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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Stephen Starr in Hamilton, Ohio

Dream turns to nightmare for midwest town in grip of US migrant crackdown

a sign reads
The Butler County jail in Hamilton, Ohio, where Sheriff Richard Jones posted a sign that reads ‘illegal aliens here’ on 13 March 2025. Photograph: Jim West/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

For 50 long years, life in Hamilton, a town of 63,000 people a half-hour north of Cincinnati, was in decline.

Factories closed and thousands of residents moved away to Cincinnati, Columbus and beyond. The scourge of the opioid epidemic during the early 2000s sucked the life out of Butler county’s seat of government.

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