Categories for News

Nov 13

2025

Bills custodian, a migrant, jailed by ICE

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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 1 month ago

Nov 12

2025

Real estate firm settles housing discrimination lawsuit

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The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has settled a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a Western New York real estate agent accused of racial steering, a practice that violates local and federal fair housing laws. The organization accused Avant Realty founder Charles Glander of directing white homebuyers away from “unsafe” neighborhoods on Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side, “a practice he did not apply for Black homebuyers,” according to a statement the Legal Defense Fund issued in January. The Legal Defense Fund — representing Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a nonprofit watchdog organization  — in April reached a settlement with Glander that[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 11

2025

“TreeGate” involving Niagara Falls mayor, engineer

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Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino at a recent press conference. Photo via the Niagara-Gazette. The City of Niagara Falls paid a private contractor to remove trees in front of houses owned by the city’s mayor, his neighbor, and the city’s lead engineer, according to city documents obtained by the Niagara Gazette. City Engineer Robert Buzzelli included his own property and the home of Mayor Robert Restaino on a list of four addresses where trees were targeted for removal under a $20,000 contract change order authorized by city lawmakers in July, according to the documents. The documents, obtained through a pair[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 7

2025

The consequences of Trump’s immigration crackdown

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From left: Jennifer Connor, Brittany Triggs, Pam Kefi and Ba Zan Lin. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. Ba Zan Lin spent his first 18 years living under authoritarian regimes in his native Burma before coming to Buffalo in 2006 seeking political asylum. He says he and others in the region’s immigrant community recognize the Trump administration’s heavy-handed tactics in pursuit of detainment and deportation of non-citizens it characterizes as “illegal.”  The raids, the street grabs, family members disappearing into a byzantine network of federal detention centers — “the masked men waiting for them at night” — all these feel traumatizing and[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 5

2025

Niagara Falls cop blows whistle on nepotism, OT abuse

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Niagara Falls Police Department. Photo by James Neiss, Niagara Gazette. Claims that Niagara Falls police officers abused departmental overtime and padded their pensions. Allegations of civil service law violations and nepotism involving administrative unit supervisors. Questions about employees’ use of public grant funds provided by the state to curb gun violence in the city. Concerns that a “completely absent” police chief has turned a “blind eye” to administrative “thievery.” In a six-page message dated Sept. 1, Niagara Falls Police Lt. Troy Earp unloaded a litany of complaints about the inner workings of the Falls police department. A copy of Earp’s[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Oct 30

2025

U.S. stepping up surveillance of travelers at border

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  The Department of Homeland Security quietly announced this week plans to step up the surveillance of travelers entering and leaving the United States by foot, car, airplane or boat. Plans include implementing a facial recognition system in the coming months for those entering the country. Participation is mandatory for non-citizens. U.S. citizens may opt out, but the Department of Homeland Security warns doing so could cause delays or other disruptions to a person’s travel. The system has been tested at select border crossings since 2018, including the Peace Bridge. Plans include later expanding the system to those leaving the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Oct 30

2025

Buffalo to raid “Rainy Day” fund

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The bad news keeps coming for the City of Buffalo’s finances. Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams informed the Common Council this week that the city would need to dip into its Emergency Stabilization Fund — a.k.a. the Rainy Day Fund — in order to balance the books for the fiscal year that ended June 30.  According to the city’s finance commissioner, the shortfall is due to costly settlements to police misconduct lawsuits that hit the city in May.  Lawmakers were told the city will need to use at least $2 million from the fund and perhaps as much as $10 million, according[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Oct 28

2025

Gardner spends big on mayor’s race

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James Gardner, the Republican candidate for Buffalo mayor, has spent close to $400,000 of his own money on his campaign in the past three months. That puts the former prosecutor and judicial clerk on pace to spend at least $500,000 out of pocket before next Tuesday’s election — about the same amount he spent last year in his unsuccessful bid for Erie County District Attorney. Meanwhile, State Sen. Sean Ryan continues to coast toward election day, having spent big to win June’s Democratic primary, and independent candidate Michael Gainer is running a shoe-leather campaign with little money but lots of[...]

Posted 2 months ago
Investigative Post