Ohio has 12 times more beds for ICE detainees under Trump. Here's where

Danae King

• The number of Ohio facilities housing immigrant detainees for ICE has tripled since January 2025.
• Advocates and former detainees have raised concerns about poor conditions within these facilities.
• ICE contracts with local county jails for bed space rather than owning or operating the Ohio detention centers directly.
• The increase in detention space coincides with a shift in federal strategy to detain and deport more immigrants.

More immigrants are detained by the federal government than ever before, and Ohio now has a lot more room to hold them.

Since President Donald Trump took office, the Buckeye State has tripled the number of detention facilities contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to six, and has 12 times more available detention beds.

In January 2025, ICE's website listed only the Geauga County and Seneca County jails, both in northeastern Ohio, as contract facilities in Ohio.

Today, ICE lists the following six facilities:

Butler County Sheriff’s Office in Hamilton– estimated ICE capacity 300Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio (CCNO) in Stryker– estimated ICE capacity 96Geauga County Safety Center in Chardon– estimated ICE capacity 60Mahoning County Justice Center in Youngstown– estimated ICE capacity 150Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown– estimated ICE capacity 784Seneca County Jail in Tiffin– estimated ICE capacity 60

Prior to Trump's second inauguration, there were about 120 beds at two Ohio facilities that were designated for ICE detainees, according to the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. In his first 100 days, the alliance says the number grew to 1,450.

The increase is part of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) strategy to detain and deport more immigrants and is coupled with heightened ICE enforcement actions and arrests.

Almost 3 million immigrants left the country during Trump's first year in office, according to DHS. About 675,000 of them were deported.

Under prior administrations, immigrants often went through immigration proceedings without being detained, but Trump changed the policy. Meanwhile, immigration judges have said they don't have the authority to issue bonds, meaning fewer immigrants are released once detained, said Adriana Coppola, Ohio-based supervising attorney of emerging issues at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. (CLINIC).

ICE booked people into detention about 19,500 times in the first 4½ months of Trump's second term in office, according to the Vera Institute for Justice. That's up 17% from the same period in his first term and 46% from the same period under former President Joe Biden.

The latest data from the Deportation Data Project shows that 794 people were detained in Ohio's six facilities contracting with ICE as of Oct. 15, 2025, according to analysis from the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. ICE later arrested more than 280 undocumented immigrants in Ohio in five days during Operation Buckeye, according to a Jan. 8 DHS release.

Data from that same month shows that ICE was holding over 59,000 people nationwide, a record high, according to the Vera Institute.

Ohio is home to one of 10 largest new ICE detention facilities

Since Trump's second term began, ICE has used 59 new facilities to detain people. Among the largest new facilities to go under contract is the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio in Stryker, according to the Vera Institute.

It is the seventh largest new facility, behind famous prisons used by the U.S. government like Leavenworth in Kansas and JTF Camp Six in Guantanamo Bay.

The institute says Ohio is also home to three of the largest facilities that ICE wasn't using before Trump's second inauguration, but that it has since reopened: the Butler County jail; the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Mahoning County; and the Mahoning County jail.

Ohio has the most detention centers on Vera's list of largest reopened facilities.

What are conditions like inside these facilities?

Former detainees, attorneys and advocates have repeatedly said Ohio facilities have little food, lack health care and medicine and keep immigrants held on civil offenses near violent convicted criminals.

Ayman Soliman knows what it is like to live inside the walls of an immigrant detention center.

For 73 days in 2025, the Cincinnati resident and Muslim religious leader was wrongly detained after his asylum status was abruptly terminated and he was falsely accused of being a terrorist.

The conditions inside the Butler County jail were so terrible he believes they’re worse than those in an authoritarian government, said Soliman, who was released in September and whose asylum status was reinstated.

“I’ve been detained four times in Egypt,” Soliman said. “My experience at Butler County jail was more traumatizing. ... You're dehumanized, you're mistreated and being detained for no real charges."

Soliman, who spoke to The Dispatch in February, was arrested during a check-in at a local ICE office and said he would have been killed if deported to Egypt, where he faced persecution before coming to the United States in 2014.

"I did it the right way," he said, of immigrating to America. "My community stood up for me."

Who owns the detention centers?

When Trump took office, most of the detention centers were like those in Ohio: existing facilities managed by other entities. In February 2025, ICE owned 10 of the 220 detention facilities it used, according to the American Immigration Council.

The council detailed a leaked ICE memo from July 2025 that stated the agency would use its recent funding of $45 billion to increase detention capacity to 107,759 beds by the end of that year, using soft-sided tent camps. The camps didn't materialize, and ICE is now buying and retrofitting 24 commercial warehouses and stopping contracting with pre-existing building owners, according to the council. ICE already bought nine warehouses.

A plan for one such facility in Georgia shows a capacity of 8,000 beds and a plan to complete it by April. It would become one of the largest prisons or jails in the United States, according to the council, with only New York's Rikers Island having more capacity.

None of Ohio's detention centers are owned or run by ICE. Instead, it contracts with local county jails – or, in one case, a corporation – and pays for bed space. That lack of infrastructure, when compared with other states where ICE owns facilities, is part of the reason fewer Ohio residents are detained, said Brian DiFranco, an immigration attorney at Rodriguez Bell and DiFranco Law Office on Columbus' Northeast Side.

The uptick in facilities housing detainees in Ohio is indicative of the broader shift in enforcement priorities under Trump, Coppola said.

"When detention space increases, it coincides with a bigger reliance on detention custody, not on alternatives to detention like ICE check-ins and ankle monitors," Coppola said.

Underserved Communities Reporter Danae King can be reached at [email protected] or on X at @DanaeKing.