John Minchillo/The Associated Press

CLEVELAND, Ohio — U.S. immigration authorities paid city & county governments in Ohio more than $24.4 million between 2013 and 2017 to detain in local jails people accused of being in the country illegally.

The jails include facilities in Geauga County in Northeast Ohio, and in Butler County, near Cincinnati. The detention centers provide beds for people arrested and detained by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents as they await deportation or a court decision that could allow them to stay in the country.

Local government officials interviewed by cleveland.com said they have come to rely on revenue generated by enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Butler County, for example, said housing detainees for other agencies has become an important part of yearly budget talks.

Records obtained by cleveland.com show the amount of money ICE paid to local governments increased in 2017, the year President Donald Trump took office on a platform of cracking down on immigration. However, those numbers fluctuated over five years, even before Trump took office.

The amount of money going to local Ohio governments is important to note as Trump’s administration continues its efforts to detain people accused of illegally entering the U.S. from Mexico and other Latin American countries, as well as to apprehend those who are already in the U.S.

ICE detainees may be held in local jails that contract with ICE, but they may also find themselves in private prisons, such as one operated by the private prison contractor CoreCivic in Youngstown, or standalone ICE detention centers.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rely on local jails because of free space and the expense of building new facilities.

“County jails are a profitable place for the administration to put large numbers of detainees because detention centers are expensive to build,” said Grace Meng, senior researcher of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program.

But with the increased numbers of immigrants in jails have come increased complaints about jail conditions, from inadequate medical care to the inability to meet with attorneys. While Ohio has not seen as many complaints about facilities as other parts of the country, advocates and attorneys say they have heard about problems in the jails as they get more crowded.

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Russell Contreras/The Associated Press

This March 12 photo shows the Metropolitan Detention Center of Bernalillo County outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Languishing in jails

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Moe Khoshknabi, a South Euclid resident and native of Iran, was in the Geauga County Jail for about a year, save for some time he spent in the Cuyahoga County Jail. ICE agents arrested him in June 2017 after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in county court, claiming the misdemeanor convictions invalidated his green card and subjected him to deportation.

Khoshknabi, 54, said the year he spent there was mostly in a dorm setting, with 60 beds in a large room for non-violent offenders. The majority of his fellow inmates were from Latin American countries.

He said he was treated well and received his medication three times a day, but he said he saw guards act aggressively toward other detainees a few times. Khoshknabi also said his dorm was locked down for 23 hours a day.

That year was difficult for him and his family, but he was able to get a new green card and was released in June 2018. While his time was not easy, it might have been easier than those in other jails across the state.

“I heard between all of (the jails that hold immigrants) that Geauga was the best and the cleanest,” Khoshknabi said.

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Eric Gay/The Associated Press

In this March 15 photo, migrant families just released from immigration detention gather at the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas.

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Poor medical treatment

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Immigration advocates say other inmates experience far worse. As the government and immigration judges order more immigrants held pending deportation, ICE detainees often languish in jails or detention centers that are known to provide less-than-adequate medical care.

Poor medical treatment contributed to more than half the deaths reported by ICE from December 2015 to April 2017, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

“The increase in detention is really one thing we’ve been concerned about," Meng said. "It’s that we’ve seen how people have literally died because of poor medical care. It’s a dysfunctional system, and being full of more people is a recipe for more deaths.”

Brian Hoffman, an Akron immigration attorney, witnessed examples of this. He said he recently met with a man with diabetes who claimed he hadn’t received his medication in a detention center.

He also recalled working with someone in jail who had leukemia, and was on medication for 10 years until he was arrested and detained.

The detainee with leukemia had turned himself in with his family at the U.S.-Mexico border after his brother was killed, Hoffman said. He did not receive any leukemia medication during his six months in detention, despite requests to see a specialist, according to the attorney.

“We gave evidence to the facility of the specific medications he was on in Mexico, and he eventually just gave up his case and asked to be deported because he was afraid that his leukemia would relapse and get worse than before,” Hoffman said.

Immigration lawyers and advocates regularly hear such stories, and each time are disappointed when there are no systemic changes.

“Where are the medical malpractice attorneys?” Hoffman asked. “Where are the personal injury lawyers who could actually file suit on behalf of some of these people and say, ‘Look, you would not have had these terrible injuries if someone had properly diagnosed you and gotten you treatment months ago.’”

Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for ICE's office in Detroit, said in an emailed statement that the agency "is committed to providing for the welfare of all those entrusted to its custody and to ensuring all detainees are treated in a humane and professional manner.

"Accordingly, all facilities that house ICE detainees must meet rigorous performance standards, which specify detailed requirements for virtually every facet of the detention environment," his statement said.

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A variety of options

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The advocates' concerns came at a time when Trump's administration was seeking more beds in detention centers and jails nationwide, a clear sign that detaining and deporting more people suspected of being in the country illegally is a priority.

President Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March 2018 that gave $6.9 billion to ICE. Just over $4 billion of that money was designated for ICE enforcement, detention and removal.

The federal budget also funds 40,520 detention beds – an increase of 1,169 from the average daily population in 2017, but 10,859 fewer beds than the Trump administration’s request of 51,379 beds. That’s one major difference between the administrations of Trump and President Barack Obama, Meng said.

“The Obama administration consistently sought less beds than Congress wanted them to fill with the detention bed mandate,” Meng said. “Trump’s administration is seeking more beds than what Congress wants.”

Still, Hoffman said passing time often allows people to forget that immigration officials aggressively went after people suspected of being in the country illegally under the previous president as well.

“Things were really, really bad under President Obama,” Hoffman said.

Meng, however, said the previous administration had different policies, including more avenues to allow people to get released.

Cleveland.com has compiled numbers for all cities and counties who held immigrants between 2013 and 2017, the last year all governments had complete information. Scroll through to find more information.

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AP file photo

A Dec. 16, 2005, file photo of Richard Jones, the Butler County sheriff had this sign put up by the main entrance to the sheriff office-jail.

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Butler County

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Located outside Cincinnati and comprised of many of its suburbs, Butler County has made money housing immigrants for years.

It pulled in more than $11.2 million from ICE between 2012 and 2017.

Such a fact should come as no surprise for a county with Rick Jones, a mustachioed, cowboy hat-wearing sheriff prone to making statements about his push to investigate employers who hire “illegals.”

It’s not just ICE, though. The main jail and two satellite locations serve as a business for the county, as they also house inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service and other local police departments.

In all, they have 1,155 beds. The main jail, which can house 848 inmates, was opened in 2002 and has too many beds compared to the needs of the county. Over the years, the county has gotten into the corrections business.

Their sheriff’s office is proud of it, too. Chief Deputy Anthony Dwyer said the county budgeted bringing in $7.5 million for housing inmates from outside the county in 2017. Instead, it brought in more than $9.1 million. While ICE is a large part of that total, Dwyer said the marshals make up an ever larger portion.

“When you look at the revenue, it’s paid for the jail several times over,” Dwyer said. He added that it did not cost the county $9.1 million to house the inmates, which turns into “a benefit for the county.”

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Plain Dealer file photo

Inmates at the Geauga County Jail play cards while watching the Indians-Red Sox game Friday, Oct. 12, 2007.

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Geauga County

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Northeast Ohio’s Geauga County was paid more than $4.2 million to house ICE detainees between 2013 and 2017.

“The jail was built bigger than what we need right now,” Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand said of the 182-bed facility constructed in 2005. “So we’ve taken advantage of that.”

On any given day, the jail houses 60 to 80 ICE detainees, Hildenbrand said. ICE pays Geauga County $75 per detainee, per day. The county also leases out space to the U.S. Marshals and other counties.

“We’ve produced revenue to the point where the commissioners were able to pay off the jail sooner than expected,” Hildenbrand said.

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Morrow County Sheriff's Office

ICE has housed inmates at the Morrow County Jail for several years.

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Morrow County

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Morrow County, a small county in the Columbus metropolitan area, was paid more than $4.5 million from the federal government to house immigrant detainees between 2012 and 2017. The numbers fluctuated, with the rural jail earning more than $1 million in 2012 and steadily declining after that.

However, the numbers started increasing again in 2016 and are going up from there. Numbers the county provided to cleveland.com in early October showed that the county had received nearly $676,000 in so far in 2018.

Messages left with Sheriff John Hinton’s office were not returned.

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Seneca County Sheriff's Department

The Seneca County Jail is used by ICE to house people suspected of being in the country illegally.

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Seneca County

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Seneca County in rural northern Ohio, took in more than $8.2 million between 2012 and 2017 to house people for immigration cases. The numbers fluctuated over those years, and three of those years saw totals exceeding $1 million.

The county did not have numbers for 2018 available. Calls left for the Sheriff’s Office to discuss the numbers were not returned.

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Cory Shaffer/cleveland.com

Cuyahoga County officials marked the opening of the former Bedford Heights Jail as a comprehensive reentry programming center at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday, April 5, 2018. From left: Jill Rizika, executive director of Towards Employment; Ken Mills, director of Corrections; Fletcher Berger, Bedford Heights mayor; Clifford Pinkney, Cuyahoga County sheriff; Armond Budish, Cuyahoga County executive.

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Bedford Heights

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Bedford Heights was the only city that ICE contracted with over the past several years. The city got out of the jail business in 2015, leaving many surrounding cities scrambling to find a place to house inmates in their custody.

ICE had inmates housed there for several years, though the agency stopped a few months before the city closed the jail. Between 2012 and 2015, ICE paid the city more than $930,000 to house immigrants there.

The jail is now used as a re-entry center.

This story was updated April 12, after Geauga County provided the amount ICE paid for detainees housed in 2013.