Categories for Investigations

Dec 9

2025

Local police who cooperate with ICE

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The Cheektowaga Police Department heads the list of a half-dozen local law enforcement agencies that are cooperating with federal agencies to detain and deport migrants. So far this year, police in the Buffalo suburb have turned over at least 21 people to federal immigration agents after detaining them for low-level offenses like shoplifting. Sheriff offices in Erie and Niagara counties are also working with U.S. Border Patrol and ICE. So are police in Lewiston, North Tonawanda and Amherst, though to a lesser extent.  Buffalo police do not appear to collaborate with immigration authorities. Mayor-elect Sean Ryan said it’s not the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 4

2025

Lack of medical care led to prison deaths

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  Jason “Poppy” Phillips’ family protest outside Greene Correctional Facility where Phillips died in December 2023. Video by by Angus Mordant for The Marshall Project. Ashley Dolcy heard panic in her husband’s voice. On most evenings, they would talk after she returned home from her job as an assistant principal at a school in the Bronx. Jason “Poppy” Phillips would call on a prison-issued tablet from his cell at Greene Correctional Facility near Albany. On Dec. 14, 2023, he told her that, since lunch, he’d increasingly had trouble breathing and swallowing. Alarmed that Phillips was struggling to breathe while locked[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 2

2025

Buffalo’s indifferent response to opioid overdoses

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Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories on the use of opioid settlement funds by government agencies. Part 2 is here. The City of Buffalo has spent less than a third of the almost $6 million in state funding it has received over the past three years to fight the opioid epidemic. During that time, more than 500 people died of overdoses within Buffalo city limits, according to data from the Erie County medical examiner. The victims have been disproportionately Black and Latino. Of the $1.75 million the city has spent, about $500,000 went for equipment and activities[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 6

2025

Detainees allege shoddy medical care at ICE Batavia

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and staff have administered what experts say was shoddy medical treatment to at least a dozen detainees at its Batavia facility in the past two years, Investigative Post has found.  Serious injuries went untreated, medications were denied or scaled back, and needed medical appointments were delayed at the ICE detention center.  In one case, a Nigerian migrant arrived in February at the detention facility suffering frostbite. A doctor who provided emergency care ordered that he see a specialist within a week before releasing him into immigration custody. Agents in Batavia never took him to[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Nov 4

2025

The intersection of neglect and indifference

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The intersection of Niagara and Jersey streets on Buffalo’s Lower West Side is riddled with trash, vacant lots, abandoned buildings and menacing squatters. It’s been going downhill for a decade or more. The only consistency has been the indifference of property owners and the inaction of city officials. Jersey Street resident David Eisenbart used to tend a community garden on a corner of the intersection, but he said that squatters in an abandoned cottage next door made the environment too dangerous. “Every once in a while I would go and mow, just because it got very bad, but the squatters were[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Sep 17

2025

Inside the human smuggling racket along U.S.-Canadian border

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A smuggler waits for a reporter posing as a client in a Toronto parking lot. Photo via IJB. 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. A silver Toyota minivan pulls into a bank parking lot in Toronto’s west end. Two young Punjabi men step out and start looking around for their client, a woman they’ve been communicating with over the previous days through[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Aug 14

2025

Feds fault Scanlon campaign for Hatch Act violations

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x Federal investigators last week ruled that Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s campaign violated laws prohibiting elected officials from using their offices or public resources for political gain. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel found the acting mayor’s campaign on four occasions violated the federal Hatch Act: Issuing a press release “using official City of Buffalo resources” attacking state Sen. Sean Ryan in response to Ryan’s criticism of conditions at the city’s animal shelter. Mailing invitations to a December fundraiser using the mayor’s office in City Hall as the return address on the envelopes. Publishing links to the Scanlon campaign’s social[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jul 17

2025

Latinos, roofers are prime ICE targets in WNY

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An ICE raid took place on Crescent Avenue in May. Photo submitted. Rather than targeting the “worst of the worst,” as the Trump administration claims, ICE agents in Western New York are primarily arresting immigrants with no criminal history. Data shows that more than three-quarters of migrants arrested in Western New York since President Trump took office have no criminal record.  To date, most of the 335 detainees are from Latin American counties, a significant percentage of them roofers and others in the construction field. By contrast, ICE arrested a total of 84 in Western New York all of last[...]

Posted 6 months ago
Investigative Post