In late May, the Butler County Jail canceled its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold immigration detainees. That started a 60–day period to release, deport or move detainees to other ICE detention centers.
That period finishes at the end of July. An immigration attorney talks about how that's unfolded.
Maria Otero is a senior attorney at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality. Her client in the Butler County Jail was moved to a different jail two weeks after the contract was canceled.
Otero says the canceled contract has delayed attorneys’ ability to help new detainees, who are now more likely to be transferred out of state and can’t be immediately located.
“Because it was real easy to know where someone will probably be sent if they were picked up around here," Otero said. "But now we don’t know. This week I heard somebody got picked up in Cincinnati and then were sent to Boone County, Kentucky.”
The Butler County Jail had contracts with ICE to hold detainees since 2003.