IRTF BORDER FOCUS MONTH WEBINAR
OHIO IS A BORDER STATE: IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AND DETENTION
Tuesday, 6/14 at 7 pm ET
The border is closer to us than we think. With about 50% of the state being within the Border Patrol’s 100-mile border zone and sharing a border with Canada, Ohio is impacted in many ways by immigration enforcement. Many Ohio residents, despite having lived in the state for many years, with a job and a family, still have to fear being arrested or detained, often simply based on racial profiling. Local police and Ohio State Highway Patrol cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to assist them in federal immigration enforcement. This leads to more arrests, more detentions, more separations of families. Many immigrant detainees and their legal representatives have voiced concerns about the inhumane, unsanitary conditions in Ohio's county jails that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses as extended detention centers. While there may not be a physical border along Lake Erie, immigration enforcement, extended surveillance and unnecessary detention are still an issue in Ohio, and they cause many to live their daily lives in fear.
Join us for this webinar as part of the IRTF Border Focus Month to get an overview of immigration enforcement in Ohio. Our statewide campaign has been successful in ending ICE contracts at two county jails. Hear some lessons learned from those efforts. But two county jails (Seneca and Geauga) are still making money from contracting jail cells to ICE. Let's work together to end racialized immigration enforcement and detention in Ohio!
Our speakers are:
Mark Heller, Attorney at ABLE Law
Brian Hoffman, Executive Director at OCSILio
Miranda Hallett, PhD, Associate Director of Human Rights Studies at Dayton University
Lynn Tramonte, Director at Ohio Immigrant Alliance
Moderator: Don Bryant, Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network
