Jul 17
2025
Latinos, roofers are prime ICE targets in WNY
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An ICE raid took place on Crescent Avenue in May. Photo submitted.
Rather than targeting the “worst of the worst,” as the Trump administration claims, ICE agents in Western New York are primarily arresting immigrants with no criminal history.
Data shows that more than three-quarters of migrants arrested in Western New York since President Trump took office have no criminal record.
To date, most of the 335 detainees are from Latin American counties, a significant percentage of them roofers and others in the construction field. By contrast, ICE arrested a total of 84 in Western New York all of last year.
The impact of the arrests is being felt beyond immigrant communities.
Owners of roofing and home construction companies told Investigative Post the arrests of migrant roofers are already causing prices to climb.
“There’s not going to be any skilled labor left to do roofs,” one roofing company owner said. “Five percent of the crews out there are white and they suck.”
Local ICE agents have also conducted arrests in immigration court, detaining migrants navigating the asylum process or other legal routes. There have also been traffic stops based on racial profiling, lengthy detentions at the bridges and deportations of people long left alone by immigration authorities, according to Investigative Post’s reporting.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomAs a result of the increase in activity, the ICE detention center in Batavia has often been at or near capacity, causing migrants to be detained at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol stations and local jails. Data obtained by Investigative Post shows the facility has been over its capacity of 650 detainees on more than 30 occasions since Trump’s inauguration. Detentions peaked at 740 on June 12, the figures show.
ICE data dated September 2023 through the present shows 66 percent of Batavia detainees had no criminal record.
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, put it bluntly: “I think, in this moment, what we’re seeing is this massive war that’s being waged on immigrant communities.”
This story is based on six months of reporting of local ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations by Investigative Post. In addition, Investigative Post analyzed ICE data, public relations releases, state records and interviewed more than 20 people, including attorneys, advocates and those with first-hand knowledge of arrests.
ICE, meanwhile, declined to make officials with its Buffalo office available for interviews.
In a statement, an ICE spokesperson confirmed the agency’s approach: “All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law – including those with no additional criminal history – may be subject to arrest, detention, and removal from the United States.”
Arrests at job sites
On the morning of May 12, a crew of Spanish-speaking roofers from the company TurkMasters arrived at a home on Crescent Avenue. They were there at the behest of owner John Yates, who’d been ordered by the city to make repairs to the dilapidated structure. He had scheduled the roof replacement ahead of a Housing Court date.
ICE agents showed up an hour-and-a-half after the workers arrived. The raid was typical of those now common around the country: Armed, masked agents from ICE and the FBI jumped out of black, unmarked SUVs, rounded up four workers and whisked them away. Neighbors of the quiet, upscale Parkside block were shocked.
Crescent Avenue home site of ICE raid.
“I think people were traumatized,” one neighbor who witnessed the raid told Investigative Post. “People came out from their homes. ‘What’s going on?’ No effort was made to explain anything to anyone.”
“It was a show of force,” the neighbor added.
In the days following the raid, Investigative Post sought an explanation from an ICE spokesperson, seeking the names of those arrested and on what charges. Spokesperson Marie Ferguson refused to provide any information, saying only that “ICE privacy policy precludes us from proactively releasing the names of aliens in custody.”
Two months later, it remains unclear who ICE arrested on Crescent Avenue or why. A representative from TurkMasters did not return multiple calls and messages seeking comment.
Also in May, in Amherst, ICE agents raided another roofing crew, this time five men from Ecuador, according to Pastor Langdon Hubbard, the retired preacher of First Presbyterian Church of East Aurora, who’s been working to free some of those detained. The raid was described to Hubbard by the men and their family members, who he said he’s grown close with in the months since.
“It was five [agents] who were unidentified and in masks and with no warrants,” he said. “They simply came up to them and took them and zip tied their hands and shackled their feet.”
Hubbard said two of the men have been deported, two have been released on bond, and one remains detained at the ICE facility in Batavia.
“There’s no evidence of any criminal behaviors,” he said. “No traffic violations, no parking tickets, nothing. [These are] people who’ve lived a very clean life, they have worked hard for years and paid taxes for years.”
“They’re all church-going people. They’re all Christian people,” he added.
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Another raid occurred June 4 on Rosewood Drive in West Seneca.
On that day, ICE agents detained a crew of four working on a house, the homeowner told Investigative Post. The homeowner encountered agents and asked why the crew, who he described as “hard workers,” was being taken away. The answer he got: Three of the men couldn’t produce proper identification, “so we took them all away.”
“[The agent] said, ‘Unfortunately, we have a mandate, and I have to follow orders that I’m given,’ ” the homeowner recalled. He asked that Investigative Post not publish his name for fear of future targeting.
“That was it,” he said. “I haven’t heard where they are, where they went to. I’m figuring a neighbor probably turned them in.”
Most recently, ICE agents arrested a crew replacing the roof on the Lafayette Presbyterian Church on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, according to Pastor Jamie Owens.
Because that roof is made of terracotta tiles, the project was costly — more than $1 million — and had been ongoing since the fall. For months, crews from Texas and Buffalo worked without incident. In late May, Owens said, City of Buffalo building inspectors ordered the crew to attend an OSHA safety training.
“They came back on the job, and within a few hours of them working, ICE showed up and pulled everybody off the roof and loaded everybody up,” Owens said. “[The agents] wouldn’t allow them to go to their cars, from what I’ve been told, to get documentation.”
Some of the men were later released without being charged, while others remain detained, Owens said.
In a statement, an ICE spokesperson said such worksite raids are “a cornerstone of ICE’s efforts.”
“During these operations, any alien determined to be in violation of U.S. Immigration laws may be subject to arrest, detention, and, if ordered removed by an immigration judge or other authority, subject to removal from the United States,” the spokesperson said.
Roofing company owners worried
ICE data suggests that the agency is currently targeting Hispanics. Arrest data shows 77 percent of those detained in the eight counties of Western New York hail from Latin American countries including Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia.
“It really does feel like racial profiling to a big degree, like they’re getting pulled over for routine traffic stops or [at] work sites,” said Matt Tice, director of immigrant services at Jericho Road Community Health Center.
Anecdotally, company owners told Investigative Post, it’s immigrant men from those groups who make up roofing and home construction crews in the region. The company owners told Investigative Post the arrests of migrant roofers are causing prices to climb.
“It’s going to destroy many businesses,” said the owner of one roofing company located in Erie County.
Related story: ICE deception on arrests
The owner said his workers have proper work authorizations but that ICE has arrested several of his crews. The owner requested his name and business not be publicized to prevent further targeting.
ICE and Border Protection agents have been profiling roofing vans along the I-90 between Rochester and Buffalo, that business owner said.
“They’re not targeting criminals. They’re targeting anybody that they can find that they know is from a different country and roofing vehicles [are] an easy way to notice that,” he said.
Roofing costs, said Tina Núñez of the firm Medusa Development, have gone, “through the roof. No pun intended.”
She subcontracts roofing firms when she rehabilitates homes in Buffalo. One job previously estimated at $15,000 has climbed to $22,000, she said. That’s due in part to the fact immigrant roofers are faster and more efficient and are now afraid to show up to the job site, she said.
“It’s just going to keep getting worse,” Núñez said. “And I think the people who are really going to suffer the most are homeowners.”
Traffic stops and other tactics
Roofers aren’t the only ones being targeted.
In Hamburg, a Native American man was stopped in June by ICE agents near St. Francis High School. Agents demanded identification, and then a passport. Upon determining the man was a U.S. citizen, they let him go. The man told Investigative Post he suspects he was racially profiled.
“I can kinda speculate that because I am visibly ethnic, and I have non-English writing tattooed on my arm that they might’ve saw that when I was driving,” the man told Investigative Post.
In response to questions about that incident, an ICE spokesperson denied agents engage in racial profiling, but said they have the right to stop anyone suspected of being an “alien” and demand identification without first obtaining a warrant.
Then, following the U.S. bombing of Iran last month, ICE agents staked out a block on Buffalo’s West Side, seeking to detain an Iranian man should he step outside. The man has no criminal history and is in the country legally.
During a May raid on Buffalo’s immigration court, agents detained a 19-year-old hotel housekeeper who had shown up for a routine hearing. A judge dismissed him and ordered he return for another appearance in 2026. But in the elevator, ICE agents cornered him, a family member told Investigative Post, and pressured him to sign some paperwork.
“He was really scared when they pressured him to sign the form,” the family member said. “He’s a good person.”
ICE records show the young man remains detained in Batavia.
The crackdown on immigration has stoked fear among migrants in the region.
“People with status, people without status … every single immigrant demographic is being targeted in this moment,” said Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition.
