Jan 20
2026
Niagara County Sheriff pulling back on ICE partnership
- Share on
A sheriff’s vehicle in front of the Lockport jail. Photo via the Niagara Gazette.
Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti, in a policy change, has “reevaluated” his partnership with ICE and has agreed to detain fewer migrants at the Lockport jail.
The sheriff, a Republican law enforcement official in a county President Donald Trump won three times, is not cancelling the agreement he signed in May with the federal immigration enforcement agency.
But, he and others said, his deputies will only arrest and detain migrants charged with crimes or whose arrest has been approved by a judge. Previously, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office was holding lawful asylum seekers and other civil detainees, primarily women. Among them was a young Venezuelan woman who had been on the path to a green card when she was arrested at Highmark Stadium.
“I made the determination to say, ‘Look, we’re going to stay in our criminal lane, which is what we are as a law enforcement agency, right? We’re criminal. But we will certainly assist our law enforcement partners,” Filicetti told Investigative Post.
“I think that strikes a good balance for us to say, ‘If it involves criminality, we’re going to be involved.’”
What that means, Filicetti said, is that if ICE or another immigration agency arrests a migrant on a criminal charge — or if a judge later issues an arrest warrant — that person will be held at the Niagara County Jail in Lockport. Those arrests may involve a sheriff’s deputy working alongside ICE agents. The department currently has six trained to do so, he said.
Migrants arrested on civil immigration offenses will not be held, Filicetti said.
Similarly, if a person is arrested on a criminal charge and held at the jail, and ICE wishes to serve them with an immigration-related warrant, sheriff’s deputies will serve that paperwork. Filicetti has six correctional officers trained to do that, he said.
“If we have people living within Niagara County that are of interest to ICE under the 287(g) program, and there’s a criminal nexus, meaning there’s some criminal activity with this individual, then absolutely we would assist,” he said.
Filicetti said his deputies will continue to call Border Patrol agents if they believe someone they’ve stopped is in the country illegally.
“We will … let them take care of their processes to figure out if that person is, in fact, here illegally,” he said. “This is really nothing new.”
The 287(g) agreement Filicetti signed with ICE in May 2025.
Filicetti first signed an agreement with ICE, under the agency’s 287(g) program, in early May. The program dates back to the Clinton administration and provides local law enforcement agencies with training and compensation for their cooperation in affecting immigration arrests. Eleven local law enforcement agencies in New York have signed up for the program, including three in the region: Niagara County, Cattaraugus County and the Village of Allegany Police Department.
Filicetti previously told Investigative Post he had “no issue at all housing ICE detainees” and joined the program, in part, to help balance his budget. Under the agreement, the sheriff’s office is paid $148 per person per day.
Figures on how many migrants in total have been held at the Lockport jail were not immediately available, nor was the total amount of revenue Filicetti had earned.
Data collected from early November through January 5, however, sheds some light. Over that two-month period, a total of 76 migrants were detained at the jail, with approximately one new person detained daily. The migrant population peaked on January 3 at 27 people. The average population was around 18 daily.
The migrants, on average, spent a week at the jail before being transferred elsewhere. Over the two-month period, Filicetti’s office is estimated to have earned $171,000, or $3,000 per day, according to the researcher who compiled the figures. The researcher, who shared the data on the condition they not be named, estimated that before the change the sheriff’s office was on track to earn $1 million in revenue over a 12-month period.
On Tuesday, 10 migrant women were being held at the jail.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomThe change follows months of lobbying of county officials by the local advocacy group Stand Up Lockport, whose members have said they were disturbed that immigrants with no criminal charges or records were being jailed in their town.
Jim Shultz, an author who organizes with the group, said ICE arresting the parents of a Lockport student in May spurred teachers, parents and others to action.
Filicetti listened to their concerns, Shultz said, “but he wasn’t inclined to change things. But then more and more people started just coming out of the woodwork.”
One of the key arguments that won the change was one of liability and money. Lawyers affiliated with the group, along with Niagara County Legislator Carla Speranza, successfully argued to County Attorney Claude Joerg that the government could be liable for damages if an ICE detainee was harmed or if a sheriff’s deputy was injured while assisting the agency.
Filicetti and his office have already been named in several habeas corpus petitions that sought to have immigrants released from the Lockport jail.
“If there’s a case, if there’s an injury or an issue … that would filter through [Joerg’s] office,” Speranza said. “And I wanted to make sure he was aware of what was happening, or what could potentially happen.”
Then, Shultz and others said, there’s ICE’s increasing aggressiveness, particularly in Chicago and Minneapolis. In Chicago, ICE agents raided an apartment complex, arresting residents indiscriminately. And in Minneapolis, agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed bystander Renee Good as she drove her car on a street where the agency was operating.
Such actions have sparked backlash locally. Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan said last week he would sign an executive order — possibly as soon as this week — banning city police and other employees from cooperating with federal immigration agencies. And in Cheektowaga, residents recently packed a council meeting demanding town police no longer turn migrants over to Border Patrol or ICE. Investigative Post in December detailed how that agency and other local law enforcement do so.
Following a December meeting with Joerg, attorney Roxana Bacon — a Stand Up Lockport member and former chief counsel of U.S. Customs and Immigration Services under President Barack Obama — wrote a legal memo outlining the various liabilities the sheriff’s office or Niagara County could face if cooperation with ICE continued. Those liabilities ranged from workman’s compensation cases to the passage of the New York For All Act, a proposed state law that would ban local law enforcement from working with federal immigration enforcement agencies.
“He’s not foolish,” Bacon said of Filicetti. “And I think he’s pretty aware of how to evaluate the risks of either the state coming down on him or a private entity coming down on him or the community turning on him.”
“And of course, this enormous amount of money hanging over him if something were to go wrong.”
Filicetti agreed that “potential liability” was a factor in his decision to pull back on the partnership with ICE.
“There’s always a consideration of potential liability when you’re doing the things that you’re doing, and how you’re doing them,” he said.
Speaking to the politics of the change, Speranza said she gives Filicetti credit for bucking the Trump administration, and noted that constituents in her Republican-heavy district may not be happy with her, either.
“I would expect he’s probably getting phone calls. He’s probably getting pressure. So I give him a lot of credit, because it’s not without risk to him as well,” Speranza said. “He has opted to put good policy ahead of politics, and I respect him for that.”
