'A huge liability': Rural Missouri jails see a windfall — thanks to Donald Trump

This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

On a recent morning, thick fog lingered over the hills and hollows of Ozark County, Missouri, limiting the view of Lick Creek. It and other waterways raged out of their banks in overnight flash flooding, only to recede with debris strewn about.

County commissioners huddled inside the courthouse, one block from a muddy rodeo ring, discussing bridge inspections and the path forward. Some washed-out areas were only accessible by four-wheel drive.

They’d put up more “road closed” signs, the commissioners said, if only people would stop stealing them.

Ozark County — estimated population 9,090 — is used to doing without. A mere nick in the Bible Belt, it doesn’t even have a stoplight.

What it does have is a 24-bed jail with a cattle trough baptismal pool in the recreational area.

It also has an ambitious sheriff who sees his prayers answered in a new contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that could boost his $1.1 million annual budget.

“It’s a pain in the butt because this is a whole new ground that we are covering, but then, you know, when you are one of the poorest counties in the state of Missouri, I’ve got to figure out how to pay for law enforcement,” Sheriff Cass Martin told the Marshall Project - St. Louis. “And that’s not easy, especially when you can’t even get new recruits. Nobody wants to be in law enforcement. It’s dying.”

Ozark County is one of many places, big and small, that the Trump administration is depending on to pull off one of the largest mass deportations from the U.S. in recent history. An enormous ramp-up in detention capacity is underway. New contracts are being negotiated. Existing contracts with the federal government are being expanded. In the ICE contract’s infancy, Ozark County is already reaping the benefits by raising wages and hiring for new positions in law enforcement.

As of early May, tracking reports show ICE contracting with or operating 147 public and private detention facilities, including three in Missouri. That’s up from 107 facilities reported in the final days of the Biden administration. On Feb. 24, Martin signed a contract for Ozark County, which isn’t yet on the list.

ICE plans to spend $45 billion on new contracts to hold and transport detainees and provide detainee services, according to a federal request for proposals. Counties like Ozark are getting a taste in federal dollars of what that expansion means.

Sheriffs say the feds pay well, yet the detention and transportation contracts come with much more scrutiny and oversight than typical jail work, especially in Missouri, which doesn’t have statewide jail standards.

Still, ICE reported that eight detainees had died nationally while in custody this year, as of May 5, including one death in a rural Missouri jail that the local coroner ruled a suicide. In 2024, ICE reported 11 deaths.

Some groups that advocate for ICE detainees are concerned that people from all over the world are increasingly being held in communities without well-established legal watchdogs and medical services.

Contracting with local jails “is the easiest way to get a (detention) facility up and running without any of the risk to the federal government,” said Romelia Graefrath, co-executive director of Mariposa Legal, a nonprofit in Indianapolis that fights for immigrant rights. “The end result is people get hurt, and then that is a huge liability for these communities that are already suffering.”

Martin said he applied for an ICE contract under the Biden administration when his department faced a budget crisis from falling revenue.

“We were really hurting,” he said. “We were basically praying that next month will be better.” The ICE application lay dormant until Trump was elected, he said.

“The day after the inauguration, a federal inspector showed up here at the jail wanting to look at everything throughout the facility,” he said.

The negotiated ICE contract will breathe new life into his department at a rate of $110 a night per detainee and $1.10 per mile when transporting detainees, Martin said.

He said Ozark County was still working out medical care so it could be cleared to hold detainees longer than overnight. Meanwhile, it has three transport vans out on the road, sometimes driving hundreds of miles per day.

He said they’ve made 525-mile runs from Ozark County to the federal building in St. Louis, down to the Greene County Jail in southwest Missouri, then back home. They’ve picked up detainees 325 miles away in Oklahoma and taken them to the tarmac at Kansas City International Airport. Sometimes detainees spend the night in the Ozark County Jail, on the way to Little Rock, Arkansas, for example, which is about a 3½-hour drive.

“We’ll feed them, we’ll house them, we’ll take care of them, and then the next morning they’ll go back out,” Martin said. “We are just kind of a spot in the road.”

Because of the ICE contract, Martin said, he’s been able to attract more jail staff and raise the pay from about $13 to $18 an hour. In addition to mileage, he said ICE pays $18.50 an hour for drivers transporting detainees, as well as time and a half for overtime.

Martin plucked one new employee who speaks Spanish from a local real estate office. She went through a short training program to be a transport officer.

“It definitely enlightened her a little bit,” Martin said. “They are able to talk to her and tell her if something is going on.”

The staffing bump was reflected in the public payroll.

In February, the county paid five jail employees a total of $12,900 in earnings, which came to an average of $2,580 each. By March, it had 14 employees earning $54,193, including about $10,500 in overtime, or an average of $3,871 each.

“We’d like to add another pod to the jail and at some point help pay livable wages,” said Brian Wise, the county clerk. “Around here, local law enforcement doesn’t have tons of money. Without extra revenue, they can’t function.”

It’s hard to gauge what local residents think. Just one attended a recent county commissioner meeting. Two years’ worth of meeting minutes didn’t mention the ICE contract in detail. Wise said he wanted to wait until federal money started coming in before listing projected revenue in the county’s $7 million annual budget.

Other elected local officials also see the contract as a boon.

“It’s going to work out to be a great thing for us,” Ozark County Presiding Commissioner Terry Newton said.

While cash-strapped jails see opportunity in ICE contracts, Brayan Garzón, a former street vendor in Bogotá, Colombia, saw opportunity in the United States.

He left in 2023 and crossed the U.S. border into southern California. Garzón was then detained for three months before settling in St. Louis, where he held various odd jobs doing roofing and food deliveries, his family said.

On May 27, 2024, Garzón was arrested for shoplifting in Missouri. Two weeks later, an immigration judge in San Diego, at a hearing Garzón wasn’t present for, ordered him removed from the country, ICE officials said.

In late March, St. Louis police arrested Garzón on a charge of using a stolen credit card at a smoke shop. He was arrested along with a friend from Colombia who was accused of stealing credit cards, a watch and more than $25,000 in jewelry while cleaning hotel rooms for a temp agency, according to court records. ICE took both into custody.

Garzón ended up being held 100 miles southwest of St. Louis in the Phelps County Jail. On March 27, a medical intake screening of Garzón at the jail noted that he had anxiety and a history of a heart murmur. He denied having suicidal thoughts. A routine mental health referral was made, according to an ICE report.

Two days later, Garzón had severe head pain, body aches and sweating. A tuberculosis test came back positive. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 at a local hospital’s emergency room after being taken there by the jail staff. He was returned to the jail a day later, on March 30, with normal vitals. But a few days later, he was treated for vomiting. His mental health appointment was rescheduled because of “mental health clinic time and staff” and his COVID-19 diagnosis.

Around 9:50 p.m. on April 7, Garzón was found near death in his cell with a blanket wrapped around his neck. He was pronounced dead the following day, after being flown to a hospital in the St. Louis area for a higher level of care, ICE said in its report.

Garzón was in his cell alone prior to his suicide, according to Phelps County Coroner Ernie Coverdell. Garzón had given a letter to his jailers written in Spanish, requesting to speak to his mother by telephone. Coverdell said surveillance footage showed Garzón praying before entering a bottom bunk, hidden by a draped blanket. When a jailer found him unresponsive about 20 minutes later, Coverdell said Garzón looked like he was asleep, but with bedding around his neck.

Emergency responders and doctors kept his heart beating for several days after he was declared clinically dead, Coverdell said. With his family’s permission, Garzón’s heart and several organs were donated to people in need.

“He saved more than one life,” Coverdell said.

Garzón, one of six siblings, was 27.

His mother, Adriana, said in Spanish that she’d spoken to her son several times by phone from the jail. He’d complained about the food and being sick, but she was blindsided by his suicide.

“My son had more will to live than to die,” she said. “He was a very happy person.”

She struggled to comprehend how he fell through the cracks of a country rich in resources and modern technology.

“How is it possible that my son could do this?” she said. “He’s a human being. They should have been watching.”

The Phelps County Jail has a long history of holding detainees for the federal government. In an effort to hold more, the facility just underwent a $21 million expansion that doubled the size of the jail to 400 beds.

A few weeks prior to Garzón’s arrival, Phelps County Sheriff Michael Kirn’s department was struggling to pay January and February invoices “due to lack of funds,” according to county commission meeting minutes.

Kirn told commissioners that it was imperative to get the ICE agreement in place because he expected it to generate an additional $3.6 million a year on top of the sheriff’s typical budget of $5.5 million.

Kirn declined to comment about the death because it was under investigation by state and federal authorities. He said no policies or procedures have been changed or added since Garzón’s death.

The county’s existing contract with the U.S. Marshals — who track down dangerous fugitives and enforce federal law — was expanded to include ICE detainees, Kirn said. He declined to share the rate.

“The feds are a little funny about stuff, and I don’t want to cause ripples,” he said.

He said they were hovering at about 300 out of 400 beds filled, half of them with federal detainees.

“We had to slow down,” he said. “It’s not the amount of people; it’s the paperwork.”

ICE officials didn’t respond to a request for comment. An April press release about Garzón’s death stated that the agency “remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.”

Garzón’s death seemed to weigh on Martin, the sheriff in Ozark County.

“He was so young,” Martin said.

He wondered if there were any red flags leading up to the incident. And how did ICE respond?

Martin said if a jail resident is in a mental crisis in Ozark County, they rush them to the hospital for an emergency hold. That hadn’t been an issue with any of the ICE detainees they’d been transporting, he said.

“These guys are a little bit easier to deal with than our local inmates on most points,” he said. “They are, ‘Thank you, thank you for this. Thank you for food.’ They are appreciative of what we’ve got.”

Martin said he doesn’t know all the ins and outs of why ICE detainees are in custody, but he wants to do a professional job.

“It’s not like going to the stockyard up here and watching cattle run through the chute. They are human beings,” Martin said. “My thing is, I promise that I can give them a safe place to put their head at night. I will feed them, and I will make sure that they are taken care of. And from there, wherever they are going, I hope everything turns out well for them.”