Recently obtained data from the Department of Homeland Security sheds light on the scope of recent federal immigration enforcement efforts in the Tri-State.
A team of academics and legal professionals called the Deportation Data Project obtained the data via federal Freedom of Information Act requests.
The data comes as the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts remain an intense point of political debate.
Surges in Minneapolis and other cities in recent months have made national headlines. The New York Times reported the ICE field office in St. Paul, Minnesota, arrested more than 5,000 people between the middle of December and the beginning of March. But field offices in other cities that weren't in the headlines as much, including Dallas, Atlanta, San Antonio and Miami, had even more arrests.
Local impact
Greater Cincinnati — and Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana as a whole — didn't see the same intensive focus from the Trump administration. But the states did see a significant number of deportations over the last six months.
From the beginning of October 2025 to March 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported more than 1,300 people who were living in Ohio, more than 1,100 in Indiana and almost 800 in Kentucky, the data analyzed by WVXU shows.
In Ohio, 370 of those deported had criminal convictions and another roughly 300 had pending charges. The remainder — more than half — had no criminal charges at all. Another 100 had minor traffic violations or convictions related to immigration offenses.
Others had more serious charges. Two had homicide convictions. Eleven were previously convicted of drug trafficking. Seventeen had assault convictions.
The vast majority of those deported came from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. But a handful of people from places like Croatia, Spain, Uzbekistan and Micronesia, also were deported.
Among those recently deported was Ibou Tine, a Senegalese asylum seeker who was detained in the Butler County Jail for months after his arrest by ICE last spring. Tine wasn't facing criminal charges and alleged he wasn't given adequate medical care in the jail. He said his health concerns around digestive issues were grave enough that he was asking to be sent back to Senegal.
"If you have health problems, this isn't a place you should be," he told WVXU. "If they need to send me back to Senegal — that's a big risk, but I'd rather risk it than stay in here."
Other immigrants held there and their advocates have made similar accusations, which Butler County officials have denied.
Seven people from Senegal residing in Ohio were deported in March, the data suggests, likely including Tine.
Immigration court
Immigration attorneys who represent local people filing asylum claims have told WVXU that immigration courts have made asylum much more difficult to attain in recent months, rejecting claims earlier and providing fewer avenues for presenting evidence of political persecution or danger in an applicant's homeland.
Recent data seems to bear out the idea that it's rare to win an asylum claim.
A separate dataset on the Executive Office of Immigration Review published by the Deportation Data Project shows data on removal proceedings in immigration courts by county. WVXU analyzed data from 2,400 removal cases originating in Hamilton County that were decided between Jan. 1, 2025 and the end of February 2026, the most recent data available.
More than 1,400 of those cases ended in orders for removal. Another 80 or so resulted in a voluntary departure by the person facing deportation. Seventeen resulted in the immigration judge granting relief — usually meaning an asylum claim.
Many other removal cases were terminated by the court, meaning the person didn't face immediate removal and federal authorities would need to file another case to further pursue deportation. About 20 cases were administratively closed, meaning the case was suspended for the time being but could be reopened at a later date.
Most of those in removal proceedings involved people from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico. Cases involving immigrants from those countries alone resulted in more than 1,000 orders for removal.
About 120 cases involved people from Mauritania, and another roughly 80 were from Senegal. The suburbs north of Cincinnati have a high concentration of people from the West African countries. Most are seeking asylum to escape slavery and racial discrimination in Mauritania and political unrest and oppression in Senegal.
About 140 of those cases resulted in orders for removal. In three cases involving Mauritanians and four cases involving Senegalese asylum seekers, the immigration court judge granted relief.
Cases in Kentucky and Indiana
About half of those deported from Kentucky had criminal convictions, and another 200 had pending charges. Like Ohio, many of the convictions were for issues like marijuana possession, traffic violations or immigration-related offenses, like being in the country illegally for a second time. About 20 deported people had convictions for assault. Two were convicted of homicide.
About 700 of the people deported from Indiana didn't have criminal convictions, but 500 of the overall number of deportations were of people with pending charges. As in Ohio, most of those convictions were for charges like traffic violations, licensing issues or immigration-related offenses as described above. Sixteen of those deported were convicted of assault. Three were convicted of homicide.
What's next?
Ohio could find itself at the center of the nation's immigration debate in coming months. The city of Springfield got national attention during the 2024 presidential election due to its large population of people from Haiti.
Many of those immigrants have Temporary Protected Status, which the federal government granted in 2010 due to a devastating earthquake there.
The Trump administration has moved to revoke TPS for Haitians, however, leading to fears of an immigration enforcement surge in Springfield. Federal courts have blocked Trump's action temporarily. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on whether Trump can revoke TPS for Haitians April 29. A decision is expected later this summer.
Saint Vincent DePaul in Springfield has been a focal point for people seeking to help Haitian immigrants, and for controversy around them. Executive Director Casey Rollins told a crowd gathered at a No Kings event in Oxford last month that no matter what happens with TPS, her community is ready.
"We are modeling peaceful coexistence among us, continuing to love our neighbor, protect our stranger and remembering Springfield, Ohio, is us," she said.
Data shows 16 Haitians in Ohio were deported between October of last year and March this year. None had criminal convictions, though six faced pending charges. Should the Supreme Court rule in Trump's favor, the number of those deported could increase significantly.
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