“Abriendo Puertas, Opening Doors”: Stories of Hope
By Dr. Linda Alvarado-Arce
(Lorain, OH)- The 27th Annual Hispanic Leadership Conference & Gala, “Abriendo Puertas, Opening Doors”: Stories of Hope, was held on April 25, 2026, at Lorain Public High School (2600 Ashland Ave.) in Lorain, Ohio, from 8 am until 3 pm. This year’s location was changed from last year, where it was held at Lorain Community College (LCC). The event, as always, had speakers, workshops, and very meaningful and personal networking opportunities. This is one of the few events I go to annually where the majority of the people in attendance and those speaking are Latinx. This event is also one that I am very proud to speak of and encourage others to attend because it is intimate enough to speak with everyone in attendance, and one in which you will always see and get to speak with all the elected officials, Latinx or not, in the City of Lorain or County, i.e., Joel Arredondo, President of Lorain City Council and Angel Arroyo of the Sixth Ward, as well as Rey Carrion, Safety/Service Director for the City of Lorain and the Lorain County Sheriff, Jack M. Hall.
In fact, La Prensa had a nice, long discussion with the Lorain County Sheriff, Jack M. Hall, in the hallway and in the presence of Councilpersons Arredondo and Arroyo, after the Sheriff’s speech on the state of immigration in Lorain County. In his speech, Sheriff Hall said that the majority of Latinx immigrants in Lorain County came to the U.S. through human, labor, drug, or sex trafficking rings. In Sheriff Hall’s words:
The immigration law in the United States has a mass and diverse history, with some of that history, quite frankly, is disgusting to many of us in this room across our manufacturing plants for steel, and our auto manufacturing plant. Where we are looking for skilled labor to fill the many jobs that need to be filled here in Lorain. Therefore, Lorain, as the international city, was offered as a promise, offered as a location to come, bring your family to build upon the American dream.
We fast forward to today, in 2025 to 2026, and we have the same issues going on, although it’s not US Steel, it’s not the Ford Motor Company. It’s building homes. It is now constructing a [Cleveland] Browns Stadium. It’s building on to the Cleveland Clinic, and it’s building a lot of buildings in the area. Unfortunately, instead of people from around the world coming to our international city, to come to our county, it’s not a solicitation anymore; it is literally we are kidnapping people in other countries and bringing them here to work. What we learned over the course of the last year, in regards to immigration enforcement, is that the problem is truly a human trafficking problem. The immigration issue has gone from labor trafficking to sex trafficking. In addition to drug trafficking crime- 170 investigations were conducted last year [in Lorain County].
Yet, when asked in a public records request how many of these 170 investigations involved Latinx immigrants, his office could not provide a number. Because, according to Sheriff Hall, the Lorain County Sheriff’s Department is at the “mercy of the policies of the presidential office, the Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency, and border control,” and only ICE has immigration violation or irregular immigrant numbers. In his speech, he verified this as follows:
The unfortunate part of this is that immigration law is a federal law, and I know we have a couple of people running for a state office. We have some people in the state office here, but unfortunately, I can’t look at my state officers right now and say hey we need to do something in Ohio because their hands are tied regarding what we could do with immigration law and immigration, pursuant federal law. So, I’m not going to lie. Of course, the last year was a little rough with our border control and immigration. Custom Enforcement Officers are part of the Detroit region. The Cleveland office actually reports to the Detroit immigration office. The issue with Lorain County, on the northern border, is not the same issue that we have on the southern border. Keep that in mind.
According to Sheriff Hall,
When we look at these 170 enforcement actions that take place, we’re focusing on sex trafficking, human trafficking, and labor trafficking, and with that we had to kind of get our federal partners to come over to our thinking, and saying, we’re not gonna be going into churches, we’re not gonna be going into school, we’re not gonna be going to look for people in their workplace, and we do know that some of that has taken place. We had to drop that and say you’re not gonna build trust in the community if you continue driving this way, and then in addition to seeing what’s happening in Minneapolis and around the country.
According to Sheriff Hall, Lorain County and the City of Lorain have “taken very proactive steps with organizations, such as CHIP, El Centro, Oberlin College, and other organizations to make sure that Lorain County does not become an international media target of these federal agencies to come here and do something… So far, we’ve done a very good job at making sure that it doesn’t happen. We worked with the Mexican consulate to make sure that we could provide our services last year.”
According to the Sheriff, “It is extremely disturbing that the left side of the media and the right side of the media do not understand when we see these things blow up on Fox News and CNN.” An example given by the Sheriff was when “a few weeks ago, we had an arrest of 13 people, and immediately, I got a phone call saying, ‘great job’.”
Yet, in his speech, he went on and on about immigrants working in massage parlors, not getting a “prevailing wage,” and having to pay a “middleman.” He said he sees “people that are in custody of border patrol, and they’re smiling, they’re like they finally get to go back home, and we get to check on our family members to make sure they are safe.” And then he said,
I’m up here to tell you that you have to keep opening your arms. You have to keep embracing friends and family. Those who wish to pursue this American dream. They dream of the international city of Lorain or Lorain County, because we are seeing regularly when we have organized criminal activity, like the MS 13 gang member from Venezuela who was arrested on the job site at the Ford Motor Company… [In a fact check search, this statement is not true; there has never been an MS-13 gang member ever arrested at a Ford Motor Company].
He proceeded to say:
Unfortunately, right now we don’t have enough skilled labor to fill the positions that have to be filled. Next thing you know we hire a middleman or organization to bring these individuals into the country. So I just wanna let you know that we learned a lot over 2025… [our] biggest success is convincing our federal officers to join us in shutting down the middleman operations that are trafficking individuals for labor and drug trafficking coming into our County… criminal organizations who bring individuals like the one from Harris County that was wanted for 20 years and was on the run for a trial in Houston… Or the female that was operating in Texas… the 58 individuals caught at the hotel in Ohio for various serious criminal activity… and kidnapping.
When asked about the number of people who came to Lorain via these means or the number of families who have lived in Lorain for years, have or live within a mixed-status home, or were small children who, by no fault of their own, have now made the U.S. their home, no numbers were given.
La Prensa’s Public Records request for information and statistics to verify and substantiate what the Sheriff said in his speech and in the hallway came back basically claiming that this information is only stored and or retrievable by Homeland Security, Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) & Customs & Border Patrol (CBP).
La Prensa, therefore, challenges the Lorain County Sheriff’s Department, since they are so “proactive,” to be the first sheriff’s department in the U.S. To stand up and assist in finding and enforcing a pathway to citizenship like the Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s (FLOC’s) resolution or a program similar to the Bracero program in U.S. immigration history’s past that allowed people to come to the U.S. and to legally work through federal agreements/contracts made between the country the immigrant is fleeing from and the U.S. And since the Sheriff spoke of human traffickers bringing immigrants here to work “illegally,” assisting with passing one of the two resolutions could only add to the wonderful work happening in Lorain County and the Latinx community.