever number two weeks ago and it’s way high now. Will it sustain what’s going to happen in the government, what’s going to happen in the economy, there are so many things that can happen. We plan ahead but it’s a hard target to shoot exactly on, but it should be several million to the good.”
The county collected a total of $22 million from 2011 until the contract ended in 2021 housing and transporting ICE detainees, or an average of $2 million a year.
Total boarding of prisoners revenue was $6.2 million in 2014, hovered in the $9 million to $10 million range for a few years and jumped to nearly $12 million the year the sheriff cancelled the ICE contract mid-year. Inmate rent dipped to $9.9 million in 2022 and $8.9 million in 2023, $7.8 million last year and they’ve budgeted $8.5 million for next year.
The sheriff’s Finance Director Vickie Barger said the spike in 2021— the ICE contract ended mid-year — could be due to the fact that sometimes there have been late payments from the federal government and some of the money could have been billed but not paid the previous year. The entire expense budget for the sheriff’s 2025 operations is estimated at $57.3 million.
Dwyer said potentially adding 400 more people — jail populations fluctuate rapidly on a daily basis — will not necessarily mean beefing up the staff. They have roughly 400 employees and he said “it’s management, we handle that internally with the staff we have.”
“We have been in the business of housing prisoners for other people for quite some time. The size of our facility and the way it’s built and the way the other jails are allows us a lot of flexibility,” Dwyer said. “I can take on a certain amount of prisoners without really any additional issues based on our facility.”
Community Behavioral Health could not be reached for comment on the pending sale but the price is a fraction of the $1.5 million value listed on the county auditor’s website. Dwyer said the deal makes sense for both sides.
“It’s a good deal for the county and I think a fair deal all the way around because of the nature of the land and the buildings that are on there and the long-term lease,” he said. “It puts them in a difficult situation to actually utilize the building fully because of the lease we have on the other side and the situation we’re in. So I think practically for their board it was a good decision to move on from that facility based on those things.”
Commissioner Don Dixon told the Journal-News the property purchase isn’t a done deal yet, but it probably makes sense for the county to own the whole property, especially since the county’s building controls are on the CBH side of the building.
“Right now it’s all contingent on the final documents,” Dixon said. “We hired the people to get the due diligence to possibly purchase the building.”
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