Dozens of people, including clergy and faith leaders, gathered outside the downtown St. Louis federal building that houses the ICE office on Monday, praying together and calling for independent, recurring oversight of four Missouri county jails that hold people in federal immigration custody. The group presented its demands to Missouri leaders and said the vigil was meant to make otherwise unseen community harm visible.
Sara Ruiz, executive director of the Ashrei Foundation, told those gathered that the Greene County Jail has reached its highest record of people detained by ICE, according to First Alert 4. Missouri has no federally operated ICE detention facilities of its own, which is why federal authorities rely on contracts with four county lockups — Greene, Ozark, Phelps, and Ste. Genevieve counties — to hold civil immigration detainees alongside local criminal inmates, according to St. Louis Public Radio.
Ruiz also said that roughly 60% of people currently in ICE custody in the region were first arrested by local law enforcement and then transferred into federal custody, per the outlet’s report. That estimate lines up with a broader pattern advocates have flagged statewide: data presented by the Southern Missouri Immigration Alliance in April found that only 9 of 233 people detained for ICE at the Greene County Jail — about 3.86% — faced any criminal charges, while 224 were held solely on civil immigration grounds, according to KSMU.
Conditions Inside the County Jails
The stakes behind the oversight demand were laid out in stark terms in May, when U.S. Representatives Wesley Bell and Nikki Budzinski conducted a congressional oversight visit to the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center. They reported overcrowded cells holding up to 48 detainees along with inadequate access to drinking water and medical care, according to a press release from U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski. The Ste. Genevieve County Jail holds up to 400 ICE beds serving detainees from both Missouri and Illinois…