Jul 16
2025
ICE deception on immigrant detentions
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On X, ICE has used these words to describe detainees who were already incarcerated. Graphic by I’Jaz Ja’ciel.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, the Buffalo ICE office has issued a steady drumbeat of press releases and social media posts purporting to show that its agents are taking dangerous criminals “off the streets.”
But in reality, more than half of the immigrants ICE Buffalo has publicized since Trump’s inauguration were already in state or federal prison.
Following a White House-issued quota, ICE data shows that arrests in the region have skyrocketed from 83 last year to 335 through the middle of June this year.
More than three-quarters of those detained this year, however, have no criminal convictions or pending charges, the data shows.
Two recent ICE press releases illustrate the deception.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomIn April, ICE Buffalo publicized the arrest of Rasmane Sankara, a native of the African nation of Burkina Faso.
“ICE Buffalo Officers are working diligently to keep dangerous criminal aliens off the streets of New York State,” the agency claimed in the April 29 post.
But Sankara, convicted of first-degree rape, was in the midst of serving a seven-year state prison term that began during Trump’s first term in 2020. He was due to be released next year before ICE took custody.
Then there was the arrest of Salvadoran native Pedro Leyva-Quintanilla, which the White House hailed last week.
“ICE Buffalo is keeping child predators off our streets,” the White House posted on X (Twitter). The post was complete with a siren emoji and a stylized mugshot poster reading “ARRESTED” in capital letters.
Screenshot from the post.
Leyva-Quintanilla, however, has been in federal custody since January 2024. He crossed the Southern border illegally in January that year, court papers show, and was immediately caught by a federal agent. He never spent a day in the United States as a free man. He had previously served nearly two years for indecent assault, for which he was deported.
The White House was unrepentant when Investigative Post challenged the Trump administration’s characterization of Leyva-Quintanilla’s situation.
“Without the work of our brave ICE officers, this sicko would be on the streets, terrorizing American communities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement Monday.
“Instead of celebrating the heroic work done by ICE to keep Americans safe, the Fake News would rather split hairs over semantics.”
The White House’s narrative also ignores that the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision is transferring detainees to ICE at the same rate that it was during the Biden administration.
Under Biden, around eight inmates per week were transferred from a state prison to ICE, according to data provided by a state prison spokesperson. So far under Trump, the rate is the same.
Matthew Borowski, an immigration attorney with offices in Cheektowaga and the Washington, D.C. area, said the Trump administration’s PR contributes to a “narrative of demonizing immigrants, trying to make the word ‘immigrant’ synonymous with the word ‘criminal.’ ”
In reality, he said, immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than American citizens. But that doesn’t fit with the White House’s message.
“They’ve got to keep that propaganda pumping out in order to drown out the reality,” he said.
ICE arrestees already in jail
Between January 20 and the end of June, the ICE Buffalo office named 52 migrants in either press releases or social media posts, many of them with convictions of serious crimes like murder and rape.
Yet more than half of the immigrants named — at least 28 — were already in state or federal prison before ICE Buffalo intervened, Investigative Post found. That conclusion is based on research using state and federal prison databases, court records and other documents.
On June 27, for example, the office publicized the case of Shaun Davie, a 57-year-old native of the United Kingdom. Convicted of a federal drug offense, ICE described him as “no longer able to threaten our communities.” Yet Davie was serving a federal prison sentence before ICE took custody.
Other migrants publicized by the Trump administration are listed as having pending charges — meaning ICE took custody of them before they were convicted. Under the newly-enacted Laken Riley Act, non-citizens accused of theft or other crimes must be held without bond. That appears to be the case with a Peruvian woman who was described as having several theft charges pending.
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In some cases, ICE Buffalo appears to have taken custody of a person well before their sentence was due to end.
In January 2013, for example, Alejandro Salazar began serving a 15-year sentence after being convicted of first-degree rape. State prison records show he was due to be released in 2027. ICE Buffalo took custody of him in February.
Similarly, in March 2024, a federal judge in Pennsylvania sentenced Antonio Palma-Quintanilla to 18 months in prison for attempted murder. ICE Buffalo took custody of him in February, just 11 months into his incarceration.
In some cases, ICE Buffalo sprung someone from prison early so they could finish their sentence in their home country.
Such was the case with Christopher Anthony Frater, a Canadian. He was sentenced in September 2023 to 10 years in federal prison after being caught in Omaha, Nebraska, with 50 kilograms of cocaine. Federal court records filed in March indicate he was deported to Canada to finish his sentence.
What the data shows
ICE does not readily make available data showing the majority of immigrants it arrests have no criminal histories.
But arrest, detention and deportation data dated September 2023 through June of this year was published online last month by the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and attorneys who obtained the figures via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Investigative Post analyzed that data as it pertained to ICE Buffalo and the territory it covers, which includes 48 upstate counties.
The figures are stark.
ICE Buffalo arrests in the eight counties of Western New York jumped from 83 last year to 335 through the middle of June this year.
Seventy-nine percent of those arrested so far this year were classified as “other immigration violators” with no criminal history. Fifteen percent had criminal convictions while 7 percent had pending charges.
For the 48 upstate counties that encompass all of ICE Buffalo’s jurisdiction, the numbers are up from 767 last year to 922 this year through mid-June.
Fifty-six percent of those detainees, the data shows, have no criminal history or pending charges.
The ICE data classifies those it arrests into one three categories: Convicted criminal, pending criminal charges, or other immigration violator. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, defines people in the latter category as “Immigration Violators without any known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges entered into [the] ICE system of record.”
The statistics track with Investigative Post’s other reporting, which has shown that families, roofers, Iranians and others have been detained or targeted by immigration authorities despite having no criminal convictions or charges.
Borowski and other immigration attorneys explained that most immigration violations are civil offenses. Only certain actions, like re-entering the country after being previously deported, result in criminal charges.
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the data makes clear that ICE is going after all migrants not just criminals as the Trump administration says.
“What we’re seeing is ICE and Border Patrol pretty much just arresting anyone for the simple crime of being an immigrant,” he said.
“It just seems like ICE and Border Patrol are doing whatever they can to actually meet the quotas that the Trump administration has put in place to enable their mass family separation and mass deportation agenda.”
