For 50 long years, life in Hamilton, a town of 63,000 people a half-hour north of Cincinnati, was in decline.
Factories closed and thousands of residents moved away to Cincinnati, Columbus and beyond. The scourge of the opioid epidemic during the early 2000s sucked the life out of Butler county’s seat of government.
But then, slowly, immigrants came to town. And things began to get better.
Inside Mary’s Comida Casera, an unadorned Mexican restaurant serving Guanajuato food on Hamilton’s southside, a telenovela plays on a pair of televisions while two elementary-age kids watch cartoons on a tablet in the corner.
The restaurant, formerly a 136-year-old residential property, along with dozens of Latin American cafes, stores and businesses in the Jefferson and Riverview neighborhoods have helped bring life back to Hamilton’s southside.
This month, the community’s growing presence was acknowledged when a huge mural titled Long live the dream – live the dream – was inaugurated in the Jefferson neighborhood.
“As a brown woman who’s called this city home for over two decades, seeing public art that reflects our stories, struggles and dreams was incredibly moving,” says Mitzi Hernandez, a community leader who moved from Mexico City to Hamilton 23 years ago.
“It felt like we were finally being seen.”
Nearly four in 10 residents in a host of census tracts immediately west and south of downtown Hamilton identify as Hispanic. Despite its relatively small size, the number of people in the city who speak a language other than English at home is almost double the Ohio average.
Not only are immigrants contributing to the renewed vibrancy of life in Hamilton through festivals and community outreach work, their income, property and business tax dollars are padding the coffers of local and state authorities.
But in the center of the neighborhood, a stone’s throw across a grassy area from Mary’s Comida Casera, lies a place that’s increasingly striking fear into the hearts of Hamilton’s immigrants: the Butler county jail.
A report by the Journal-News newspaper that analyzed the jail roster on 8 July found that of the 384 people detained at that time, more than 90% were there on immigration-related charges.
“There’s a real and growing concern,” says Hernandez.
“This fear isn’t limited to just the Hispanic community – it impacts all immigrant groups.”
The jail is run by Richard Jones, an outspoken sheriff who among his long list of anti-immigration policies recently joked that while Florida has “Alligator Alcatraz”, his town has a “swamp squad” – posting images of inflatable crocodiles at the jail to his Facebook page this month. Many locals and rights groups called the posts “cruel”.
Jones and his populist, anti-immigrant messaging enjoy significant support among the local population. Since 2004, he has won every election for sheriff, often prevailing by three-to-one margins or running unopposed. He has appeared on Fox News calling for the death penalty for drug dealers.
But his controversial views go beyond mere rhetoric.
The detaining of hundreds of people on immigration charges earns the jail more than $24,000 a day or $720,000 a month in fees paid by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) – on top of $36 an hour in transportation fees the jail charges Ice.
At this month’s Butler County Fair, the sheriff’s office display included two mangled cars that were involved in a fatal crash last year caused by an undocumented migrant from Mexico whose blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal driving limit. Why it picked this and not any one of the other 31 fatal crashes that happened in the county last year isn’t apparent – emails, calls, voicemails and an in-person visit to the jail by the Guardian failed to secure an interview with Jones.
On the other side of the jail walls is Ayman Soliman, an Egyptian-born, Cincinnati-based imam who was detained this month following the termination of his longstanding asylum status.
His confinement on 9 July, allegedly related to membership of a group purportedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization outlawed in Egypt but not by the United States – has sparked recriminations, mounting fear and anger, and violent responses to protests in south-west Ohio.
Soliman’s detention and the outpouring of anger that has followed are emblematic of the wider split in American society, between those who believe the repressive policies of the Trump administration are key to keeping the country safe, and those who think migrants are a cornerstone of the American way of life.
During a court hearing on 22 July, Soliman appeared by video link in a yellow-and-white prison jumpsuit wearing brown glasses and a salt-and-pepper beard. When asked by the immigration judge whether he needed an interpreter he declined.
Soliman’s calm demeanor during the hearing belies what’s at stake for him.
Should he be deported to Egypt, he could face the death penalty; this month, an Egyptian news outlet accused him of being a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he has vehemently denied.
Cincinnati seethes
His predicament has fueled a groundswell of anger linked to police beatings, felony charges and seemingly impromptu firings.
On 17 July, Madeline Fening and photography intern Lucas Griffith, two CityBeat journalistswere among 15 people arrested on felony rioting charges following an until-then peaceful protest in downtown Cincinnati against Soliman’s detention.
Footage of the arrests shows the demonstrators walking across the John A Roebling Bridge before Kentucky police, whose jurisdiction extends across the city’s Ohio River bridges, repeatedly punchshoot pepper balls and violently subdue several participants.
While the felony charges initially filed against the reporters have since been dropped (police claimed the journalists “knowingly participated in a riot”), they still face several misdemeanor charges.
In an environment in which the Trump administration has repeatedly vowed to go after elements of the media it deems are hostile to its positions, press freedom groups have assailed the charges.
“Our clients were doing their jobs and should have never been arrested in the first place,” said William Sharp, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Kentucky, which is defending the journalists.
“A free press is critical to a functioning democracy, and those members of the press who, like our clients, merely cover a story enjoy the full protection of the US and Kentucky constitutions to do so. We look forward to zealously defending them in court.”
The journalists and others face a preliminary hearing on 14 August.
“Journalists and journalism are under threat … It is disappointing that our efforts to cover a protest were deliberately misinterpreted as rioting,” says Ashley Moor, editor of CityBeat, in a statement provided through the ACLU of Kentucky.
“The suggestion that we were rioting was baseless and designed to intimidate us into silence and complicity.”
All the while, the Kenton county police department has placed Zachary Stayton, the officer who repeatedly punched protest participant Brandon Hill, on administrative leave with pay, pending an investigation. Stayton had been previously the subject of a 2023 lawsuit for excessive use of force.
At a preliminary hearing for Hill, who was hospitalized due to the severity of his injuries and who is one of four protestors still facing felony rioting charges, the judge declined to view the video of the punching, stating“The officer’s testimony is sufficient.”
‘This is my dream job’
Nor have Soliman’s former colleagues escaped apparent punishment for speaking out about his predicament.
For the past decade, the Rev Lizzy Diop worked as a chaplain at the Cincinnati Children’s hospital, four of those years spent alongside Soliman.
“Cincinnati Children’s has patients from around the world and quite a few from the Middle East. It’s a big thing to travel to a new country with a new culture to get medical care – it’s the most stressful time of their lives,” says Diop, who is one of three people Soliman has asked to be allowed to visit him in jail.
“The delight in somebody’s eyes, and the joy they take in [caring for] the kids; he had that.”
When Diop heard that Soliman had been detained, she was shocked.
“He’s not somebody who talks a lot about himself, but early on, he said: ‘I came from Egypt to the United States to save my life.’”
Five days after his detention, she visited Soliman at the jail. Days later, after being interviewed by a local television station – a move she believed was explicitly cleared by her employers – Diop was fired from the hospital.
“I briefly talked to my manager and director, and we decided I would take PTO and meet off-campus and not wear any [hospital] gear [for the television interview],” she says.
“I was talking about a former employee and some particular interaction about visiting a friend who was incarcerated.” When Diop arrived at work the morning after the interview aired, her director told her she was facing serious disciplinary action for violating media policy.
“This is my dream job. It’s a huge part of my identity. I felt like my world, my life, my self had been torn apart,” she says.
“I’ve been here for 10 years, and I’ve never had a disciplinary action; I got an ‘exceeds expectations’ review weeks before I was fired. I’ve done nothing but good work,” she says.
Diop is still at a loss as to why she was fired.
“Have I messed with a donor? Have I caused [the hospital] to fear repercussions from the Trump administration? I don’t have an answer, but those are the two things that I thought of that could have happened.”
Diop isn’t alone.
Days after Adam Allen, another chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s hospital, attended the vigil that preceded the bridge protest, the hospital fired him.
“They’re firing people for speaking out,” Allen told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cincinnati Children’s hospital is regarded as one of the top hospitals in the US and receives hundreds of millions of federal government dollars every year for treatment and research. In March, the hospital was one of three healthcare facilities investigated by the federal government on discrimination charges for programs aimed at helping students from minority backgrounds.
“We don’t comment on current or former personnel,” responded a Cincinnati Children’s hospital spokesperson to the Guardian’s query asking why Diop and Allen were fired.
Back in Hamilton, leaders in the Hispanic communities are further panicked by the move last month to allow local law enforcement officers in Butler county to do the job of Ice agents such as detaining and arresting people suspected to be undocumented immigrants. At least 10 Butler county deputies have become certified Ice agents having taken part in a 40-hour training program.
With nearly three-quarters of Hamilton’s foreign-born population not US citizens, an overwhelming majority of the community is living in fear.
“There’s anxiety, especially as we see Ice activity increasing in other states,” says Hernandez.
“But our community is incredibly resilient. We’ve faced hardship before. Moving to a new country in search of a better life takes courage, and despite fear, people continue to push forward. The most important thing we can do is come together.”
There are signs that Republicans in Butler county, where almost 63% of voters backed Trump in November’s presidential election, are growing uneasy with Jones’s and the White House’s anti-immigrant drive.
On Friday, the Butler county prosecutor, Mike Gmoser, a self-declared “lifelong conservative Republican”, warned of “potential liability” and legal implications for county leaders and authorities for imprisoning hundreds of people on immigration rather than criminal charges, and said he had sought the opinion of the state attorney general.
Soliman last week filed a lawsuit challenging the termination of his asylum status, and his next court hearing is set for 12 August, taking his detention at Butler county jail to more than a month.
