ICE Arrests in East Price Hill: Half-Baked Measures of Cincinnati Fail to Protect Its People
Reports have confirmed that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrested multiple people in East Price Hill during the first weekend of June. This was not an isolated assault, but part of a broader pattern of state violence and neglect. These arrests bring the number of immigrants held against their will in Butler County Jail, a known ICE contractor, to over 300. Butler County represents a continually recurring phenomenon of local police departments directly aiding and abetting ICE in their duties and training their own officers in how to execute ICE detainments and detention in their own local communities.
The 287(g) law, codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1996, authorizes ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to deputize state and local law enforcement officers in order to enforce federal immigration laws under the direct supervision of ICE. For many of our neighbors, this is not just a statistic. It’s the terrifying reality of being ripped from families, jobs, and community by an agency built on xenophobia and cruelty and their local collaborators.
Back in January, Mayor Aftab initially stated that Cincinnati would comply with ICE. After public outcry, he walked that statement back. However, his “correction” only clarified that the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) would not directly participate. In truth, what it means is that ICE is free to operate in Cincinnati. There is no sanctuary here. The city will not stop them, challenge them, or even sound the alarm when they come for our neighbors.
East Price Hill has been abandoned by this city before. In 2022, tenants were left to freeze in an apartment building with no heat while the city accepted a landlord’s lies about installing a boiler. Instead of protecting those tenants, the city issued a vacate order, evicting working-class residents en masse, and then failed to follow through with real relocation aid. The same neighborhood now targeted by ICE was already forced into precarity by landlord neglect and the city’s bureaucratic indifference.
The pattern is clear: when working-class and immigrant communities need protection, Cincinnati shrugs. But when systems and agents of repression and removal descend on our streets, the city looks the other way. We reject the illusion that these are isolated oversights. This is how structural violence works: disinvestment, displacement, and deportation, all enforced without accountability.
We stand in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors and the people of East Price Hill. We demand the city and county take real action to end cooperation with ICE in all forms — not just CPD’S participation, but the use of county jails for detention, the quiet tolerance of raids, and the failure to notify or support affected communities. We demand an end to policies of abandonment and removal. Our communities deserve protection, not silence. They deserve dignity, not disappearance.