Apr 30
2025
ICE seeks to deport Buffalo man over traffic tickets
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Federal agents arresting a man on Buffalo’s West Side last week.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to deport a Buffalo man whose only offense appears to be traffic citations.
And in a second case, ICE appears to be attempting to deport someone arrested for a crime they committed prior to entering the United States.
ICE officers last week arrested West Side resident Saul Valverde-Venegas, a roofing contractor, while he was loading a work truck. For days, ICE refused to explain why.
In a statement Monday evening, an ICE spokesperson described him as “unlawfully” entering the United States more than a decade ago and said he had “since acquired several vehicle and traffic law violations.”
Otherwise, records show, Valverde-Venegas, 48, appears to have gotten in no trouble during nearly 12 years in the country. In interviews last week, family members described him as selfless, hardworking and a dedicated stepfather.
“He’s good, he’s a good dad. He never gets in trouble,” his wife, Paula Diaz, told Investigative Post.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomImmigration court records show that Valverde-Venegas entered the United States in May 2013. The ICE spokesperson said border patrol agents “encountered him near Rio Grande Valley, Texas” and detained him in September. Court records show, however, that he was released a week and a half later.
After a series of hearings, the records show, an immigration judge in Philadelphia closed Valverde-Venegas’ case in February 2016 and scheduled no additional court dates. That was a common mechanism used during the Obama administration to allow immigrants to stay in the United States without granting them legal status.
Valverde-Venegas’ traffic violations appear to have all occurred in subsequent years, between July 2018 and March 2020, all in the Orlando area of Florida. Records show he was cited once in 2018 for running a red light and four times in subsequent years for failing to pay a highway toll. In all five cases, Valverde-Venegas was caught via traffic cameras and never encountered a police officer.
After failing to pay the issued fines, he faced a drivers license suspension, the Florida records show. Diaz, however, told Investigative Post he eventually rectified the matter and has a valid New York license. He had moved to Buffalo within the last two years seeking higher pay for his work.
Aside from the traffic citations, Valverde-Venegas appears to have had no encounters with law enforcement. His name appears nowhere in New York court records and a City Hall spokesperson said he’s had zero interactions with the Buffalo Police Department.
Regardless, the ICE spokesperson indicated the agency was seeking to eject Valverde-Venegas from the country. Marie Ferguson said he was “amenable to deportation” but did not clarify what that phrasing meant.
State Assemblymember Jonathan Rivera, who represents Buffalo’s West Side, decried the effort by the Trump administration to deport a resident for unclear reasons.
“Every single U.S. resident should be appalled by the opaqueness with which the Trump administration is carrying out these deportations,” Rivera said in a statement Tuesday. “Such ambiguity leads to confusion and fear, which is a deliberate intimidation tactic that this administration has sought to employ.”
Aaron Krupp, an advocate with Justice For Migrant Families, said ICE’s portrayal of Valverde-Venegas as a law-breaker is part of a Trump administration pattern to “villainize” immigrants.
Elected on a promise to conduct mass deportations, Trump’s second term has so far been marked by a show of public ICE raids, arrests and deportations. ICE so far has not released data to reflect how many arrests or deportations have occurred in the Buffalo region, although there have been signs of increased enforcement. Those have included arrests and detentions at U.S.-Canada bridge crossings.
By “emphasizing any tiny mistake that anyone may have made in life,” Krupp said, the administration is “trying to create a narrative that immigrants are bad for the United States.”
“They’re trying to villainize this person,” Krupp added.
In the second case, ICE is moving to deport a man named Milton Zuniga-Miranda.
Like Valverde-Venegas, he is originally from Costa Rica and had been living on the West Side. The two men were arrested together on Wednesday.
In the statement, Ferguson said Zuniga-Miranda had been arrested for “strangulation” in April 2016 and was ultimately convicted of “offensive touching” two weeks later. Zuniga-Miranda then entered the United States in May on a nonimmigrant visa, Ferguson said, implying his offense took place in Costa Rica. Ferguson would not confirm where the offense occurred. An official with the Costa Rican embassy in New York did not return a request for comment.
Zuniga-Miranda subsequently “violated the terms of his admission,” Ferguson said, leading to his arrest last week. He has no records in either New York courts or federal immigration courts.
Both he and Valverde-Venegas are currently being held in the ICE detention center in Batavia. Attempts to communicate with the men via a messaging platform made available to ICE detainees were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Valverde-Venegas was scheduled for a hearing with an immigration judge Tuesday but, as of 5 p.m. Diaz said there were no updates.
In his statement, Rivera said the Trump administration owes the public more information on who the administration wants to arrest and deport and why.
“Put plainly, this administration has been carrying out deportations with no adherence to constitutional protections, and the American public deserves transparency,” he said.
