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Opposition to a planned expansion of the Department of Homeland Security detention center in Batavia kicked off on July 19 with a demonstration on the city’s main street.
The demonstration, organized by the Genesee County chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Rochester Rapid Response Network, and the GLOW Community Alliance, drew 50 protesters advocating against a planned expansion of the center, formally known as the Buffalo Service Processing Center.
“We have all witnessed the current administration’s abhorrent treatment of our immigrant neighbors, abducting them off the street and disappearing them into their vast network of detention centers, making it difficult for family members to get into contact or even know where their loved ones are,” said Gina Shelemanow, chair of Genesee County DSA, reading from a statement. “As residents of Genesee County, we are standing up here today to make it absolutely clear that we do not want an expansion of the detention center in Batavia. This is not who we are as a community, and we will not stand for this.”
The detention center, only minutes up the road from where the protest was taking place, serves as the main destination for undocumented immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York. On July 3, DHS announced a “hard-sided” expansion of the facility to include 100 additional beds for detained migrants.
“Our goal today is just waking up the community because this news really just hit that they’re going to expand the detention center. … We want the community to really know about it. So we’re out here to raise the visibility of it,” said Jane Schnieder, another protest organizer at the event.
The DHS announcement was made in the wake of a bill signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in May, disallowing contracts between DHS and individual counties to detain undocumented people in local jails and prisons pending hearings, transfer to out-of-state detention centers, and/or deportation.
Democrat Tim Kennedy, who represents the 26th Congressional District, has sent a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding that the department immediately discontinue plans to expand the detention capacity in Batavia. He said the plan “reflects a broader effort to escalate interior immigration enforcement and expand detention capacity in service of the continued over-criminalization of immigrant communities in Western New York and across our country.”
The Batavia facility has been criticized by immigrant advocates for alleged overcrowding, excessive use of solitary confinement and lack of medical care for detainees.
According to the DHS, the overcrowding issue is compounded by the recent legislation by Hochul. However, advocates are skeptical that an expansion will improve conditions, arguing that it will only enable larger ICE operations in the region.
As of July 9, the facility housed an average of 698 detained immigrants, down from a peak of 745 in February, but still exceeding its capacity of 650 people.
At an information meeting on Wednesday organized by the same organizations, a small group of activists, organizers, and immigration law experts discussed the reported conditions inside the Batavia detention center, and potential avenues for stopping the planned expansion.
Similar efforts are underway in Rochester, where Customs and Border Protection plans to construct a detention center inside the Keating Federal Building in downtown Rochester.
“We’re working on a number of things,” Schnieder said of the response to these actions. “We may hold protests—the detention center is right down the road. And we are definitely going to be in correspondence with our government officials to try and slow it down or stop it.
“There’s a lot we can learn from what’s already been happening (in areas with detention centers),” she added. “And I do watch it in the news and want to talk with some of the leaders of these different communities that have been objecting (to detentions in their area).”
The Batavia detention center was built in the 1990s as an Immigration and Naturalization Service facility before ownership was transferred to DHS following its creation in 2003 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
It remains the only DHS detention center in New York and is one of only 10 detention centers nationwide owned and operated by DHS, which normally contracts with private prison companies to manage its facilities or uses county and state facilities to house detained immigrants. New York does not allow privately run prison facilities and now no longer allows ICE to work with individual counties to detain people in local jails and prisons.
The detention center’s status as one of only a handful of DHS-owned facilities could be an extra hurdle for activists hoping to prevent the expansion. Because the facility and the land it sits on are already owned by DHS, policies like zoning can’t be used to impede the planned expansion.
Still, local advocates like Shelemanow and Schnieder are working to find new strategies to prevent the project.
“We’re really early in our strategy,” says Shelemanow. “We have reached out to Rochester DSA, and we’re talking with them, because I know there’s a group organizing in Rochester against what they’re planning on building there. We’re going to coordinate with them, kind of see what their approach is.”
DHS has not yet released further information on the project, its goals, or its timeline. The agency did not respond to a request for comment. Some reports indicate the expansion will serve as a women’s wing for the center, which is currently a men’s-only facility. Earlier, female detainees captured in New York would be held in county jails and prisons before being transferred to larger facilities out of state.
Both male and female detainees are often transferred to out-of-state facilities in Ohio, Louisiana, and Colorado, a move which immigrant advocates argue limits contact between detained people and their loved ones and legal counsel. A Wayne County farmworker and advocate, Dolores Bustamante Romero, was transported to a detention facility in Louisiana following her detainment in April at ICE offices in Buffalo.
According to court testimony during her May 26 hearing, Bustamante was not informed of where she was going, nor was she allowed to contact family members until after her arrival in Louisiana.
“Our immigration system has been broken for a really long time,” observes Schnieder. “It needs to be fixed. This isn’t how you fix it. You know, snatching people off the street, detaining them, deporting them without any due process, shooting them. This is not what we do in America at all.”
David Wazana is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort.
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To make the statement that the invasion of millions of illegal aliens with thousands of hardened criminals, terrorists, drug dealers, etc didn’t happen during Biden’s administration is laughable and shows that reader is part of a Leftist cult mentality. Furthermore, to twist the real story from the 17th, 18th and 19th century immigration history and compare that to dementia laden Biden’s disastrous immigration policy is ludicrous.
The immigration ignorance is concerning to say the least. You know we have laws on the books. So, point one, either enforce those laws on the books or change them. There is a process in place for that. Point two, just open the borders and allow anyone in who wants to. Let them vote. Give them phones and provide them with housing, food and medical. Get it over with. I am an immigrant at age 12 came here with my parents. (1957) We were given nada, nothing. What did we get? We received the opportunity to come here, work here and raise our family. There is a proper way to manage immigration. Or you can do it like Spain did just a few days ago. Just open the border and 10’s of thousands stream in and overrun the system. And if you believe things are a mess…..we have today because of what and whom we had yesterday. The Dems created this mess and the Reps don’t have a clue how to establish a solution and manage it. Our governing individuals are on route to destroying this nation as founded, because they just oppose each other instead of getting together and working on a solution. The people who are so very pleased today are, Iranian Regime, Mr. Putin and President Xi. So you people on the line bashing ICE get ready for a change in leadership. Just saying.
Very dramatic. And very inaccurate. There are of course numerous options available between building a wall around Trump’s Festung Amerika, and throwing open the gates to any and all comers as what the case from 1607 to 1882, and the all but wide-open immigration policies from then until the national origin restrictions of the 1920s. Every family branch of each of my parents were fortunate to arrive here between 1636 and 1858. So they didn’t have to beg to get in. And they weren’t hunted down by masked thugs for the crime of seeking a better life for their families. Today’s immigration debate reminds those if us who are familiar with American history of its similarity to the debate over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 where The Law forced all Americans to aid and abet the slave catchers on pain of penalty. Nevertheless, men and women everywhere ignored the law and helped fugitive slaves to escape to freedom in Canada.
Where was the outrage when under Biden there was an invasion of millions of unvetted illegal aliens? Thousands of these were hardened criminals, terrorists ,drug dealers, etc. It made America less safe! Trump has taken the first necessary steps in fixing our broken immigration system.
Sorry, that never happened. And outrage against things that never happened is the exclusive preserve of Trump and his cultists.