8/17/2023 0 Comments Butler county sheriff newsAnd he is four-square behind Donald Trump. “I get Republican, Democrat and independent votes,” Jones said. In 2012 he defeated his opponent Dale Richter by garnering just over 80 percent of the vote. He has coasted to election wins easily during his three terms in office. in 2001 on a work visa from Bogotá, Colombia. Martinez is a product of the immigration system, having moved to the U.S. Instead of running away from it, I ran towards it,” Martinez said. “Sheriff Jones’ stance on immigration and the fear the community was feeling was one of the factors that brought me to Hamilton. ![]() An immigration lawyer who set up shop in Hamilton, he acts largely as a resource to counter to Jones. Instead, I prefer to think of all the great organizations and people we have here who are welcoming,” Pucke said. “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Sheriff Jones. He has worked with other agencies in the county to create a safety net for Latinos. “Many times people who are that desperate to get into the United States and are willing to spend that much effort are among the best,” he said. He spent four years as a missionary in Chile before returning to his Ohio roots. Sunday service in Spanish, which he leads, is the most crowded, he said, with almost 400 people packing the pews each week. The church offers four weekend Masses, and the 1 p.m. ![]() while providing a place of worship, support and like-mindedness. “Why would I ask them?” he said. He doesn’t inquire about his parishioners’ legal status in the U.S. “This is a safe place,” he said of his church. Julie Billiart Catholic congregation in Hamilton. "But then people went on with their lives.”Īs menacing as Jones has been to the local Hispanic population, there’s an unusual juxtaposition in the county, evidenced by the open-armed Rev. “It did cause a lot of stress, frustration, especially the first couple of years, in the Hispanic community,” she said. She said that, if anything, he has brought the county’s Hispanic population closer together. He hasn’t frightened anyone off,” said Shelly Bromberg, the chairwoman of the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “The number of Hispanics in Butler County has doubled during his time in office. Census Bureau put the county’s Hispanic population at just 4,800 as recently as 2000.ĭespite Jones’ grandstanding, headlines and resources poured into efforts to remove undocumented residents from the county, one Jones critic thinks his crusade has largely fallen flat. People have set up organizations in the county to send the opposite message: one of welcoming undocumented immigrants.īutler County’s Hispanic population was at 15,904 and climbing in 2013, according to the Ohio Development Services Agency. Years of Jones’ scrutiny notwithstanding, the Hispanic community in Butler County is growing fast. He has even hired a detective to conduct investigations and spawned headlines with stunts such as sending the government of Mexico a bill for the cost of jailing them. Like Arpaio, Jones has vowed to pursue undocumented immigrants in the county and crack down on anyone giving them a job. Many observers consider Jones a Midwestern acolyte of Joe Arpaio, the controversial anti-immigration sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. He would probably cause fewer problems for us if he were in Washington.” Like many other Hispanics in Butler County, she did not want to give her name out of fear of attracting the attention of the authorities. When told Jones would likely not be launching a campaign, she snapped her fingers disappointedly. “Is he running for the seat?” a Hispanic customer in Supermercado Garcia asked. A special election to replace Boehner is scheduled for June. Jones recently made national headlines by flirting with the possibility of running for the congressional seat that opened when House Speaker John Boehner retired. ![]() But they represent very different slices of life in this corner of the state, not far from Cincinnati and Dayton, because the sheriff’s office is where Richard “Rick” Jones runs the county law enforcement apparatus with an almost single-minded zeal to root out undocumented residents - who are often Hispanic - and the employers that hire them. The two buildings can be caught in the same line of sight. HAMILTON, Ohio - A block from the sprawling, fortresslike Butler County sheriff’s office in Hamilton is Supermercado Garcia, a Mexican grocery store selling spices and tortillas that provide a taste of home to area residents from south of the border.
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