Tag: ICE

Oct 21

2025

ICE: Unfettered and unaccountable

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Federal agents stand guard outside an ICE detention facility in Newark, N.J. Photo credit: Victor J. Blue/The New York Times/Redux This story is republished from ProPublica, a nonprofit, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.  When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system. Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Oct 3

2025

Overcrowding rampant at ICE facility in Batavia

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J. Dale Shoemaker summarizes the story. The ICE detention center in Batavia is bursting at the seams. Data obtained by Investigative Post shows an average of 727 migrants have been held at the 650-bed facility daily since early June. “We’ve heard reports of people sleeping on the floor of the gymnasium of the facility, given only individual workout mats to sleep on, not even mattresses,” said Aaron Krupp, regional coordinator for Justice for Migrant Families, an advocacy group that works with detainees. In mid-August, the number of people held in the detention center peaked at nearly 800. The count dropped[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Sep 12

2025

A potential boost to ICE deportation efforts

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U.S. Rep. Tim Kennedy. Amid the backdrop of the Trump administration’s mass deportation program, Congressman Tim Kennedy, a Democrat, has sponsored a bill that would mandate the hiring of thousands of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. Kennedy’s staff says the new hires would be used to facilitate people and goods crossing the borders. But data shows the Trump administration is using the class of officers covered by Kennedy’s bill to arrest and deport immigrants. The bill — dubbed the “Securing America’s Ports of Entry Act of 2025” — would require the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection to hire[...]

Posted 5 months ago

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 5 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 5 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 6 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 6 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 6 months ago
Investigative Post