Tag: ICE

Jan 29

2026

ICE now targeting Afghans, rule followers

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250 Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo has become a site of ICE arrests. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. In recent months, two new patterns have emerged involving ICE arrests across Western New York. First, federal immigration agents are apprehending asylum seekers at their mandated check-in appointments. Second, they’ve ramped up their targeting of Afghan nationals. A half-dozen federal lawsuits filed over the past month illustrate the first: Agents order an asylum seeker with a pending court hearing to show up at an ICE office to “check-in.” The person does so and is immediately detained, despite being in the country legally[...]

Posted 3 days ago

Jan 26

2026

Ryan bars city cooperation with federal immigration

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Ryan signs the order flanked by deputy mayors, advocates and NY Assembly members Jon Rivera, left, and Pat Burke, right. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker City of Buffalo police officers and other employees are barred from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, according to an executive order Mayor Sean Ryan signed Monday morning. That means city employees cannot: Inquire about a person’s immigration status while administering a city service. Provide access to databases or other records to civil immigration authorities that are not already public. Make facilities available to immigration authorities that aren’t otherwise already public spaces. Participate in the enforcement[...]

Posted 6 days ago

Jan 26

2026

Dispatches from Minneapolis

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Editor’s note: This weekly newsletter, formerly called Monday Morning Read, has been renamed Off the News. Lydia Polgreen, a columnist for The New York Times, penned a piece published Saturday that carried the headline: In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War. Thousands of masked, heavily armed agents, some with minimal training, have been unleashed on the streets of an American state. They have been promised near-total legal immunity by the president, effectively unshackled from any constitutional constraints. They have been given limitless license to abduct anyone, not just the undocumented immigrants but American citizens who happen to look foreign, whatever[...]

Posted 6 days ago

Jan 20

2026

Niagara County Sheriff pulling back on ICE partnership

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Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti, in a policy change, has “reevaluated” his partnership with ICE and has agreed to detain fewer migrants at the Lockport jail. The sheriff, a Republican law enforcement official in a county President Donald Trump won three times, is not cancelling the agreement he signed in May with the federal immigration enforcement agency. But, he and others said, his deputies will only arrest and detain migrants charged with crimes or whose arrest has been approved by a judge. Previously, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office was holding lawful asylum seekers and other civil detainees, primarily women. Among[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jan 16

2026

Buffalo mayor to ban city cooperation with ICE, others

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Mayor Sean Ryan addresses community groups Friday. Photo via PPG. Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan announced Friday that his administration is drafting an executive order that will prohibit the Buffalo police and other city departments from working with federal immigration agencies. The order, he said, would ensure “no apparatus of city government interacts in any way with federal immigration.” “And that’s going to be from building inspectors, to garbage collectors to police officers,” he said. “What we don’t want is any chilling effect,” Ryan told civic and advocacy groups assembled at the Buffalo State University Alumni Visitor Center. “We don’t want[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jan 15

2026

Anger over ICE detention of UB researcher

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Outrage over the ICE detention of a University at Buffalo medical researcher — Shovgi Huseynov — is reverberating around Western New York, with one lawmaker calling for the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “This incident is part of a disturbing pattern of lawless and unconstitutional conduct at the Department of Homeland Security, under the leadership of Secretary Noem, and it underscores why she must resign or be impeached immediately,” Rep. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, said in a statement. Huseynov on January 7 made a wrong turn onto the Peace Bridge and crossed into Canada. He was arrested[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jan 14

2026

Wrong turn lands UB scientist in ICE detention

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  A screenshot of Huseynov’s Facebook page. The Trump administration maintains its mass deportation program is aimed only at “the worst of the worst.” In reality, the crackdown on immigrants is a dragnet, one that’s now ensnared a well-regarded neuroscience researcher from the University at Buffalo. Azerbaijan native Shovgi Huseynov has no criminal record and a visa that allows him to work in the United States through 2029. But on January 7, Huseynov made a wrong turn onto the Peace Bridge and was detained by border agents upon his return to Buffalo. A spokesperson for U.S Customs and Border Protection[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jan 12

2026

Newspaper dies of self-inflicted wounds

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Striking journalists and supporters of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2022. Photo courtesy of Communications Workers of America. Big city newspapers are constantly downsizing. It’s worse in Pittsburgh, where the Post-Gazette announced last week that it’s closing altogether in May. The publisher cited $350 million in losses over the past 20 years, which suggests management didn’t do a good job running the business. The Buffalo News, for example, has operated in the black the past couple of decades, although its profit margin has shrunk over the years. Sour grapes also appear to be involved with the decision to close. The union[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago
Investigative Post