BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio — An Ohio sheriff is opening the jail doors for illegal immigrants after President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation promise. 

It's unclear whether there will be any deportations, but one sheriff said he’s ready for it.

What You Need To Know

  • Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said he's making room in his jail for mass deportations 

  • Jones said  he has room for 200 or more illegal immigrants, but he has to move inmates around to free up the space

  • Jones said no one from Trump's transition team has contacted him about mass deportations but Jones says he wanted to be ready

Ever since the President-elect made a campaign promise about Ohio Haitians in the Springfield community have been concerned about whether they’ll be forced back to their home country.

“We’re gonna have the largest deportation in our country and we’re gonna start with Springfield,” said Trump. 

“I don’t have nothing in Haiti now, my house was burned, my business burned, I lost my mom,” said Springfield Haitian restaurant owner Ketlie Moise. 

About an hour away from Springfield in Butler County, the sheriff there, Richard Jones, is already taking action. 

“We started the day after the election preparing our space,” said Jones. 

He said he’s making room in the jail for Trump’s promised mass deportations. Jones said there’s space here for 200 plus illegal immigrants that they used to house regularly.

“We used to house prisoners here for ICE. We stopped doing that when the new president came in and they didn’t want us to be involved in this,” said Jones. 

He said he has not talked to anyone from Trump’s transition team saying illegal immigrants are coming to the Butler County Jail for sure this time, but he says he’s shuffling inmates around to make room.

“We’re shutting one pod down, getting ready to, so we can do maintenance to it and then we’ll shut another pod down, so it’s good timing, we’ll just cut back on the maintenance, hurry that up and we’ll have space,” said Jones. 

He said there’s a reason he’s going through the trouble to do it.

“I want to do what my constituents, the people that are my boss, want me to do, they want people that are here illegal not to be here, they don’t want people in schools that don’t speak English, they don’t know even what their shot records are, you don’t know how old they are, they come here with none of those things,” said Jones. 

Just across the county line, in Hamilton County, the sheriff there told us during her campaign that illegal immigrants make up a small part of the inmate population there.

“We’ve had 70. Seventy people that were undocumented that came through our jail in one year, that’s a solid year, we housed 1200 prisoners daily,” said Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey. 

But with Trump’s mass deportation campaign promises, Jones said he’s expecting different, and he’s ready for it.

“We’re gonna do our part to get these bad people out of our country,” said Jones.