Categories for Broadcast on Channel 7

May 30

2025

Another ICE deportation in defiance of court order

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For at least the second time since President Donald Trump took office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported a migrant in defiance of federal judges — this time a Salvadoran man long held in detention in Western New York. The Trump administration’s most recent action occurred May 7. That morning, a panel of federal judges with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City granted the man, Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, permission to remain in the United States while his immigration case wound its way through the courts.  Twenty-eight minutes later, however, Melgar-Salmeron was on an ICE Air flight from[...]

Posted 1 week ago

May 29

2025

More bad budgeting from Buffalo politicians

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Writing about the City of Buffalo’s finances is like watching the movie Groundhog Day, but the wheel of suffering never stops turning.  Before the story reaches its happy-ever-after conclusion, the film rewinds to the beginning. Again and again, year after year. The Common Council on Tuesday adopted, with few minor amendments, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s proposed budget for the city’s upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1.  The $622 million plan recycles many of the fiscal sins of the Byron Brown administration, whose specious revenue and expense projections yielded deficit after deficit — backfilled first with cash from the city’s[...]

Posted 1 week ago

May 27

2025

City inaction on lead endangers federal funding

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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 2 weeks ago

May 22

2025

ICE raids immigration court in Buffalo

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In a rare, perhaps unprecedented move, armed ICE agents raided the federal immigration court in downtown Buffalo Wednesday, seizing four people who had showed up for scheduled hearings. Two people present in the court building on Delaware Avenue told Investigative Post they saw between six and 12 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — many in plainclothes, some armed — present in common areas and at least one courtroom. “I’ve never heard of it, I’ve never seen it,” said Jennifer Connor, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Justice for Migrant Families. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen ICE[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

May 20

2025

Local DAs don’t prosecute wage theft cases

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Wage theft — the practice of an employer withholding pay or benefits from a worker — has been considered a felony crime in New York since September 2023. Yet in the 20 months since, not a single prosecutor in the eight counties of Western New York has brought a single case under the statute. It’s not for a lack of offenders. Data from state and federal labor investigators shows that at least a dozen cases have met the $1,000 threshold of felony larceny since the law changed. Cases from October, November and December 2023 show eight employers were found to[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

May 19

2025

‘Hostile takeover’ of union by Granville supporters

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Members of the union that represents Erie County Sheriff’s officers last Tuesday voted to provide $25,000 toward paying the lawyers representing D.J. Granville, the narcotics chief who last April plowed his county-owned pickup truck into seven parked cars on Buffalo’s West Side. But some union members are crying foul on the decision and petitioning for a second meeting to reconsider the matter. “This was an attempted hostile takeover of our PBA’s democratic process by D.J. Granville and a small group of his supporters,” said one union member, who spoke to Investigative Post on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

May 7

2025

Buffalo’s streetlight maintenance “haphazard”

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The streets of Buffalo are illuminated by more than 30,000 streetlights, the majority of them installed decades ago, according to the engineer who once oversaw the entire system.  And every year the city’s 311 citizen complaint line receives hundreds of reports of damaged or missing streetlights, according to city data.  And yet the city’s Department of Public Works can produce no records of the city inspecting, maintaining or replacing any streetlights in the past seven-and-a-half years. That’s according to DPW Commissioner Nate Marton, to whom  Investigative Post in February directed a Freedom of Information request, seeking all documents tracking the[...]

Posted 1 month ago

May 3

2025

Scanlon considers “privatization” of Kleinhans

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The Scanlon administration has been talking about unloading city-owned cultural institutions as part of its efforts to shore up Buffalo’s short- and long-term finances. Since taking office, Acting Mayor Christopher Scanlon and his aides have discussed selling Kleinhans Music Hall, perhaps to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, which is the venue’s principal user. They also have discussed shifting the maintenance costs of city-owned cultural venues — including Kleinhans, Shea’s Buffalo Theater, Sahlen Field, the Buffalo History Museum, the Buffalo Museum of Science and the Buffalo Zoo — to Erie County.  Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz threw cold water on that idea,[...]

Posted 1 month ago
Investigative Post