LOCKPORT — The Niagara County Sheriff’s Office has imposed new restrictions in its agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house detained immigrants.
Effective last week, Sheriff Michael Filicetti confirmed, the county jail is only accepting detainees with a “verified” connection to a local crime, or a judicial warrant or order.
“We are still honoring the contract (with ICE) but we have narrowed the scope,” Filicetti said on Tuesday. “I listened to both sides (of the immigration enforcement debate); I did a lot of thinking about how to uphold public safety and criminal law enforcement” without incarcerating ICE detainees in cases where criminality is not an issue.
The changed agreement with ICE follows months of quiet lobbying by community members, including affiliates of Stand Up Lockport, who object to ICE’s practice of seizing non-citizens to have them deported despite no criminal history in their background.
Stand Up affiliates, including Lockport-based county legislator Carla Speranza, applauded Filicetti and the changed terms of the deal with ICE during Tuesday night’s county legislature meeting.
Speranza said affiliates feel “profound gratitude” for the sheriff’s changed view of the situation. His decision “reaffirmed the sanctity of due process” and reassured immigrant residents of Niagara County that they can call police for help without fearing they’ll be deported.
Affiliate Dina Udell, a teacher in Lockport City School District for the past 19 years, told the legislature a bit about one of her students last year, Daisy, an indigenous Ecuadoran whose family had applied for asylum and were living in Lockport, the adults all employed and law-abiding. Daisy’s father and uncle were taken by ICE outside a dental clinic in Williamsville almost a year ago, and were held at the federal detention center in Batavia for months before supporters were finally able to get them released on bonds. Then ICE came for Daisy’s aunt and her pregnant 18-year-old cousin, Udell said, and after the women were “processed” at the Niagara County jail they were sent to federal detention out of state.
While chastising Filicetti for being “complicit” in the nightmare faced by Daisy’s family, Udell praised his willingness to hear criticisms of ICE and rethink his position on working with it.
The revised detention agreement is “protecting the dignity of individuals who do not belong behind bars,” she said. “This is what democracy looks like. It’s how differences should be handled.”
The Niagara County jail has been serving as a holding center for ICE detainees since last April, following Filicetti’s decision to exercise a rider on the jail’s longstanding agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service. ICE agreed to pay the county $148 per detainee, per day, to keep detainees in holding until their transfer to a federal detention facility. Until now, jail staff were not asking whether detainees had been accused of a crime.
Stand Up affiliate Roxie Bacon, a retired immigration lawyer, said immigration law is civil law, and New York State law prohibits local law enforcement’s participation in civil detention. Bacon said she looked into the cases of dozens of ICE detainees held at the county jail and could not find anyone who was there for a crime-related reason.
Bacon and Speranza had several meetings with Filicetti and Niagara County Attorney Claude Joerg to discuss the county’s potential liability in the event of litigation stemming from an illegal detention or harm suffered by a detainee.
Citing state laws that prohibit unreasonable search-and-seizure and unauthorized contract work by the county, as well as a nationally applicable November 2025 ruling by a California-based U.S. District Court judge — who found that anybody inside the United States, regardless how they got here, is entitled to basic protections including due process — Bacon thinks the county officials finally were persuaded that a deal with ICE without conditions could cost the county far more than it’s being paid.
“One incident — one death, one shooting — could ruin the county financially,” Bacon said.
In her comments to the legislature, the attorney who served as counsel to a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration applauded the new conditions put on ICE in Niagara County.
“What looked good in May looks horrendous in January. It’s time to break up with ICE (unless) it follows the law,” she said.
To and about Filicetti, Bacon added, “It takes true leadership to pivot on a hot issue like this.”
Alongside the revised detention agreement, the sheriff’s office has separate agreements with ICE to be a part of the agency’s “287(g)” program, authorizing trained local law enforcement officers to do some immigration law enforcement. Filicetti said six Niagara County correction officers and six road patrol deputies were trained since the agreements went into effect, but going forward, the 287(g) officers are limited to serving immigration warrants only, and no additional officers will receive training.
In addition, Filicetti said, the sheriff’s office remains involved in Operation Stonegarden, a multi-agency border patrol/security initiative, and it will always respond when another law enforcement agency, including ICE requests assistance in an emergency. That’s a public safety/officer safety issue, he said.