Articles for J. Dale Shoemaker

Dec 31

2025

Covering ICE in Western NY throughout 2025

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[...]

Posted 5 days ago

Dec 23

2025

Subsidies, nonprofits reduce Buffalo taxes by $20M

The Delaware North building, recipient of major tax breaks. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. The City of Buffalo last fiscal year missed out on $20 million in revenue due to a variety of property tax exemptions and abatements, according to a recently released audit. That’s the biggest loss the city has recorded since it began tabulating the figure in 2017, city financial audits show. For a city facing a current-year deficit that could be as high as $54 million, the uncollected property tax is “obviously a concern,” said Benjamin Swanekamp, who will be Ryan’s deputy mayor overseeing tax and finance[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Dec 17

2025

STAMP data center could jack up power bills

A national builder is once again proposing to construct a massive data center at Genesee County’s STAMP industrial park, one that would use so much electricity that it could drive up costs for residential and commercial consumers. The data center’s power demands could also hamstring efforts to recruit other businesses to the industrial park, which has struggled to attract tenants despite a state investment of $100 million. A proposal filed with Genesee County officials on Friday from Stream Data Centers for a 2.2-million-square-foot facility states it would require some 500 megawatts of electricity — 83 percent of all power that[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Dec 12

2025

Cops shouldn’t cooperate with ICE, advocates say

A panel of law students and advocates presented the report Wednesday. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. A handful of local law enforcement agencies turn migrants they encounter over to federal immigration agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol — a practice some now say should end. In a report released Wednesday, professors and graduate students with the Buffalo Human Rights Center — part of the University at Buffalo’s law school — detailed the cooperation between local and federal agencies, criticized the practice and called on state lawmakers to ban it. “Our conclusion across many contexts and many actors is that cooperation[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Dec 11

2025

A double-dipping Niagara Falls defense contractor

Americarb’s existing production facility. Photo via the Niagara Gazette. A Niagara Falls defense contractor is “double dipping” from public coffers, critics say, after winning a Department of Defense contract, a state grant and now, on Wednesday, local tax breaks. First came the $12.6 million federal contract, announced in September. Americarb, a materials manufacturer, was awarded the funding to develop a process for converting woven rayon fabric into “carbonized rayon phenolic,” a material that the military will use to insulate the rocket nozzles of tactical and hypersonic missiles. The company plans to expand its Niagara Falls factory and hire 40 people[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Nov 24

2025

Dozens arrested in recent WNY immigration raids

ICE agents arrest a man on Elmwood Avenue. Photo submitted by Diane Hinman. Immigration agents have arrested and detained 44 people in raids across Western New York so far this month. At truck stops along the New York Thruway in Angola, Clarence and Corfu, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents conducted “immigration inspections” during a four-day operation that swept up 30 drivers and seven others. On Elmwood Avenue, four Hispanic men were arrested Nov. 13 in front of the Aquacates restaurant by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations. And this week, three men working at a[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 18

2025

Deportee: “I shouldn’t have lost my fingers”

The federal ICE detention center in Batavia. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. Military-style raids by U.S. immigration agents — many of them filmed and glossily produced for television and social media — have become a hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term. Early raids involved the capture of nearly 600 migrants in New York, New Jersey and other states. The government released images of migrants in shackles, marching toward a military plane that would deport them. Chidi Nwagbo, 58, a Nigerian man who’d lived in the United States since 1988, saw those raids unfold in real time from his home[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 13

2025

Bills custodian, a migrant, jailed by ICE

For two months, a young Venezuelan woman who had been hired to clean the Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadium has been detained by ICE. The woman, Yusgleidy Villa Alvarez, 18, has no criminal history. Until September, she’d been a legal resident of the United States, was on the path to obtaining a green card and had been granted a work permit. Yet without warning, a federal lawsuit alleges, ICE agents arrested her after a shift Sept. 19, the day after the Bills beat the Miami Dolphins at Highmark Stadium. For more than a month, she was held at the Niagara County[...]

Posted 2 months ago