Even a MAGA sheriff who cheered Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda from the Trump rally stage says the administration “messed up” on its deportation campaign.
Richard Jones, the longtime sheriff of Butler County, Ohio, where Vice President JD Vance was born and raised, has been part of the MAGA faithful since Trump’s first run for the White House, warming up crowds at Trump rallies and throwing his support behind the president’s immigration crackdown.
But in a new interview, he became the latest MAGA Republican to concede that Trump’s second-term effort to deport as many people as possible has brought ugly consequences.
“Has it been kind of messed up when they first started this under the second term? Sure they have,” Jones, 72, told WCPO reporter Stephen Knobel during an interview about his new book They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America.
“Did they go about it in the wrong way? Sure they did,” he added.
Jones has spent 25 years as sheriff of Butler County—just north of Cincinnati—where Trump secured more than 60 percent of the vote in 2024. He suggested Trump’s mass deportation plans wouldn’t get very far.
“You can’t deport 20, 25 million people,” he told WCPO, offering his estimate of the number of undocumented people in the U.S. “I don’t even think [Trump’s] deported maybe over a million.”
He said federal immigration enforcement should not come at the expense of how people are treated, according to WCPO, and noted the leadership chaos that has engulfed Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“They’ve had to change people out, fire people, get new people in,” Jones said, before claiming the administration has now landed on a “softer approach, which is a good approach.”
Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March and replaced her with then-Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, amid mounting controversy over Noem’s use of taxpayer funds and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents.
While Mullin appears to have left behind some of the administration’s most aggressive tactics and has even drawn fire from MAGA hardliners, ICE’s deadly encounters have continued.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite his criticism, Jones continues to push for tougher immigration enforcement and praises Trump as a “real leader” in his new book.
The Butler County Sheriff’s Office continues to cooperate with ICE and house federal immigration detainees, whose treatment has come under scrutiny from Ohio lawmakers.
On Wednesday, protesters gathered outside the sheriff’s office in Hamilton to condemn its cooperation with ICE on deportations, Local 12 reports.
“I would like Sheriff Jones to search his own heart,” protester Hugo Olaiz told the outlet. “See what Jesus had to say about welcoming the stranger, about loving those who perhaps are different from us, and about seeing if that really is consistent with the actions that he’s taking in this county.”
Jones is not up for reelection until 2028.
A growing list of Republicans have spoken out against Trump’s hardline immigration agenda
Last week, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican from Florida, issued a scathing campaign ad disavowing the president’s immigration policies, saying that he had gone “too far” and had “betrayed” Hispanic voters who were crucial to his 2024 election victory.
A day later, Christi Fraga, the Republican mayor of Doral, Florida, told CBS News, “I don’t agree with the way things are handled,” after business owners in the city complained that masked ICE agents roaming the streets are severely hurting their sales.
