Jacob Fox was getting ready for the day in his Town of Tonawanda home last month when a noise outside caught his attention. He saw three unmarked SUVs. The people inside wore tactical gear. At least two of them wore masks, he said.
Fox was not close enough to see if any of them had weapons, but he did see a man being handcuffed and escorted into one of the SUVs.
“It was definitely jarring,” he said.
It also is becoming increasingly commonplace in Western New York and across the country. The scene Fox described bears the hallmarks of an arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Social media is full of videos and news reports of ICE agents rounding up people from job sites and in courthouses. Often, the agents have covered their faces with masks, and some carry what appear to be military-style rifles.
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“I suppose you know that it’s coming to a neighborhood near you, and then all of a sudden it’s literally in the Town of Tonawanda neighborhood near you,” said Fox, who lives near Lincoln Park.
Just this week, two Western New York supermarkets that specialize in Asian cuisine − one in Amherst and one in the Rochester suburb of Henrietta − were targeted.
Following the raid in Henrietta, ICE put out a statement to the Rochester Beacon acknowledging the raid saying it was done “in coordination with partners including U.S. Customs and Border Protection, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the FBI, conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity at multiple locations in western New York. Due to the ongoing nature of this criminal investigation, we cannot provide additional information at this time.”
A check of social media posts from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations field office in Buffalo show agents here arrested at least 13 people between June 11 and July 15. Most on the list had Hispanic surnames. Four were Chinese nationals, and one man was from the United Kingdom.
Some of those rounded up are facing serious criminal charges, including drug dealing, gang assault, rape and murder.
President Trump has ordered a crackdown on immigrants who are in the country illegally. The White House and those who support the program of arrests and deportation applaud the focus on removing violent criminals from the streets. But CBS News reported recently that according to ICE data, 46% of currently detained immigrants are accused of being in the country illegally but are not facing additional criminal charges.
Thomas Homan, the president’s border czar, has said that Trump has secured the U.S. border “to its highest level.”
But in communities where the arrests are being carried out, questions immediately follow regarding whether they are worth the cost.
A climate of fear
Matthew Tice, director of asylum-seeker programs at Jericho Road Community Health Center, said immigration enforcement has increased fear among immigrants in Buffalo, even as they try to go about their daily lives with simple tasks like walking children to the school bus or planning field trips for students.
“It’s been pretty intense,” Tice said.
He said that nearly every week, he hears of families who are clients of Jericho Road or who have been in the past that know someone who has been detained or at least questioned by federal agents.
Tice directs Jericho Road’s Vive shelter in Buffalo, which houses people applying for asylum in the U.S., and refugees waiting for appointments with the Canada Border Services Agency. Vive has capacity for about 120 people and is almost always full.
ICE agents have not attempted to enter Jericho Road’s properties to try to conduct enforcement, said Tice. And Jericho Road works to ensure that anyone staying at the shelter is “actively and appropriately” working on their cases, including required check-ins with ICE.
But some asylum-seekers risk detention just by attending scheduled appointments at Immigration Court on Delaware Avenue. After their hearings, ICE may be waiting for them.
Brittany Triggs, a senior staff attorney with the Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, said she has seen people taken into custody even after judges have told them they were − at least for the moment − free to go.
“No matter where you’re at in your processing, you have your hearing,” she said, adding that the judge will give the person time to get an attorney, set the trial date and possibly change the venue.
“Then you walk out of the court, you’re like, ‘Oh, that was easy.’ You go down an elevator, and there’s anywhere from five to eight ICE officers in plain clothes, no masks, there to arrest you.”
“It happens basically about every day,” she said. “And so, people are now afraid to go to court.”
Homan, who began working for what was then called the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1984, was appointed by President Barack Obama as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations in 2013. He became acting ICE director at the start of the first Trump administration and retired from the post about a year later. He became “border czar” at the start of the second Trump administration.
In an interview with the New York Times last year, he defended the ICE practices that have become the subject of pushback and protests.
“Just so you know, deportations, what we’re doing is executing the final order issued by a federal judge, a federal immigration judge,” he said in the interview. “People have a right to claim asylum. They have a right to due process. And you know what? They do. But you can’t believe in due process, you can’t demand due process, and not accept the final outcome of that due process. So when an immigration judge says, well, you lose, I’m going to issue an order of removal, our job is to execute that removal.
“I don’t know of another law enforcement agency in the world who are not allowed to execute a judge’s order. ... So when a court says this person loses, he must be removed, our job is to remove him. And I’ve said for a long time, we don’t make this stuff up. That’s the way the law is designed. That’s the way the process is designed. So we’re simply carrying out the laws as enacted by Congress and signed by a president.”
‘It’s an epidemic’
Sometimes people are picked up by ICE agents while they are at work.
Joseph Capaccio is the owner of J Cap Contractors in Buffalo, the roofing company involved in the incident Fox witnessed in Tonawanda. Capaccio said more than 20 members of his crew have been arrested recently, including a dozen workers since March.
The arrested workers are mostly Ecuadorian with no criminal records, Capaccio said. They have driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, employee identification numbers and pay taxes.
“It’s an epidemic because it’s going on everywhere. I’m not the only one. I have been roofing for 40 years, and I talked to other owners of companies … and they’ve been losing crews every day,” Capaccio said. He said he takes issue with the quasi-military approach ICE agents appear to take, with some masked agents sporting camouflage outfits and military-style rifles.
“Is that necessary?” he said. “It’s all upsetting to me. It’s all so disturbing. I don’t know how our country got to this. How did we become this? I just don’t understand how we’re allowing this to happen.”
Homan, the border chief, defended ICE agents concealing their faces when the Department of Homeland Security announced that ICE officials are facing an 830% increase in assaults between Jan. 21 and July 14, compared with the same period in 2024.
Recent local arrests, although not reportedly violent, still have left some rattled.
Mary Armstrong, a Kenmore firefighter, said she has seen plenty of harrowing scenes in her 40 years as an emergency responder, but was not prepared for what happened on Palmer Avenue earlier this month, a usually quiet street where she has lived her entire life.
Armstrong was in the backyard with her dog at about 7 a.m. July 8 when she saw a helicopter flying overhead. She thought it was Mercy Flight, but then she noticed the colors were different and recognized the aircraft as the Erie County Sheriff’s Office helicopter.
Then she heard four or five booming noises that sounded to her like shotgun blasts.
“I ran out front, and then I see everything happening there,” she said pointing to the gray two-story house at 186 Palmer Ave., where the raid took place.
Gathered outside the house were vehicles from Homeland Security and the Amherst, Buffalo, City of Tonawanda, Town of Tonawanda and Kenmore police departments, Armstrong said. The officers were all in tactical gear with rifles.
She heard a voice coming over a loudspeaker: “186 Palmer, this is the police.”
“And they kept repeating it,” she said.
Her first thought was that it was a drugs or weapons raid.
“They charged in the door and went upstairs … but the renter, who they were looking for, was not home,” Armstrong said.
She had seen him and the moving van the day he moved in a few months ago.
“I saw the guy standing in the driveway waving to the truck as his friends drove off. And that was it, and then a couple of months later, they’re (ICE) right in the house,” she said.
“I don’t think he’s ever coming back,” she added. “Everything that was there is going to stay there.”
By Deidre Williams News Staff Reporter
