Ibou Tine says he's scared to be deported to his native Senegal, which he fled years ago to escape political violence. But now he's asking to be sent back soon so he can leave the Butler County Jail, where he's been for more than two months.
He's speaking to a WVXU reporter through a teleconference at the Jail during a visit on a recent Sunday. He describes the searing stomach pain he says he's been suffering lately. He claims he hasn't gotten medical treatment and is having trouble eating.
"If you have health problems, this isn't a place you should be," Tine said. "If they need to send me back to Senegal, that's a big risk — but I'd rather risk it than stay in here."
WVXU reached out to the Butler County Sheriff's Office, which runs the jail, about Tine's condition and any medical treatment he's received. The office declined to provide records specific to Tine's treatment, citing medical privacy laws. The office did provide details about its 24-hour infirmary and some data about how people held on ICE detainers are given medical treatment in the jail.
Tine's attorney, as well as a friend who talks to him most days, say they're worried about his condition, noting he's seemed to have lost weight.
They aren't the only ones worried about how ICE detainees are being treated.
A letter from faith leaders
Groups raising concerns about the jail's treatment of those federal prisoners include immigration attorneys and a coalition of 19 Butler County faith leaders and 16 other clergy from outside the region who signed a July 28 letter expressing deep reservations about the county's contract with U.S. Marshals to hold people detained by ICE.
Some Butler County residents and two Republican Butler County commissioners also have expressed a level of discomfort about the jail's status as an ICE detention site.
Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones has said his deputies treat all inmates in the jail properly and that the contract is about supporting the Trump administration's efforts to remove immigrants without authorization in the United States.
But that hasn't been enough to prevent growing questions about the jail.
"Having the ICE facility in our county links us to what we’ve come to see as an unfair and unduly harsh administration of new immigration laws," the faith leaders' letter reads. "We are also concerned about reports of abuse suffered by some detainees in ICE facilities. And as those who are ministering to the local immigrant population, and often the Latino community as well, we can testify that law-abiding residents are now afraid to report crimes for fear of being arrested instead of aided."
The sheriff's office said in a statement it offered a tour of jail facilities to the faith leaders who wrote the July 28 letter. Members of that group WVXU talked to confirmed that tour will take place Aug. 13.
'Doing the right thing' with 'an open mind'
Rev. John Wagner of the Seven Mile United Methodist Church helped write the letter. He says he has deep respect for law enforcement. And he applauded the sheriff's offer of a tour and the transparency it implied. But he also said he felt a responsibility to ask "hard questions" about what is going on inside the jail.
"I'll be going in with an open mind, but I also want to do the right thing and see that people are being treated fairly and humanely," he said.
The Butler County Sheriff's Office entered into its contract with the federal government Feb. 1. That contract pays the county $68 a day per person to house ICE detainees. The sheriff's office also gets $36 an hour to help guard and transport detainees. According to the contract, the office bills ICE's Enforcement and Operations Field Office in Detroit for these expenses.
Since signing the contract, the jail has held between 300 and more than 400 ICE detainees at a given time, according to BCSO.
The sheriff's office had entered into a previous contract to house federal detainees in 2003. It ended that contract in 2021. At the time, Jones said it was no longer financially feasible to uphold the agreement. BCSO signed the new contract shortly after President Donald Trump took office for his second term.
Allegations of mistreatment
Tine, the Senegalese immigrant with a stomach ailment, was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and detained in the Butler County Jail May 22 after missing a routine immigration appointment in Cleveland regarding his asylum claim. His attorney says he missed that appointment because the person who was driving him had car troubles.
Like most people held in ICE detention, Tine has no serious criminal record in local courts — the only charge in local court systems is a 2023 dismissed misdemeanor for driving without a license in Hamilton County.
Tine says he has gastrointestinal issues that he has struggled with for a few years. He's gone to the hospital on multiple occasions, where he says he was told he has a tear in his stomach and needs a specialist.
That condition has worsened during his time in the jail, Tine and his advocates say.
"Every time I try to eat, I throw up," he said during a recent phone call. "I'm not getting medical attention. They give me a medication I used to get a long time ago. It's not helping me at all."
WVXU is working to secure a signed release form to access Tine's jail medical records. A reporter also submitted questions to the county about how medical care works for ICE detainees in the jail more generally.
According to a detailed response from BCSO's Jonathan Davidson, the jail bills ICE for prescription medication and necessary medical procedures for detainees.
They get care at the jail's infirmary, which is open 24 hours a day. If an emergency the certified doctors and nurses on staff at the infirmary can't handle arises, detainees can be transported to nearby hospitals.
That's happened 11 times over the duration of the current contract with ICE, records show. Davidson said records of current expenditures on medical care for ICE detainees were not available at this time.
Other concerns
Several high-profile cases, including the detention and eventual deportation of Cincinnati Public high school grad and Honduran immigrant Emerson Colindres, have drawn attention to the jail's ICE contract. The July 28 letter from faith leaders mentions the case of another Honduran asylum seeker, Armando Reyes, who was arrested by ICE this summer and is detained in Butler County Jail.
Another case centering on the jail is that of former Children's Hospital Chaplain Imam Ayman Soliman.
Soliman was detained by ICE July 9 after his asylum status was revoked. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has made claims in court filings that Soliman has ties to terrorist groups and was wanted for murder in Iraq, though it has yet to provide evidence of this. His legal team has denied these claims.
Soliman's attorneys filed a motion in early August seeking his release from the Butler County Jail on the grounds he's being mistreated there. They allege Soliman was put in solitary confinement earlier this month without a compelling reason and was cut off from his attorneys and spiritual advisors.
Attorney Nazly Mamedova says Soliman has been serving as a Muslim chaplain at the jail. She acknowledges that many of the guards at the jail have been willing to let Soliman do this. But she says when he asked one guard for clarification about a prayer session, he was declared to be insubordinate and put in segregated custody. Mamedova says the extended time he spent in solitary confinement was very difficult for him.
"He was heavily depressed," she said. "Part of him is talking to people as chaplain. So putting him in isolation without the ability to talk to anyone, that definitely brought his spirits down."
Controversy over previous ICE contract
The treatment of ICE detainees under the BCSO's previous contract with the federal government is the subject of at least one federal lawsuit. In it, attorneys for Bayong Brown Bayong and Ahmed Adem allege the two immigrants detained by ICE in Butler County experienced physical abuse at the hands of guards there in 2020, including beatings and being pushed down a set of stairs.
Filings by attorneys for the county dispute this, saying no one was pushed down stairs and that force used against the two was proper because they were being disobedient.
Details from the filing shed light on how discipline in the jail works.
"In a correctional facility, a detainee who questions the lawful orders of a corrections officer or who demands to speak with a higher-ranking officer is effectively disobeying, which is a form of resistance," the county's answer to allegations reads, noting that such detainees are considered "a real threat to institutional security" subject to use-of-force, detainment in solitary confinement, or other discipline.
Later in the filing, the county describes one metric used to determine if use-of-force is appropriate.
"If a corrections officer’s assessment of a situation reasonably leads them to believe that they may be assaulted by an inmate who is in close proximity to them, the corrections officer does not have to wait to actually be assaulted before reacting with reasonable force," it reads.
The lawsuit is still working its way through federal court.
Growing concern
Data revealing most ICE detainees in the jail who don't have other criminal charges against them has led to some pushback around the BCSO contract with the federal government.
Records show that only about 30% of people held on ICE detainers in the Butler County Jail have other, non-immigration related offenses.
That fact drew several Butler County residents to the July 15 Butler County Commission meeting to voice their displeasure at the contract.
Hamilton resident John K. Roberts said he's uneasy about what is happening with ICE detentions of otherwise-law abiding people just because they're undocumented.
"These people are being rounded up by individuals in military uniforms with face masks. No ID, no warrants," he said. "I just wonder what the hell happened. Why have people come to the conclusion that this is a good thing?"
County Commissioners Don Dixon and TC Rogers promised they would ask Sheriff Jones questions about the treatment of detainees in the jail.
"When I hear that our sheriff is just going after what I deem normal people who have come here illegally but are working, that is different than what I'm told was the plan that started after January 20," Rogers said. "That was to get rid of the criminals... there are a lot of those criminals to go first before you start thinking about the people who just came here and have not had a criminal infraction. I will discuss that with the sheriff, but what you're saying is contrary to what I've been told."
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