How Ohio Built a Business on Disappearing Immigrants
An investigative report on how Ohio sheriffs turned traffic tickets into ICE money, arrested a working mother, and helped to make your county into a quiet deportation machine.
It starts with a flicker of red and blue in the mirror.
In Ohio, that’s all it takes. A tag a month out. A stop sign interpreted too loosely. A state trooper with a quota. That’s the doorway. What happens after has nothing to do with traffic.
This isn’t theoretical. Ohio has been perfecting the traffic-stop-to-deportation pipeline since at least early 2024.
According to the American Immigration Council, the Ohio State Highway Patrol began colluding with Border Patrol agents at the Sandusky Bay station to target Latino drivers in northern Ohio. They pulled over vehicles on flimsy pretexts, performed ID checks, and flagged names to DHS. That was the dress rehearsal.
Now the tactic is statewide, weaponized by local sheriffs with dollar signs in their eyes and ICE on speed dial.
Under Trump’s second term, sheriffs across Ohio have been deputized (some formally, some functionally) to act as federal immigration enforcers.
Through the 287(g) program, local cops can be trained and authorized to make civil immigration arrests, usually under the banner of “public safety.”
Portage County signed on. Others, like Mahoning County, didn’t. They didn’t need to. All it takes is a jail contract, a traffic stop, and the political will to disappear people for money.
Let’s talk about Ohio
Start with Mahoning County. They didn’t join 287(g). They didn’t need to.
Sheriff Jerry Greene, who served four years as a Democrat before flipping to the GOP and running unopposed in 2024, made a simple deal: ICE pays $125 a day for each immigrant detained in the Mahoning County Justice Center.
“As soon as Trump got elected, I contacted ICE in Cleveland and Homeland Security in Detroit and discussed with them that I would certainly have some open bed space,” Greene told reporters. “If they wanted to come and take a look at us as a particular facility that they want to be housing immigrants.”
With capacity for up to 150 people, that deal is worth over $4.5 million a year. By April 2025, Mahoning was already holding 95 ICE detainees a day. Most were picked up after minor stops and funneled into Greene’s jail like livestock into a butchery.
One of them is Nataliya Vlchekova.
She’s a 54-year-old legal resident. She has lived in the U.S. for nine years, working, raising her daughter, and applying for a green card. She was stopped in Portage County, reportedly over by the Ohio State Patrol (OSP 67) for expired tags, and ended up in ICE custody. Her family has launched a GoFundMe to help with legal costs. If you are able, please check it out. Her story is what led me to investigate this entire pipeline.
Nataliya’s booking lists her as charged with “federal immigration” and held in Mahoning County, but she was arrested in Portage, right next door.
And Portage County? That’s no ordinary county, either. It’s one that enthusiastically joined the 287(g) program. Now remember, that’s the formal ICE partnership that deputizes local cops as federal immigration agents. The one that they advertise on their website like they’re selling you a cable service.
Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski didn’t just accept immigration powers he jumped at the chance to join ICE’s enforcement network while already under fire for abusing his position.
Zuchowski actually said that he is "surprised" more Ohio sheriffs have not already signed onto the 287(g) program because of how much safer he believes it will make their communities. He said he is hopeful more sheriffs will "do the right thing."
In 2024, this same man was accused of using jail inmates as free labor for his reelection campaign. They were made to haul gear, build booths, and work the county fair under his name. Not for the public. For his political machine. And now, that same sheriff holds federal authority to arrest immigrants and hand them off to the same jail system his allies profit from.
Zuchowski never faced charges. But now he holds federal immigration authority to arrest people and then house em in one of the six facilities ICE is paying in their neck of the woods.. And that authority was used to begin the chain that moved Nataliya from a minor traffic stop into ICE custody.
You have to wonder when a sheriff with 287(g) powers arrests immigrants but doesn’t house them, and his neighbor runs an ICE detention contract worth millions, is it just coordination? Or is it quiet, localized profiteering?
Zuchowski makes the arrests. Greene fills the beds. They both benefit. No paperwork required.
Now, I say this because records show us that Nataliya isn’t the only one. In recent weeks, Mahoning booking logs have been filled with Latino and Eastern European names marked as “federal-other” or “federal immigration.”
No local charges, trials or paperwork here. Just bodies, moved like inventory.
This echoes what’s happened in Georgia, Tennessee, Colorado.
We’ve seen a college student named Ximena Arias Cristobal was pulled over for a traffic violation she didn’t commit. Dashcam footage later proved her innocence, and the charge was dropped. But ICE took her anyway.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol helped ICE conduct 500 stops in a single sweep near Nashville. Two hundred immigrants were arrested. Most had no criminal record.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, a DACA recipient was pulled over, released by local authorities, and immediately detained by ICE — despite no charges ever being filed. It wasn’t an arrest. It was a handoff. They set the stage, and ICE walked right in.
This isn’t enforcement. It’s dragnet deportation by traffic stop. And in Ohio, sheriffs have perfected the funnel…. straight into their jails, and straight into their pockets.
This didn’t start with Trump’s return to power. Ohio had already started.
In early 2024, the American Immigration Council exposed a quiet, coordinated effort between U.S. Border Patrol agents and the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Then came the handoffs. Border Patrol was standing by. ID checks were called in. And people vanished.
The report didn’t make news for long. A couple of headlines. A few statements. Then it slipped into silence. But law enforcement agencies across Ohio heard the message loud and clear: no one was going to stop them.
So they didn’t stop.
Instead, sheriffs built on the model. They studied the gaps, formalized the pipeline, and signed the paperwork to make it all look legal.
By the time 2025 rolled around, the deportation machine was already up and running. All it needed was fuel. And that fuel came from traffic stops — just like the one that took Nataliya Vlchekova.
She wasn’t an outlier. She was a test case. She was proof the system works. A legal resident with no criminal record, caught between county lines and jurisdictional doublespeak, pulled into ICE custody like it was the natural next step in a bureaucratic routine.
And now? The logs in Mahoning keep filling up. Names marked “federal-other.” No charges. No court dates. Just bodies, moved like freight. Eastern European. Latino. Poor. Disposable.
The sheriffs cash the checks. The jails fill the beds. And the lights keep flashing in rearview mirrors across the state. In America, we don’t need black sites. We have county roads. We don’t need secret police. We have deputies with ICE on speed dial.
We don’t need to disappear people in the night. We just need a tail light out, a judge who won’t ask questions, and a country willing to look away. Ohio had already built the blueprint and no one else is coming to tear it down unless do.
A Note From The Author:
I will continue to hold everyone accountable. That includes the federal government and every small-town sheriff, county jail, or local official who thinks no one is watching. I am.
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Ah Bruce Zuchowski... He was also the sheriff who told Portage County residents to give him a list of neighbors supporting Kamala Harris., and he is currently suing a resident who documents his bad behavior on Facebook.
Portage County is also where a recent ASIG "INTO ACTION" training made news (ASIG is an extremist group, like the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys). They advertised that law enforcement and elected officials would be present...I wonder if that meant Bruce?...
Every moment of everyday - the bombardment of disgusting greedy sick people doing horrible things - this is so so beyond the pale. I just can’t