Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more people per capita in Erie County so far in 2018 than in any other county in New York State, according to data released by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
New York County and the surrounding area had the highest number of ICE arrests – 1,113 – from January 2018 to May 2018, according to the data. It also had the highest arrests in fiscal year 2017, at 1,289.
The Erie County area, which contains Buffalo, had the second highest arrest rate of the state: 580 arrests so far from January 2018 to May 2018. According to the data, 866 immigrants were arrested in that county in fiscal year 2017.
The majority of the arrests that happened in the Erie County area were connected to ICE’s Criminal Alien Program, which means the arrests were likely made from state facilities. In New York County, the majority of the arrested non-citizens were grabbed out in the community.
While ICE made double the arrests in the New York County area as it did in Erie, New York has a foreign-born population over seven times larger than Erie County’s. Census estimates show that New York County has 472,404 immigrants living there, while Erie County has just 61,368.
TRAC noted that ICE does not keep track of county level arrest data. The information in the report comes through “a mosaic of records obtained from a range of sources, including those derived from hundreds of separate FOIA requests over the span of several years,” according to the organization.
“As the October 24, 2018, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) report states, this data was not obtained from ICE, and therefore the agency is unable to confirm any of the conclusions drawn therein,” ICE deputy press secretary Sarah Rodriguez said in an email.
