How the Broome County Jail became the face of ICE
In late March 2025 ICE began to conduct raids across central and northern NY. Suddenly buses of ICE detainees began to arrive unannounced at the Broome County Jail dropping off scores of shackled persons who remained out of sight and out of communication with family, friends, and lawyers. Identifying and visiting scores of unknown persons was impossible. Most were quickly moved out, in secret, to other detention centers and deportation. The machinery of mass incarceration and jailing has found a new face, ICE.
Why did they come here? Who authorized this?
On March 10, 2025, Broome County Sheriff Frederick Akshar signed a formal “287g” agreement to act on behalf of ICE and have his own officers trained as ICE agents. Sheriff Akshar has long been a Trump supporter, appearing at Trump rallies in Albany and posting pictures of himself and Trump.
This is unusual. Broome County is one of only a handful of New York’s 62 counties to formally join ICE’s deportation drive. All this was done without any consultation with the legislature and county executive, much less the broader community.
Broome Mobilizes vs ICE
The community is outraged.
In December 2024 JUST members joined with other community advocates to hold a large know-your-rights training session presented by leaders of immigration support organizations from around the upstate area. From these efforts emerged a new local coalition, Concerned Residents of Greater Binghamton, (@crgbing) which has created a 24/7 ICE alert tipline and done extensive community outreach and support to undocumented people. Attempts by the Sheriff to avoid discussing his ICE operations, as at a “townhall” in Endicott, have been met with open objection and disruption.
Clergy, social workers, students, and activists have banded together at rallies and protest. County legislators and city councilpersons have been pressed to investigate and terminate the contracts, salary and overtime, and hard county cash spent on processing ICE detainees. Who is paying for the feeding, clothing, transporting, and the most minimal health and hygiene supplies and conditions—not to mention interpreters and legal assistance required by law but not provided. In sheer money terms all city and county residents lose: it costs $287 to keep a person in the jail every day, and the county is reimbursed hardly $100.
The Real Price of ICE
It is the human cost that matters. The persons dragged off and caged in unknown locations with no communications, little health care, and fearing for their families. It is the wives and children of those spirited away, who ask us: where are our fathers, our partners? The dairy farmworker in the Broome County jail whose farm owner praises his work in court, and wants him to return to his wife and (citizen) children, but who is sent to an unknown Federal prison on immigration violations alone. Or the roofers seized early in the morning who desperately want to contact friends but cannot, not from the Broome County Jail.
Glen Falls Protest
But communities do resist—and win! Up North in little Sackets Harbor a thousand people marched en masse to the home of Trump’s border “czar” Tom Homans, protesting the seizure of a third grader and his family–and forced their release. In Owego the community has rallied in support of a restaurant owner who had been in the country for 33 years–and was finalizing his green card documents when he was arrested. In Glen Falls, protesters line the streets, denouncing the arrest of longtime resident who went to a regular check-in in Saratoga Springs and didn’t come home.
Sackets Harbor marchers
Protest continues to grow, ICE watch efforts expand, and communities march in the hundreds, local police are blocked from cooperating with ICE, and rapid responders stand ready.
For us in Broome, can Akshar and ICE be held at bay? Yes, if we join together.