Articles for I'Jaz Ja'ciel

Aug 5

2025

U.S. crackdown sends refugees to Canada

This story is published in partnership with the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, a collaborative investigative newsroom supported by Postmedia that partners with academics, researchers and journalists while training the next generation of investigative reporters. As fears of refugee deportation mount in the United States, a surge of asylum seekers is turning to Canada — only to find a border that is getting increasingly hard to cross. The number of refugee seekers processed by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) shot up by 87 per cent between January and April. In[...]

Posted 5 days ago

Jul 29

2025

What’s next for Chris Scanlon

There has been much chatter about Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s plans come January, when he will relinquish his job as the city’s interim chief executive to the winner of November’s general election. Will Scanlon serve the two years left in his current term as South District Council member? Will he seek another elected office, perhaps in the state Legislature? Or will he leave elected office behind — at least for now — and take some well-paying job in state government or the private sector? Scanlon on Friday told an Investigative Post reporter he’s “heard the rumors” and insisted there’s nothing[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jul 23

2025

More delays in creating Buffalo Housing Court panel

Plans to reinstate the Buffalo Housing Court Advisory Council — which, despite being written into law, has been inactive for over three decades — seem to have stalled yet again. The state judicial system says not enough people have shown interest in joining the council, which is intended to monitor Housing Court, make recommendations to the judge, hold quarterly meetings and produce annual reports. Meanwhile, community members say the courts have done a poor job of advertising the search for applicants. “It shouldn’t be shocking that you don’t get a lot of applicants if you don’t actually make the position[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jul 22

2025

Migrant crossings on our northern border

Border patrol surveillance cameras at Fort Niagara State Park. Photo by Tina MacIntyre-Yee/Democrat and Chronicle. By the time four people paddled halfway across the Niagara River in an inflatable raft one night in 2024, a surveillance camera had already picked them out of the winter darkness. The image was gray and pixelated, their raft a single speck of black in the mouth of the river. Several miles away, a U.S. Border Patrol agent sat behind a dozen or more monitors and counted as four people stepped onto land. The camera followed the migrants to the shore in Lewiston, while agents[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jun 24

2025

Uncertain prospects for rent subsidies

A rent subsidy program that helps some 10,000 households in Erie County is bracing for cuts in federal assistance. Two of three agencies that administer the Section 8 program have stopped issuing new vouchers, despite long waiting lists. Some agencies are calling this a “complete 180” to their previous efforts in November to provide renters with better access to apartments in the suburbs and more well-to-do neighborhoods in the city. In January, HUD began basing Section 8 voucher awards on ZIP codes, adjusting payments to match neighborhood market conditions. That resulted in larger subsidies for rentals in affluent communities where[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Jun 3

2025

Protesting city inaction on lead poisoning

Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good (center) joined by community advocates and state elected officials Jon Rivera (left) and April Baskin (right). Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel Local housing advocates and elected officials are condemning Buffalo’s failure to spend over three-quarters of a $2 million federal grant dedicated to removing toxic lead paint from city homes. Meanwhile, proposed state legislation aims to pressure landlords to clean their property of lead when identified by housing inspectors. Investigative Post reported last week that the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency to date has only spent $479,481 of the $2[...]

Posted 2 months ago

May 27

2025

City inaction on lead endangers federal funding

The City of Buffalo has spent only a quarter of the $2 million in federal funds it has received to abate lead hazards in houses and apartments. Now, the program is coming to an end with less than two months to commit the remaining money before it has to be returned to the federal government. The Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, which administers the grant, set a goal of remediating 110 residences when it received the funds in 2021. Four years later, only 18 units have been abated. The city last year received a one-year extension for the program from the[...]

Posted 3 months ago

May 16

2025

I’Jaz Ja’ciel discusses food injustice on ‘What’s Next?’

Investigative Post reporter I’Jaz Ja’ciel this week hosted a segment of Buffalo Toronto Public Media NPR’s What’s Next dedicated to food injustice. She sat down with Nnennna Ferguson, chair of the Buffalo Food Equity Network Advisory Board, to discuss food inequities in the Black community and how community-based solutions may help meet the needs of residents. The episode originally aired Wednesday, May 14 to commemorate the third anniversary of the Tops Supermarket Massacre. Ja’ciel and Ferguson discussed how the definition of food injustice has changed since the tragedy that saw the closure of the Jefferson Avenue grocer for a month,[...]

Posted 3 months ago