Why would an immigration check-in be scheduled for Sunday?
That’s what Jean Aurilio wondered last month when she headed to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Malta, about 20 miles north of Albany, with her husband Jesus Carrión. He fled Peru several years ago and is pursuing an asylum claim to stay in the U.S.
Aurilio waited in the parking lot. More than 15 minutes that had been scheduled for the check-in ticked by. There were lots of people in the parking lot, talking on phones. Aurilio saw a white bus leaving from behind the building. Eventually, an agent told her that her husband had been detained.
“ We were in the process of filing all documents. In fact, he was supposed to go to get vaccines that Monday morning. But they seized him,” she said. “ It was extremely upsetting.”
Immigrant rights activists say the arrests are a recent example of an uptick of ICE activity across New York as well as the nation, as state officials implement a new law to end cooperation on immigration enforcement under many circumstances.
According to activists and court records, Carrión was one of at least 11 people taken to the detention center at Batavia, a Genesee County city that’s a roughly four-hour drive west of the Capital Region.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the detained individuals crossed into the country illegally and were released during the Biden administration. They will receive full due process, the spokesperson said.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney John Sarcone, whose office is handling challenges to some of the Malta detentions, said in a statement that the federal government’s commitment to the law is unwavering.
“We will pursue criminal activity wherever it is found, and we will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to protect the American people and uphold the laws of our nation,” he said in a statement.
Nationwide, the average number of daily ICE arrests rose from around 1,000 a month in May to 1,474 in late July, according to federal statistics analyzed by Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher. Detailed arrest data broken down by geography isn’t available past March, according to the Deportation Data Project at the University of California.
But there are signs that federal immigration leaders are following through on their threat to bolster ICE’s presence in New York.
ICE announced plans to expand its 650-bed facility in Batavia. The federal government leased a warehouse in the lower Hudson Valley and is considering relocating a Customs and Border Protection office with holding cells to a federal building in downtown Rochester.
Hands Off NYC, an advocacy coalition, reported that confirmed sightings of ICE activity in New York City more than doubled in July from the previous month. The number of ICE sightings around Albany, Schenectady and Troy increased from eight in June of this year to 33 in July, according to the Capital Region Sanctuary Coalition.
Matthew Borowski, an immigration lawyer who practices in upstate New York, said he’s seen an uptick in calls over the past few weeks indicating a surge in enforcement activity. He’s filed habeas corpus petitions — legal petitions that demand authorities release someone that they’ve detained — for eight of the people arrested during the July 26 sting in Malta. He said the government had already determined the detainees weren’t flight risks or a danger to society.
“This was an orchestrated roundup of immigrants,” he said. “It sows chaos because I'm sure that it encourages a lot of people not to comply, right? Because they don't want to get detained, and then their noncompliance then becomes a valid rationale for their subsequent detention.”
U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, an Amsterdam Democrat, visited the Batavia detention facility on Monday. He said some detainees told him they were forced to sleep on the ground, and he saw beds on wheels that had been rolled in to meet capacity needs. He declined to say if he interacted with any of the people arrested in Malta.
“This is such an aggressive approach to go well beyond the intent of the law,” he said. “It's causing havoc out there in the community, and a lot of pain and suffering for the individuals.”
A Gothamist analysis of federal court records shows the number of habeas corpus petitions filed reached a peak in March of this year. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired that month after federal agents killed two people during a surge in Minnesota earlier this year.
After declining in April and May, the number of petitions increased in June and July, Gothamist’s analysis shows. The exact figures are still a fraction of the number of people arrested in New York, experts said.
Sarcone, the federal prosecutor, said he wouldn’t comment on active cases.
Retaliation
Tom Homan, the federal border czar, has said on multiple occasions that he would increase the number of federal agents in New York in response to a state law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in May. The law prohibits 287(g) cooperation agreements, which allow local police officers or deputies to perform immigration enforcement duties.
The new statute also restricts law enforcement agents from covering their faces while on duty and prohibits local jails from renting space for immigration detention. Democrats, including Hochul, said the measure would protect immigrants and increase public safety by focusing law enforcement resources on crimes — not civil immigration enforcement.
A federal judge on Monday struck down New York’s prohibition against face-coverings but let the state move forward with winding down 287(g) agreements. Homan said restrictions on cooperation make things less safe and requires deploying more ICE personnel.
“We're going to flood the zone,” Homan told podcaster Glenn Beck last month. “The sheriffs and chiefs are working with us. So when you take that efficiency away, and we’ve got to send more Fugitive Teams out, that's where the surge of agents are going to go — to sanctuary states like New York.”
Hochul praised the court ruling.
“Local law enforcement should be focused on local matters, and New York taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for any collaboration with ICE,” she said in a joint statement with Attorney General Letitia James.
Fleeing threats
In Peru, Carrión worked as a bank teller and later owned a tax service, Aurilio said. But there was danger. Carrión’s father was a local official during the decades-long conflict between the Peruvian government and leftist guerilla groups. Aurilio said Jesus’ father and sister were murdered, and he was threatened by guerillas.
Carrión arrived in the United States in 2022. The couple met online and married three years ago.
He was doing his best to settle into the Capital Region. Aurilio said he connected with other Latinos and often served as a driver for other people. Carrión was working through the process of gaining firmer legal immigration status, and had been scheduled to get required vaccines the day after he was detained by ICE.
The shock of his sudden arrest was destabilizing, Aurilio said. And she didn’t see any reason for it.
“My husband is a good, good person. He's the kindest, most helpful, hardworking person I've ever met,” she said. “I just don't think that we deserve this kind of treatment.”
