An Ohio sheriff who has built his career on tough immigration enforcement says President Donald Trump’s administration got its second-term crackdown wrong from the start.
“Now, has [immigration enforcement] been kind of messed up when they first started this under [Trump’s] 2nd term? Sure they have,” Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones told WCPO-TV. “Did they go about it in the wrong way? Sure they did.”
Jones, who calls Trump a “real leader” in his book, “They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America,” said the administration has since replaced some personnel and moved to what he called a “softer approach,” which he praised as good.
The sheriff also raised doubts about the scale of Trump’s mass deportation promises.
“You can’t deport 20, 25 million people,” Jones said, citing his own estimate of the number of people living in the country illegally. “I don’t even think [Trump’s] deported maybe over a million.”
Jones has worked with federal immigration authorities under several administrations and has expanded his office’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump. His office has a 287(g) agreement with ICE, which lets trained local officers carry out some immigration enforcement duties under federal supervision.
He told WCPO that roughly 450 people in the Butler County Jail were being held on immigration matters, and that about 6,000 people had been deported from the jail over the previous 18 to 19 months.
In January, several Ohio lawmakers asked state corrections officials to address what they called overcrowding, poor food, inadequate heating and other problems there, citing an earlier state inspection. Jones disputes the complaints and says the jail is clean and the food is nutritious.
Jones argued that immigration was a major reason Trump won in 2024, pointing to a figure showing 78 percent of Americans want action on immigration. WCPO noted that the figure comes from a February 2024 Pew Research Center survey.
It found 78 percent of Americans saw the number of migrants at the southern border as a “crisis” or “major problem,” not that they supported Trump’s policies. The same survey found 56 percent said expanding legal immigration would help.
Jones said he supports expanding legal immigration while cracking down on illegal immigration.
“The whole system’s broke,” he said, suggesting that six Republican and six Democratic leaders be locked in a room “and don’t let them leave until they reach a compromise on immigration.”
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