Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ramped up its deportation and detentions across the country, including in New York. While most people detained by ICE in the state were men, women detained by ICE are more likely to be transferred out of state, since there is no ICE detention facility for women in New York.
Jahaira Roldan is the Capital Region manager of Organizing and Strategy with the New York Immigration Coalition. She says in the Capital Region, ICE has often detained men from their homes and their work vehicles, leaving their families without their breadwinners. Roldan says women who are detained in the region are usually first detained in county jails.
“When we say that a family is being targeted, it really means that like a breadwinner in a home, in a residential home, with like a work van outside, that is an example of a family being targeted," Roldan said. "Like this is not a business or a corporation that their business or their corporation being targeted, but it is them and their livelihood.”
Cianna Freeman, an immigration attorney at Whiteman, Osterman, and Hanna, says from there, many women are transferred to ICE facilities out of state, in Louisiana, or to the Dilley family ICE detention center in Texas.
“While the women are here in New York, we've seen them go to Niagara County Jail," Freeman said. "We've had clients that have been held at hotels overnight before they could be taken to Dilley.”
Freeman says the location of her clients who are detained by ICE is a mystery until she is contacted by the detainee or by their family.
“ICE is not telling us, ‘Oh, they're at this facility,’ not at all, but they're calling family members. They're in touch with family members," Freeman said. "They call from the facility to say where they are that night, so on and so forth. So that's how we were able to kind of track them as they move around.”
Data from the Deportation Data Project analyzed by WAMC shows that, outside of New York City and Long Island, 904 people were deported by ICE in 2025. Of that total, 835 were men, while only six were women. The women were transferred from facility to facility during one detention period more than men.
In 2024, both men and women were transferred on average at least three times. The same was true for men who were detained in 2025. But, women who were still detained as of March 2026 were transferred an average of four times.
According to data from the Vera Institute, a New York-based advocacy organization, more than 86% of women who were detained in New York State were transferred to facilities out of state. Only 37% of men detained since the beginning of the second Trump administration were transferred to facilities out of state.
Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, says women in New York state are 3.5 times more likely to begin their ICE detention journey at a county jail.
“21% of women were initially booked into a jail, as compared with 6% of men, and that men were more than five times more likely to than women to both have started their stay at the Batavia at a Batavia area facility - so that's mostly the Buffalo Service Processing Center," Kessler said.
Kessler says the transfers of women to facilities out of state makes accessing legal representation much more difficult.
While Roldan says she has not directly worked with many women who are detained, there are instances when women have been detained at what they expected to be routine immigration check-ins at the Malta ICE facility. She told the story of one woman who was detained after a routine check-in early this year.
“She was back there for what she said it was about 20 or 30 minutes, and in the end, the ICE officer just like silently released her and was like, ‘You can go,’" Roldan said. "She was so confused. And I heard later from her that it was because she understood that there was nowhere for her to be put, and so when I talked to some of our legal partners asking why does this happen, one of the reasons that they immediately came up with was because there is no space at these county jails.”
Kessler says ICE transferring people in detention out of state is not new, but she expects transfers to increase as New York state moved to ban formal cooperative agreements between ICE and local law enforcement.
“Those transfers are definitely increasing, and I think we're likely to see increases of transfers now that the state has thankfully ended many types of immigration detention in the state with the passage of this year's budget," Kessler said. "There's the real hope is that people are released from detention rather than being transferred to elsewhere.”
According to WAMC’s analysis of data from the Deportation Data Project, the largest group of individuals who were deported were apprehended for being in violation of their immigration status, which can include overstaying their visa, or not having documentation, rather than criminal convictions.
In 2024, 82% of those deported after first being detained in upstate New York had a criminal conviction and 5% were in violation of their immigration status. In 2025, 46.4% of those deported had immigration violations.
Kessler says the ramp-up of detentions and deportations has resulted in a gap in overall access to legal representation for people in detention. She says 40% of people in detention in New York state end up having to represent themselves in immigration court.
“There's a real need for significantly increased investments in legal defense representation for people, and that 40% doesn't even touch upon the number of people who don't get to go to immigration court because they have been placed in detention without the chance to go before an immigration judge and defend their rights,” Kessler said.
Ivy Hest, co-executive director of the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement, says the demand for legal representation is often overwhelming for immigrant advocacy organizations. But the need for financial support for immigrant families also has increased. Hest says women in immigrant families are having to support their families as single parents, and CCSM’s mutual aid support group for women has seen a stark uptick in demand.
“You know, we created that group to help build and strengthen, social networks and supports for women who are left behind, and we're seeing that again, as well as an uptick in the need for mutual aid funds and financial support because the breadwinners are leaving, as well as a huge uptick in legal scams, and you know people taking advantage of this moment, and the people who are most vulnerable," Hest said.
