Categories for Broadcast on Channel 7

Jul 16

2025

ICE deception on immigrant detentions

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On X, ICE has used these words to describe detainees who were already incarcerated. Graphic by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. Since Donald Trump took office in January, the Buffalo ICE office has issued a steady drumbeat of press releases and social media posts purporting to show that its agents are taking dangerous criminals “off the streets.” But in reality, more than half of the immigrants ICE Buffalo has publicized since Trump’s inauguration were already in state or federal prison. Following a White House-issued quota, ICE data shows that arrests in the region have skyrocketed from 83 last year to 335 through the[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jun 20

2025

Feds seeking to deport sickle cell patient over theft

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U.S. immigration officials are seeking to deport to Venezuela a 20-year-old migrant living in Buffalo and suffering from sickle cell disease because he has been accused of shoplifting at the Walden Galleria Mall. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Investigative Post the charge of shoplifting “nullifies” Anderson Contreras-Hernandez’s legal status and, under the newly enacted Laken Riley Act, means he must be detained by immigration authorities. To date, he has not been convicted of any crime. The spokesperson described Contreras-Hernandez as “amenable to deportation.” His attorneys, in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, have appealed to U.S. District Judge[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 19

2025

Buffalo’s $2 million mayoral primary

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Next Tuesday’s Democratic primary election for Buffalo mayor is already a $2 million affair, as of the most recent campaign finance disclosures, with a weekend of TV and radio spots, phone banks, social media ads and mailers still to come. That figure doesn’t count independent expenditures — money spent by political committees unaffiliated with, but supporting, a one candidate or another. The first such independent expenditure took place this week in support of Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon, paid for by an Albany-based group whose backers are for now a mystery. On its own account, Scanlon’s campaign committee has spent $950,879[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 13

2025

Feds adding migrant detention centers in Buffalo area

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U.S. immigration agencies have expanded their footprint in Western New York, detaining arrested migrants in five locations beyond the federal detention center in Batavia.  One reason for the detentions: The ICE facility in Batavia has been periodically near or over capacity in recent months and cannot house women or children, according to advocates for detainees.  In the Town of Tonawanda,  23 immigrants have been detained for the past 10 days at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection station located at 600 Colvin Woods Parkway. A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson  confirmed those detentions Wednesday. The station is in an office[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 6

2025

Concerning contributions to Scanlon campaign

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Under city law, one of Buffalo’s largest paving contractors could have been fined and barred from bidding on lucrative contracts because of its admission to wage theft. Instead, the Common Council, despite reservations and headed by then-President Chris Scanlon, awarded D&H Paving $6.9 million in work last July.  At the time, the lawmakers expressed concern that D&H Paving was under investigation by the state Department of Labor. That probe, the state’s second into D&H, resulted in a nearly $28,000 fine and a finding that the company’s violations were “willful.” In the midst of the Council’s deliberation, the company’s owner, Michael[...]

Posted 5 months ago

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 5 months 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 5 months 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 5 months ago
Investigative Post