President Donald Trump’s immigration plan aims to deport thousands of people that are living in the United States without proper documentation.
We wanted to get an idea of how Trump’s plan will impact Kentucky, a place that’s home to nearly 200,000 immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan immigration policy think tank based in Washington, D.C.
So, we called more than 40 local law enforcement operations — the sheriff’s and police agencies that could be tapped to assist federal immigration agents. And we went inside the state’s only full-time immigration detention center — the Boone County jail, where federal agents can hold up to 175 people to await deportation.
KyCIR reporters Morgan Watkins and Jared Bennett discussed what they found with LPM’s Bill Burton. You can listen to the conversation by clicking the audio player above, or you can read more below.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Bill Burton: Jared, has the jail been holding more people since President Trump took office?
Jared Bennett: The Boone County jailer, Jason Maydak, told me he hasn’t seen any evidence of raids or increased enforcement here in Kentucky.
And actually he wasn’t really expecting any in this new Trump administration.
So far they have seen a slight bump, though. There were 131 people held for ICE there when I visited. That was January 28. And by February 3rd, that number rose to 175 people, which is the jail’s capacity for ICE detainees.
BB: How long are people held there?
JB: The jailer told me the average stay for ICE detainees at the Boone County jail was around 45 days, that’s a month and a half, but some people are there for much, much longer, and that’s one of the main issues with ICE holds right now.
People are held for ICE either waiting deportation or for their cases to move through immigration courts, and that can take a really long time. There was a backlog in immigration courts of 3.6 million cases at the end of the 2024 fiscal year.
A federal judge this past August found someone’s year-long stay at the Boone County jail without a bond hearing was unconstitutional. There’s no hard and fast rule about when detainment becomes problematic, but lawyers told me that courts start to get skeptical around six months.
And when I looked at the records I found 20 people had been at the Boone County jail for over six months, and three people for over a year.
BB: You got to tour the jail, what's it like?
JB: For the most part, a jail is a jail. It’s a big facility, it’s clean, a lot of fluorescent lighting, and it was pretty quiet when I visited. It was below capacity. The jail performs pretty well on ICE inspections, they have a lot of different standards they have to meet to hold people for ICE. That inspection found only three deficiencies that the jailer told me were addressed right away.
But the ICE detainees themselves, they tell a different story. I wasn’t able to talk to any directly, but two filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights in 2021 and said the jail wasn’t taking COVID-19 seriously, didn’t provide translators or regular access to outdoors and recreation. One man from East Africa said he was called racial slurs at the jail.
The Office of Civil Rights investigated and in 2024 made 34 recommendations to address civil rights violations they found. We only have a summary of the findings, so we don’t know what all of the findings were, but we do know ICE only agreed with 18 of the recommendations.
BB: Morgan, Trump wants local police to help ICE enforce federal immigration laws. What do Kentucky officers say, though?
Morgan Watkins: I contacted over 40 police departments and sheriff’s offices and a majority of them got back to me. None of them reported having a formal agreement to partner with ICE, but none said they’d refuse to work with the agency, either.
Several officers said they’d have to consider their available resources – which are limited, especially for small police departments – if ICE asks them for help with an immigration operation.
BB: Do the law enforcement agencies have official policies on working with ICE?
MW: Most of the ones I talked to do not have a policy on ICE, specifically. Louisville Metro Police is an exception. LMPD has policies that limit how and when it can help ICE. A couple of Republican state lawmakers are proposing bills that could force Louisville to drop the restrictions, though.
