A Hamilton, Ohio family is demanding answers after ICE agents detained Alberto Lira Razo on a recent Friday, with his teenage daughter saying she watched agents tase her father and forcibly pull him from his van while her four-year-old brother looked on. Yulianna Lira says she pulled out her phone and began recording as agents pushed her away while she tried to reach her father and little brother. She says she saw agents on top of her father and that his vehicle window was broken during the encounter.
According to WCPO 9 Cincinnati, Lira Razo had gone to pick up his daughter from school that day because she was feeling unwell. Yulianna told the station she blames herself for what happened, since it was her father’s trip to get her that put him in the agents’ path. By the time his wife, Moriah Lira, arrived at the scene, her husband was already sitting in a police vehicle, she said.
A Decade of Trying to Fix His Status
Moriah Lira told WCPO her husband has lived in the United States since he was 16 years old and has no criminal history. She said the family has spent more than a decade trying to resolve his immigration status, without success. Lira Razo is the family’s sole provider and the father of five children, according to the station’s report.
An attorney is now working on the case, and the family is hoping Lira Razo can be released on bond, per the same account. As of the interview, Moriah Lira said they had received little information about what would happen to him next. The station’s reporter said the Department of Homeland Security had not responded to an inquiry about the detention at the time of publication.
Kids Left Traumatized
Moriah Lira said the toll on her children has been immediate and visible. “They're traumatized. They're upset. They can't sleep,” she told the outlet. She said her four-year-old son cried all night asking for his father.
A Statewide Surge in Ohio Detentions
The Lira family’s ordeal is unfolding against a backdrop of sharply rising ICE activity across Ohio. The Ohio Immigrant Alliance reported that 7,756 people were detained for ICE in the state between January 2025 and March 2026, with 91 percent of them men. The group also found that Ohio's average daily detained population jumped from 117 in 2024 to roughly 656 in 2025.
Notably, fewer than 5 percent of people arrested and detained for ICE in Ohio during that period had been convicted of a violent offense, based on National Crime Information Center classifications cited in the Ohio Immigrant Alliance report. The same analysis identified the most common detention transfer route in the state: 535 people moved from the Butler County Jail in Hamilton to the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana.
Hamilton's own jail has become a hub in that pipeline. The Ohio Capital Journal reported that Butler County Jail held 44 Haitian nationals between July 27 and August 31, part of at least 445 people booked into four Ohio ICE detention facilities during that same stretch.
Force Tactics Under Scrutiny Nationally
The daughter's account of a tasing and a broken van window echoes a pattern researchers have flagged elsewhere. The Immigration Policy Tracking Project identified nearly 50 documented instances of immigration agents breaking vehicle windows during the second Trump administration, compared with just eight instances over the entire previous decade. Experts and former ICE officials told the project that such tactics were rarely used in previous administrations and that they knew of no formal policy change authorizing increased force.
The Department of Homeland Security's own use-of-force policy states that excessive force is unlawful and will not be tolerated, and that those who engage in or fail to report such misconduct may face administrative and criminal penalties. Separately, federal law under 8 U.S.C. § 1226 states that the Attorney General's discretionary judgment on detention matters is not subject to judicial review, and that no court may set aside a decision under that section regarding detention or the denial of bond or parole.
Detention Numbers Climbing Nationwide
Ohio's surge mirrors a national trend. The Vera Institute of Justice found that ICE detention populations reached unprecedented levels by mid-March 2026, with populations on almost every day since mid-June 2025 exceeding the previous peak recorded in August 2019. Vera's analysis also counted ICE detention activity across 469 facilities nationwide in July 2026, even though ICE acknowledged using just 208 of them on its own website.
Meanwhile, the number of local agreements allowing Ohio law enforcement to assist federal immigration agents has exploded. An ACLU of Ohio staff member told WYSO that Ohio had zero so-called 287(g) agreements at the start of 2025; by late August 2026, that number had climbed past 20. For now, the Lira family is left waiting, hoping the attorney working on Alberto Lira Razo's case can secure his release while their children try to process what they witnessed.
