Tag: ICE

Aug 28

2025

WNY farm targeted again by ICE

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Lynn-Ette & Sons Farm in Orleans County.   This story was originally published by Documented, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on immigration in New York state. During the early hours of August 14, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched a raid on the Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, a sprawling 8,000-acre farm in Orleans County that specializes in growing snap beans, cabbage, and squash. ICE agents detained four Mexican workers and three Guatemalan workers. The recent arrests at Lynn-Ette are the farm’s second ICE raid in the past three months. In May, a similar raid saw federal agents detain 14 workers.[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 26

2025

ICE deports West Side restaurant owner, family

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Katherine Gomez stands outside of Sabores De Mi Tierra, which she purchased from her deported client. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. During the four years William Murcia Henao owned Sabores De Mi Tierra — literally, “flavors of my land” — his West Side Colombian restaurant was celebrated. Opened in 2021, the Niagara Street eatery quickly earned local media attention, praise from a local blogger and a nomination for a state Business Council award from Assemblymember Jonathan Rivera. The restaurant won particular acclaim for its traditional Colombian dishes, which Rivera and others said was missing from Buffalo. But then, in May,[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 19

2025

Judge overturns immigration court arrest

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This story was produced in partnership with The Intercept, an award-winning investigative news outlet. Akela Lacy is a staff reporter with The Intercept. In a rare win against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, a judge ordered that a detained 19-year-old asylum seeker be released back to his family.  Oliver Mata Velasquez’s arrest May 21 outside a immigration court in downtown Buffalo following his hearing on his asylum case was unlawful, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo wrote.  “Mata Velasquez followed all the rules,” Vilardo wrote. “On the other hand, the government changed the rules by fiat, applied them retroactively,[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 8

2025

ICE separates parents, 2-year-old child

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Carlos Molina Manzaneda, Rebeca Ferreira Castillo and their child, Ines. Photo provided. On a late July morning, immigration authorities in Western New York targeted the Fredonia Walmart, ultimately detaining a husband and wife. The action separated the parents from Ines, their two-year-old child.  For two weeks now, the toddler has cried nightly, her father said, and has at times refused to eat, not understanding why her parents haven’t come home. A member of the couple’s extended family is caring for the child, who was born in Buffalo in 2023. “It’s like a piece of you is ripped out, like a[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Aug 5

2025

U.S. crackdown sends refugees to Canada

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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. As fears of refugee deportation mount in the United States, a surge of asylum seekers is turning to Canada — only to find a border that is getting increasingly hard to cross. The number of refugee seekers processed by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) shot up by 87 per cent between January and April. In[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jul 30

2025

Another bad review for ICE’s Batavia detention center

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For a third time in the past two years, federal inspectors have found that guards at the local ICE detention center in Batavia improperly used force against the immigrants held there. Investigative Post in February reported on two recent federal audits that found incidents where officers were quick to use pepper spray and manhandle detainees instead of deescalating tense situations. Now, a June report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found two additional instances where guards violated the use-of-force policy against detainees. On one occasion, a detainee was locked in his cell, handcuffed. Officers arrived to remove the[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jul 22

2025

Migrant crossings on our northern border

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Border patrol surveillance cameras at Fort Niagara State Park. Photo by Tina MacIntyre-Yee/Democrat and Chronicle. By the time four people paddled halfway across the Niagara River in an inflatable raft one night in 2024, a surveillance camera had already picked them out of the winter darkness. The image was gray and pixelated, their raft a single speck of black in the mouth of the river. Several miles away, a U.S. Border Patrol agent sat behind a dozen or more monitors and counted as four people stepped onto land. The camera followed the migrants to the shore in Lewiston, while agents[...]

Posted 4 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 5 months ago
Investigative Post