Dec 31
2025
Covering ICE in Western NY throughout 2025
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Until January 20, it was easy to forget that Buffalo is a border town.
If you thought about the border at all it was probably because you were traveling to Canada or coming back home — one of the best perks of living in the Queen City. The only time it was really front of mind was when you were showing your ID to an agent on the Peace Bridge.
But Buffalo is a border town, and that means it’s home — and has been for years — to all the federal infrastructure a border entails: immigration agents and court rooms, cells in bridge and border stations, unmarked SUVs and an ICE detention center.
So when President Donald Trump ordered his administration to enact the largest deportation program of immigrants in U.S. history, everything needed to do so was already in place.
The enforcement ramped up quickly and the effect has been staggering. I’ve been one of the only reporters in the region to document what’s been happening. My reporting and investigations over the past year have illustrated how White House policy has shaken this community.
First, two points of context to explain why all of this matters so much:
- Between the early 2000s and the 2020 Census, refugees and other immigrants flocked to Buffalo, drawn to the cheap cost of living and resources that made resettlement in the Queen City smooth. When the numbers came out in 2021, they revealed Buffalo experienced a population increase for the first time in decades.
- During Joe Biden’s presidency, more asylum seekers were admitted into the country than under previous presidents. This is a process by which a person is not granted legal status but is permitted to live and work in the country while a claim for permanent residence is processed through the immigration court system. Some of those migrants ended up in Buffalo and its suburbs after being bused from New York City.
Consider this the tinder that White House adviser Stephen Miller — condemned as a “white nationalist” by several Democratic members of Congress in 2020 — was happy to ignite.
In Erie County alone, fewer than 450 migrants were arrested in 2024. Through October of this year, that figure spiked to 821. The Trump administration has pledged again and again that it was only going after “the worst of the worst.” Yet only 34 percent of those arrested had criminal convictions or pending charges. The remaining two-thirds had no record. One investigation I published illustrated how the Buffalo ICE office misleads the public about this.
As I reported, a profile emerged: Those most likely to be arrested are Latino men and women heading to or coming home from work. ICE agents, in unmarked vehicles and with masks covering their faces, nab them while loading work trucks, driving vans down the Thruway, replacing roofs on residential homes, working at local restaurants. My reporting partner Adam Smith-Perez and I heard numerous stories like this. In some cases, parents are separated from their children, leaving them in the care of friends or neighbors.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomSome migrants are also handed over to immigration agents after an encounter with local police. In those cases, they were stopped for a low-level offense like running a stop sign or shoplifting before officers handed them over. Others are picked up after their immigration hearings. In the fall, I visited the downtown immigration court for a separate story and saw plainclothes ICE agents milling about outside, keeping watch on who was coming and leaving.
Once arrested, the migrants are shuttled off to either a Border Patrol station — like the one on Colvin Woods Parkway in the Town of Tonawanda — or to the ICE detention center in Batavia. Those Border Patrol stations were once a temporary waystation, a place a migrant might spend just a few hours. Now, they stay for days, sometimes weeks. At the Rainbow Bridge, one family was held in a cell for three weeks. In Batavia, some migrants are made to sleep on the ground until a bunk in a two-man cell becomes available.
The men detained in Batavia are subjected to conditions described to me as worse than state prisons, despite the fact most are not criminals. I learned that beatings by guards are common and detention in solitary confinement rampant. Should a migrant enter that facility sick or injured, there’s a chance they won’t be afforded proper medical care. The detainees are kept in their cells for up to 18 hours a day, unless they agree to work for $1 a day. When they are let out, the exercise yard is a small concrete pad. The library is understocked.
Women, meanwhile, are held at the Lockport jail. Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti’s department gets paid $148 per person per day to hold them. He told me he agreed to do so to boost his budget.
Immigration courts in recent months have restricted who is eligible to be released on bond. More likely, a migrant will be transferred to another detention facility in the South and then put on a deportation flight — even if a court order forbids the government from doing so.
Deportation is now the most common way out of detention.
More and more immigrants are choosing to agree to be deported. At a recent panel, immigration attorney Catharine Grainge explained their logic: “They said, ‘Being detained and flown all over the country, and being separated from the people I love, and risking whatever happens to me in these jails and detention centers … was worse than whatever I face at home.’”
Eleven months in, the raids and arrests continue. Some are captured on video. Many aren’t. With an infusion of funding from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act coming early next year, enforcement is likely to ramp up further.
Increased enforcement will almost certainly lead to serious economic impacts on the city and region. The local economy is already contracting. The home construction industry has been hammered. I’ll never forget what the owner of one local roofing outfit told me over the summer: “There’s not going to be any skilled labor left to do roofs. Five percent of the crews out there are white and they suck.”
It was a busy year for me in other ways, too.
I exposed a heavily-subsidized Niagara Falls restaurateur for allegedly stealing wages from his employees. The state Labor Department’s investigation into his business practices is ongoing. I followed that series with two other stories showing that wage theft is rampant in our region and that local prosecutors do nothing about it.
I also reported on a handful of City Hall affairs, one involving Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s plan to sell off Kleinhans’ Music Hall and another regarding a city paving contractor. That firm violated city law, donated to the acting mayor’s political campaign and then won millions of dollars in new contracts. Then there was the story about Scanlon’s plan to sell off the city parking ramps, which we showed was based on some shaky math.
Oh, and like former Mayor Byron Brown, the Scanlon administration ignored Freedom of Information Law requests, which is unlawful.
And as always, no year is complete without a few minor scandals at Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp.:
- Wojtaszek’s wife, a judge, berates OTB employee
- OTB hires Byron Brown’s brother-in-law
- Report: OTB’s No. 2 helped himself to freebies
Thanks for reading, Buffalo. I’m taking a week off and then will be back with more in 2026.
