A senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervisor in Cincinnati was sentenced on Thursday, October 29, to 21 months in federal prison for lying to federal agents about violently abusing his girlfriend, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio announced.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

Samuel Saxon, 47, of Cincinnati, received the sentence from U.S. District Court Judge Matthew W. McFarland. He had been charged federally in December 2025 and pleaded guilty in March 2026 to making false statements to federal officers, according to court documents cited by the Justice Department.

An investigation opened in September 2025

According to court documents, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General (DHS-OIG) opened an investigation into Saxon in September 2025 after receiving allegations that he had physically abused and threatened to kill his girlfriend. The Justice Department said the investigation revealed years of escalating violence, including repeated death threats and strangulation. Those underlying abuse allegations are set out in court documents; Saxon's federal conviction is for the false statements he made to investigators about the abuse.

Between June 2024 and December 2025, Cincinnati police officers responded to Saxon's residence approximately two dozen times for reports relating to possible domestic violence, the Justice Department said. Local station WKRC, reporting the same sentencing on Thursday, put the figure at about two dozen responses over the same period and noted that Saxon had worked for ICE since 2005.

Source: WKRC via Star64

Saxon was arrested by local police officers in December 2025 after a neighbour witnessed him abusing the victim, the Justice Department said. He then lied to a federal agent about the attack — the lie that became the federal charge.

A supervisor on ICE's enforcement side

At the time of his arrest, Saxon was working as the assistant field office director for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations at a sub-office in the Cincinnati area, based at Blue Ash, according to federal court records reported by FOX19 (WXIX). He lived in Corryville and had begun working for ICE on September 18, 2005 — a roughly two-decade career inside the agency whose officers carry out immigration arrests and removals.

The case did not end with the lie itself. According to the Justice Department, Saxon did not report his contacts with police to ICE, as DHS policy requires, and evidence presented at sentencing showed that he also commonly failed to report for duty, or showed up late and then left early, while submitting false timesheets claiming full-time, in-person work.

Federal prosecutors had sought the maximum five-year sentence, the Montgomery–Blue Ash Courier reported ahead of the final sentencing hearing, and at the time of his guilty plea FOX19 reported the charge carried up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Judge McFarland imposed 21 months — well below the maximum the government had asked for.

The state case is still ahead of him

The federal sentence does not close Saxon's legal exposure. He still faces state charges of domestic violence, felonious assault and strangulation in Ohio, to which he has pleaded not guilty; FOX19 reported that the state case was put on hold while the federal case went first, and that a conviction on all the state counts could mean decades in prison. Those state charges remain allegations until a court decides them.

When Saxon was indicted in December, ICE said in a prepared statement reported by FOX19 that it was aware of the allegations and was cooperating fully with the investigating authorities, adding: 'As public servants working for a law enforcement agency, every employee at ICE is held to the highest standard of conduct. If an employee does not adhere to those standards, it will be addressed appropriately.'

What happens next: Saxon will serve the 21-month federal term, and attention returns to the pending Ohio state case, where he has pleaded not guilty to assault, strangulation and domestic-violence charges arising from the same period. For readers who follow ICE closely — including the many immigrant families in Ohio and across the Midwest who deal with the agency every week — the case is a rare instance of the agency's own watchdog, the DHS inspector general, building the prosecution of one of ICE's own supervisors.