Media Monitor #15, October 20-27, 2026, Compiled by Susan Manuel
Detention Watch Hudson Valley New York State Updates
Jails Making a Killing
Media continue to cover the profits earned by localities cooperating with ICE. NY Focus and boltsmag.org report that New York county jails have billed ICE around $20 million for detaining immigrants for the agency since early last year.
A NYS law passed early this year prohibits counties from detaining people for ICE, with most counties complying. But Focus published records that demonstrate just how lucrative those deals were. The Orange County jail, for example, billed ICE an average of more than $800,000 a month (or $8.4 million) from January 2025 to July 2026. The records “reveal the pivotal role New York county jails played as part of a national network of detention sites during the historic surge in immigration arrests.”
Orange County Sheriff Paul Arteta has resisted the law, joining several other sheriffs suing the state over its implementation. Arteta is touting his resistance as part of his campaign for re-election, against Democratic challenger Bernie Rivers.
The sheriffs have until November 25 to transfer out detainees held in their jails. https://boltsmag.org/new-york-immigration-detention-contracts-orange-county/
The records “reveal the pivotal role New York county jails played as part of a national network of detention sites during the historic surge in immigration arrests.”
Judge Denies Release of Man Shot by ICE
Oscar Belgal, the Dominican immigrant shot by ICE in the Bronx on October 8, cannot be released for medical care, a judge ruled on October 23. He is being held in solitary confinement in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, awaiting surgery to have a bullet removed from his neck.
His lawyers filed an emergency motion in Federal District Court, arguing he needed medical treatment due to deteriorating health. Judge Hector Gonzales ruled that the government had provided evidence that he has been given appropriate care and that his condition is stable.
Meanwhile a lawsuit is pending which calls for Mr. Belgal’s release, contending that he was unlawfully detained by ICE. That case could be decided next week. (New York Times).
The Worst of the Worst
NYC media reported the detention of long-time Bronx food pantry leader Alex Nilaj, who was taken into custody during an immigration hearing last week in Federal Plaza. For years, Nilaj has led the Open Hand food pantry, serving 8,000 people a month.
“Every elected official in the Bronx knows Alex. Every civic association knows Alex. Every member of the local community board knows Alex. He’s no stranger. He’s one of us,” said Rep. Richie Torres, D-NY.
Nilaj, originally from Albania, overstayed his visa 20 years ago and was ordered removed in 2008, according to DHS. Torres said that Nilaj has had several immigration hearings over the years, in an effort to regulate his status. He is being held in Delaney Hall in New Jersey. Residents have launched a petition for his release.
Meanwhile ICE’s voter fraud crackdown netted a Syracuse woman, who learned recently that she was adopted by the American family she grew up with. In searching for her birth mother, she found she had been born in Germany. Marva Cook, 66, is a social worker who has lived in Syracuse since infancy.
DHS brought her a warrant, and she turned herself in last week. She appeared in court on Oct. 21 with her ankles and wrists shackled. Court papers show her adoptive parents applied for a visa for her in 1962, and she applied for a green card in 2020. Election records show she voted in 14 elections through 2022. She is charged with “illegal voting by alien.”
“Under the Trump administration, adoptees across the US have a new urgency to prove they are citizens of the only country they have known,” Syracuse.com reported.
Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Bond Hearings
The latest development in court battles over the right of detained immigrants to bond hearings favored Trump: the full bench of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi) concluded 10-7 that the Constitution does not guarantee undocumented immigrants a bond hearing if they are detained.
According to the Oct. 23 ruling, Congress had “intended to restrict the availability of release for people facing potential deportation, even if they have lived in the US for years without criminal records and had attended their ICE check ins.” (Politico).
The decision is “the most consequential ruling yet in support of the Trump administration’s unprecedented, year-old policy of mandatory detention for those who entered the country without permission—even if they had developed decades long roots in the country.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/23/appeals-court-ice-mass-detention-01134109
“The ruling closes the main legal avenue that judges in three Southern states have used to free migrants who have filed petitions challenging the legality of their detentions.” (NY Times).
The policy had been rejected by courts nation-wide, including nine of 11 appellate court districts, as well as a three-judge panel of the Fifth. However, the full Fifth and Eighth Circuits have now held that those immigrants remain “applicants for admission….subjecting them to mandatory detention without an ordinary bond hearing as their removal proceedings play out” (Politico).
The Supreme Court is next: “The ruling comes as the Supreme Court prepares to hear Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha this term, a closely related fight over whether the federal mandatory detention statute applies at all to longtime immigrants arrested inside the country—setting up the possibility that the justices could either undercut Friday’s ruling or strengthen the government’s hand.” (Foxnews)
The ruling is limited to the 5th Circuit. However, some of the largest detention centers reside in those three states, holding immigrants sent from across the country.
Although the 5th Circuit sided with the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy, the vast majority of (lower) judges in Texas—the busiest state for ICE detainee lawsuits—had previously rejected the government’s interpretation of the law.
Under federal immigration laws, the government can quickly deport undocumented immigrants who recently crossed the border, without a bond hearing. But the law gave those who have lived in the US for months or years the right to challenge their detention.
The new policy is a “departure from the practice of previous administrations, when such migrants generally had the opportunity to persuade a judge to release them if they were not a flight risk or danger to the public.” (NY Times).
That changed in 2025 when the Trump administration announced that anyone arrested by ICE had no right to bond. Since January 2025, immigrants have filed more than 89,000 petitions against the Trump administration, seeking their release. (Texas Tribune).
For the Fifth Circuit majority, Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote that because the three petitioners in the case were still “seeking admission” to the US, they were not entitled to hearings on due process grounds. “If they wanted to be free from physical restraint,” he wrote, “they can do so at any time by agreeing to leave the country.”
Judge Leslie Southwick, joined by five other dissenting judges, argued that the court majority had “constructed an impenetrable wall between the Constitution and these long-term residents, a wall not designed, recognized or even suggested by the Supreme Court.”
Four judges in the minority put the word “DISSENT” in all capital letters in their opinion.
Immigration Judges Lose Any Semblance of Independence
The bond hearing issue lay underneath the deplorable treatment of a veteran and respected immigration judge, described by the Washington Post in a long narrative of the saga of Judge Karen Donoso Stevens.
Immigration judges work for the Dept. of Justice: under Trump, hundreds have been fired.
Donoso Stevens was strict, having denied 85 percent of the asylum claims that came before her. However, recently she was ordered to reverse four of her rulings on granting bonds, recalled from her docket in the middle of a hearing and subsequently fired.
“Judges have succumbed to immense pressure from the Trump administration to deny applications… Legal experts say the Justice Department’s transformation of the immigration court has set a precedent that could upend the system each time a new president takes office: more mass firings, more ideological hirings, more pressure to appease whoever is in charge.”
Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced legislation to remove immigration courts from the executive branch, but without Republican support it is doomed.
White House Releases $7 Billion for Detentions and Deportations
The federal Office of Management and Budgets has okay’d ICE to spent $7 billion for immigration detention, deportations and hirings for the fiscal year through next September. It is holding back another $36.6 billion until next October, Project Saltbox reports. Detention received the largest share, at $3.2 billion. Over the past year, ICE and DHS spent $1.07 billion on empty warehouses, under a conversion plan now paused. They paid $3.5 billion to buy seven detention centers from private prison companions Geo Group and CoreCivic, which still run them. And they awarded construction contracts worth $7.3 billion to build new detention space at five government sites. Another $2 billion is for moving detainees around and out of the country. Staffing will receive some $598 million.
