The city’s Correction Department is set to renew a multimillion-dollar contract with a prison telecom giant that’s bragged of using recordings of detainees’ private phone calls to train its artificial intelligence model.  

The Mamdani administration plans to pay Securus Technologies up to $23 million over five years for phone service used by roughly 7,000 people detained on Rikers Island, according to a notice in the City Record. The contract is set to begin July 1.

The Brooklyn Defenders legal aid group and technology experts are urging the Mamdani administration to scrap the agreement, arguing it could hand over vast amounts of personal data including recordings, voiceprints and social connections to a private company with limited oversight and a checkered history.

The conversations people in jail have with their loved ones include intimate moments and private, vulnerable, interactions. It was unclear if, in addition to being recorded, the private calls of New York City detainees are being used to train Securus’ AI model. 

In a memo opposing the contract, Brooklyn Defenders warned of “a community surveillance apparatus that reaches far beyond jail walls, sweeping up the families, friends, and communities of incarcerated New Yorkers without their knowledge.”

Securus began developing AI systems in 2023 using its archive of recorded jail calls to train models designed to flag potential criminal activity, company president Kevin Elder told MIT Technology Review.

One model, he said, was built using seven years of calls from the Texas prison system, with additional efforts underway to create similar tools tailored to other states and localities.

Over the past year, the company has been testing these tools to analyze inmate conversations in real time, according to Elder. 

He described the system as capable of scanning what he called a “treasure trove” of data, using large language models to identify signs that a crime may be planned, with the goal of detecting potential criminal activity earlier in its development.

Correction officials pushed back on several of the concerns raised by advocates — particularly related to immigration enforcement — saying the agency has not enrolled in Securus’ broader data-sharing network.

“The Department has not opted-in to any data or information sharing application with external users,” spokesperson Latima Johnson said in a statement. 

The contract’s confidentiality provisions bar Securus from sharing reports or data without prior written approval from the department, she added.

Department officials declined to answer detailed questions about whether federal immigration authorities have ever sought access to the data, or whether the new contract contains additional safeguards related to AI or third-party integrations.

The proposed contract has not been made available to the public.

Advocates point out Securus was found to have improperly recorded hundreds of attorney-client calls from Rikers, which was later disclosed to prosecutors in 2020 and 2021. 

The issue came to light after public defenders discovered the recordings in evidence shared by prosecutors. The company ultimately deleted the affected calls and worked with the city to overhaul safeguards.

Representatives for Securus, headquartered in Dallas, did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

‘Swept Into These Systems’

Zina Maka, a law professor who studies prison surveillance and emerging technologies, said prison systems historically operate with broad secrecy and legal deference.

“A lot of things that happen in the prison space are subject to a significant amount of opacity,” she told THE CITY.

The introduction of technology has improved communication in jails and prisons — detainees now have access to tablets for video calls — and educational offerings for incarcerated people. 

But it also expands surveillance beyond jail walls, Maka said. 

“Families who have done nothing wrong are increasingly swept into these systems simply because they’re communicating with someone in custody,” she said.

Critics noted Securus’ THREADS platform, which aggregates call recordings, transcripts, voiceprints and financial data to map social connections and flag behavioral patterns that investigators deem suspicious.

Securus previously said the database included information from more than 1.5 million people — including many who were never incarcerated but had received calls from someone who was.

The Correction Department says recorded calls to and from Rikers are not part of the THREADS community. 

Current jail officials did not detail what, if any, privacy protections would be part of the new contract. 

Brooklyn Defenders also raised concerns about a feature that allows participating agencies to share data across jurisdictions. If enabled, that tool could pool New York City jail data with information from facilities in other states — including some that routinely detain immigrants for federal authorities. 

That could potentially allow outside investigators to search data on New Yorkers locked up on Rikers, critics of the new contract say. 

DOC officials maintained that none of the calls would be shared with ICE. 

‘Control every word’

Bianca Tylek, executive director of advocacy group Worth Rises, said the Correction Department should stop recording detainee calls altogether..

“People’s detention is the punishment,” she told THE CITY. “But there are tons of private moments — conversations about family finances, mental health, things that have nothing to do with crime — that really shouldn’t be the purview of the government.”

Tylek also pointed to the impact on people outside the jail system. 

“It’s not just the person who’s incarcerated,” she said. “Families who have done nothing wrong are caught up in this surveillance — their voices are recorded, databased and stored for years, if not forever.”

One mother, whose son has been held on Rikers Island for more than two years, said the constant monitoring has fundamentally changed how they speak to each other.

“We have to control every word,” the woman, who asked not to be named, told THE CITY. “It’s impossible to really talk with my son about his children.”

She said her son sometimes breaks down crying on the phone but avoids discussing why because he assumes the conversations are being recorded.

Tylek noted that recording calls made from jail only started in 2008 under former Commissioner Martin Horn. Initially, the calls would be kept for 18 months before being erased. DOC did not say if that is still the case. Horn has long argued the recordings are a key tool to keeping people safe in jail and for prosecutors to bolster their criminal cases. 

Tylek noted that city officials have never publicly disclosed data on how often the recorded calls have led to those outcomes. 

“We’ve asked DOC to share how many hours they are recording and what percentage of those calls are being flagged for any security purposes,” she said. 

Commissioner Defends Contract

The contract renewal with Securus was spearheaded by James Conroy, the department’s deputy commissioner for legal matters. Conroy, who spent 25 years with the NYPD’s legal department, joined Corrections in 2024. 

The proposed deal must still be formally registered by City Comptroller Mark Levine. His office is reviewing the contract, which will likely take several weeks, spokesperson Terrence Cullen said. 

The contract extension comes as the Mamdani administration has hired a senior advisor for technology and innovation to oversee the city’s expanded use of AI. Rashida Richardson, a civil rights attorney, previously served as senior counsel at Mastercard. 

Asked about the Securus deal, she responded, “I have to decline.”

The contract comes as new Corrections Commissioner Stanley Richards has publicly talked about his difficult experience as a detainee on Rikers during the 1980s as he struggled with addiction. 

Richards defended the contract at an unrelated event last week, saying the calls would not be shared with ICE.

Asked if he’d have been concerned about his calls from Rikers Island to his father being recorded back in the day, Richards responded, “No.”

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An ICE agent appeared to tase a man several times while another agent tried to forcefully drag him out of his car as the man screams in pain and begs for help, as captured in a video obtained by THE CITY.

ICE agents later took that man to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center for medical treatment, in what became a tense, hours-long standoff Saturday night into the early hours of Sunday morning, with protesters and NYPD officers outside the hospital.

In a statement sent hours after THE CITY first published this story, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security disputed that the man had been tased. “This criminal was NOT tased by law enforcement,” he wrote.  

The video, captured by bystanders, shows a masked agent appearing to fire a taser at the man, who is seated in the driver’s seat of a white car with the door open. The man screams in pain as popping sounds are heard, while repeatedly asking to talk to a lawyer and pleading for help from nearby witnesses. 

At one point the agent appears to use a knife to cut the man’s seatbelt. 

“Somebody help me,” the man can be heard screaming. “They are killing me.”

A subsequent video shows the man lying on the ground continuing to scream as agents handcuff him.

On Sunday, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security had identified the man arrested that night as a Nigerian national named Chidozie Wilson Okeke, who they said had prior arrests for assault and criminal drug possession and had overstayed a tourist visa. 

The spokesperson said Okeke “became physically combative attempting to punch and elbow ICE officers” and had “refused to comply with officers’ lawful commands to exit the vehicle and weaponized his vehicle to attempt to hit ICE officers.”

“Our officers followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to make the arrest,” the spokesperson, who declined to be named, said.

Ivan Carrion, a 35-year-old who lives on the block, said he heard a car window smash from his apartment above in the late afternoon Saturday and rushed to the window to see what was going on.

“They were choking him, hitting him, trying to get him out of the car,” and the agents had bashed his car window, Carrion said. 

The struggle went on for  minutes, he recalled, while the man screamed in pain. Eventually the agents handcuffed the man and drove him away in another vehicle, as one of the agents jumped into the man’s car and drove it away.

“I just didn’t know they were able to forcefully force themselves into somebody’s car and pull him out like that,” he told THE CITY on Monday. “I never seen that before.”

Two days after the arrest, crumbled glass from the car window still lay strewn on the roadway. 

An NYPD spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment on Okeke’s arrest history right away.

Okeke’s arrest precipitated a chaotic standoff outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center when activists got word of ICE’s presence at the hospital and rushed to the scene.

As the demonstrators arrived, federal agents pepper-sprayed several of them, eyewitnesses told THE CITY. While agents were inside with Okeke, who was being treated in the emergency room, the crowd of protesters grew, staying outside the hospital until early morning Sunday.

“There is an ICE agent detaining your neighbors inside,” one demonstrator chanted to the crowd. “Your neighbor is currently being abducted.”

At one point, an agent left the hospital in a sedan — speeding through a crowd of demonstrators trying to block the car. Later, at around 2 a.m., video from FreedomNewsTV showed the ICE agents dragging Okeke out of the hospital in handcuffs and thrusting him into a car, while NYPD officers cleared the way from the raucous crowd. 

An unnamed NYPD spokesperson said they’d arrested nine people over the course of the evening, charging eight with resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration while giving a ninth person a summons. 

Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who was outside the hospital until early Sunday morning said she witnessed what “appeared to be direct coordination between ICE and the NYPD, with officers cordoning off the ambulance bay to allow ICE to move the individual into their vehicles and leave.”

A spokesperson for the NYPD said they did not participate in the earlier ICE operation.

Asked about the situation at a press conference Monday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said “NYPD officers were not dispatched to the hospital to participate or facilitate an ICE operation. Rather, they were responding to 911 calls regarding a protest outside of the hospital.”

“And as I’ve made very clear that our laws leave nothing, no room for interpretation about the fact that our NYPD will not participate in civil immigration enforcement,” Mamdani said, calling ICE raids cruel and inhumane.

Murad Awawdeh, the President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, denounced the violent arrest and called for an investigation into how the NYPD handled the situation. 

“ICE has put New Yorkers in the hospital through their violent and unlawful tactics – and DHS constantly lies to the American public to justify terrorizing, brutalizing, and even killing people,” he said. 

“This weekend, when a New Yorker was put in the hospital by ICE – while he repeatedly asked to speak to his lawyer – they once again showed their disregard for the law and their disrespect for immigrant New Yorkers’ lives.”

Katie Honan contributed additional reporting.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article said that ICE agents had tased Okeke. ICE has since denied he was tased.

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Around 11 p.m. one night in January, a Long Island couple was driving back to their home in Hicksville when Nassau County police pulled them over for having a suspended registration. The officers searched the car and claimed to have found drugs inside. 

The couple was held overnight at the precinct. The next morning, police released the woman with a desk appearance ticket. 

But as the woman waited outside for her boyfriend, she saw him walk out shackled with an officer who said he was with the FBI, according to a description of his arrest submitted in a federal habeas corpus petition filed in the Eastern District of New York. He called her from immigration detention later that day, having apparently been passed off from Nassau County Police to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The man’s lawyer didn’t immediately return a request for comment; neither did the Nassau County Police Department.

The case is one of three dozen arrests identified by THE CITY in a review of habeas petitions filed in federal courts in New York City and New Jersey between October 2025 and March of this year in which local police departments allegedly collaborated with ICE to apprehend unsuspecting immigrants.

The cases all took place in cities and towns on Long Island and in counties north of New York City that lack sanctuary city protections, leaving local law enforcement there free to share information with ICE and to coordinate operations. 

Most of the cases occurred in Nassau County, where the sheriff and police departments have expansive agreements with ICE that deputize them to conduct immigration enforcement. Many of the arrests identified by THE CITY, however, involved local police and probation officers tipping off ICE agents, rather than making arrests themselves.

THE CITY found several cases in Port Chester, Mount Vernon and Monticello, none of which have formal agreements with the Department of Homeland Security. There, local police or probation departments allegedly tipped off ICE to undocumented immigrants they had encountered. 

THE CITY’s report comes as the state legislature is in final deliberations over the New York for All Act, a bill that would limit cooperation between local police departments and federal immigration authorities, except in certain circumstances. The legislation, sponsored by State Senator Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblymember Karines Reyes (D-The Bronx), has dozens of co-sponsors and the backing of a number of immigrants rights groups and the NYCLU.

Gov. Kathy Hochul initially countered with a more limited proposal that would end contracts with local jails and the 287(g) agreements that deputize local officers to perform immigration enforcement. On Thursday she offered a new proposal that went further, restricting communication between local authorities and ICE unless there was “probable cause” of a misdemeanor or felony crime.

“This is not done, it’s an important step forward,” Hochul said at a press briefing.

Immigration advocates say the proposal still leaves too much to the discretion of local police officers — and, in some cases, could open the door to more collaboration than is currently allowed. Yasmine Farhang, Executive Director of the Immigrant Defense Project, which has been tracking cases of collusion between local governments and ICE, called Hochul’s current proposal “deeply dangerous.” 

“Doing this would create more harm than the status quo,” she said.

On X, Gounardes pointed to the recent viral video of police beating up a man in a bodega in Brooklyn. 

“Police thought they had probable cause to arrest someone, used unjustifiable force on him, and had the wrong guy,” he wrote. “Letting police collude with ICE if they think there is probable cause a crime occurred will harm immigrants, and people who look like immigrants.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security criticized New York’s attempt to limit coordination with federal law enforcement. “Partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country,” an unnamed spokesperson said. 

ICE Came Instead

THE CITY identified 11 cases in Nassau County in which a local probation department tipped ICE off that an immigrant would be coming in for an appointment. Five of those involved a person on probation for driving while under the influence. Newsday has previously reported that Nassau probation officers are regularly tipping off ICE officers about immigrants showing up for probation appointments. 

Local police in Nassau County appear to have notified ICE in 11 other cases reviewed by THE CITY. Seven of these took place on streets and highways, where cops stopped cars to arrest people and later handed them off to ICE.

In some cases, immigrants described waiting for police and a tow truck after minor car crashes. ICE came instead.

Spokespeople for the Nassau County Police and for County Executive Bruce Blakeman — who’s also the Republican gubernatorial nominee running against Hochul — didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Blakeman’s campaign released a statement after Hochul introduced her proposal on Thursday charging her with “allowing dangerous criminals to return to our neighborhoods.”

More than 140 people have been arrested by ICE on Long Island through local 287(g) agreements since the start of the Trump administration, a small portion of the approximately 2,800 ICE arrests on Long Island in that time, according to data from the Deportation Data Project. 

Outside of Nassau County, THE CITY found three examples in which Port Chester police were alleged to have tipped off ICE.

In two cases, men had spent the night in jail for traffic violations; as they were released the next morning, ICE was waiting for them outside the precinct. 

In a third case, police told ICE in advance they were going to arrest a man who had been arraigned in Greenburgh on grand larceny charges several weeks earlier, according to ICE’s own account of the arrest, which was submitted in court. It’s not clear why Port Chester police re-arrested the man, but once he was in their custody, they called ICE, who came and picked him up at the precinct. 

A spokesperson for the Port Chester Police Department didn’t return requests for comment on the incidents. 

Additional reporting by Rosalind Adams.

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A coalition of groups sued the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, alleging that ICE and other federal agencies are unlawfully arresting immigrants in New York solely over their race or ethnicity. 

The coalition, which includes the New York American Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York and the Legal Aid Society, filed the class action suit in the Eastern District of New York on behalf of eight immigrants around the state who were allegedly arrested and detained without probable cause. 

“ICE is profiling and arresting Black and Brown New Yorkers based solely on their appearance. This is an egregious violation of their civil rights that has caused fear and panic to ripple throughout New York’s immigrant communities,” Meghna Philip, Director of the Special Litigation Unit at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.

The plaintiffs include Juan Carlos Quintero, who was arrested while watching a game of dominos in Staten Island. The 41-year old was surrounded by federal agents in three unmarked cars and handcuffed after he said he did not have an ID on him.

In another incident, a 36-year-old Hispanic man was arrested entering his apartment building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, while coming home from work. In a third incident described in the lawsuit, a 24-year-old Hispanic man and a graduate of the City University of New York was arrested on his way to the Long Island Rail Road in Hempstead. 

All three have been released from federal custody after lawyers filed emergency lawsuits challenging their arrests. 

“DHS agents routinely stop Latinos for no other reason than their appearance and the language they are speaking,” the suit said.

Homeland Security said it arrests people on the basis of reasonable suspicion, consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. “Any allegations ICE law enforcement engages in racial profiling are FALSE,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. 

The new lawsuit cites THE CITY’s reporting last fall describing an uptick in street arrests as well as THE CITY’s story this month which found that 800 New Yorkers who were not an intended target of immigration officers were arrested here between October and March. In 85% of these cases, the people detained had no prior criminal record.

Last September, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 2025 concurring opinion to an emergency order that federal immigration officials may use factors such as language, ethnicity or work as one factor in determining whether someone is in the country without authorization — though not as the only factor. 

The order was in response to a suit the ACLU filed against immigration officials for improperly using race while targeting Home Depots in immigration raids in Los Angeles last summer. 

The ruling has led some to dub the street arrests by federal agents as “Kavanaugh stops,” and is credited with empowering immigration officials to continue using race as a factor in arrests.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested 811 immigrants in New York City since August who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of these “collateral” arrests — as the agency calls them — 85% involved people with no criminal history, according to newly obtained ICE data. 

THE CITY had reported on several examples of those arrests, including that of a 28-year-old construction worker on the streets of Corona, Queens while he was headed to work one morning. Agents claimed they had been looking for his neighbor, but they took him instead. 

Overall, these “collateral” arrests accounted for 24% of all ICE arrests in New York City from August 2025 through March 10.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has repeatedly said in the past that it’s focused on arresting “the worst of the worst” while regularly posting photos of immigrants convicted of crimes that ICE has arrested.

Yet even of the 2,491 people ICE targeted for arrest in New York City since August, 73% had no criminal convictions or pending charges.

The ICE arrest data analyzed by THE CITY was obtained by the Deportation Data Project through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and covers immigration arrests through March 10. It includes, for the first time, ICE’s own determination of whether a person was detained as part of a “targeted” operation or as a “collateral” arrest. 

While the ICE data does not materially describe where or how a person was arrested, THE CITY found many of these “targeted” arrests took place at ICE check-ins and immigration court, where agents have been carrying a list of names and staking out hearings to detain immigrants since last year.

Asked about the latest ICE arrest data, an unnamed spokesperson disputed the agency’s own records. 

“This story only reveals how the media manipulates data to peddle a false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst,” the spokesperson said, pointing to several examples on DHS’s website of people arrested who were wanted for crimes in other countries. 

“Nationwide, our law enforcement is targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists,” adding that “70% of illegal aliens ICE arrested across the country have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.” 

ICE’s own data released by the Deportation Data Project, however, shows those people accounted for 59% of arrests nationwide since August, according to THE CITY’s analysis. 

In New York City, that percentage was even lower: Just 24% of the 3,191 people ICE arrested had criminal convictions or pending charges, while 76% had no criminal history. 

“This statistic doesn’t account for those wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country, INTERPOL notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists, etc. The list goes on,” the spokesperson said. 

Advocates slammed the latest figures, saying it was another indication of a law enforcement agency needing to be reigned in. 

“The Trump administration is not interested in actually delivering on what they say, which is making our communities more safer and secure,” said Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “They are aimlessly, racially profiling people, but they’re looking for anyone that they can detain so they can meet their idiotic quotas.”

Border Czar Tom Homan has long reasoned that sanctuary cities like New York would face more of these “collateral arrests” because ICE isn’t allowed to go into local jails or coordinate with local police for the purposes of immigration enforcement.

“When you release a public safety threat out of a sanctuary jail and they won’t give us access to him, that means we got to go to the neighborhood and find him, and we will find him, but when we find him, he may be with others,” Homan said shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2025. “Others that don’t have a criminal conviction and are in the country illegally, they will be arrested too.”

But ICE’s own data shows a more complicated picture. 

The agency’s data suggests a higher rate of “collateral” arrests outside of jails and prisons in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island, where sanctuary laws are generally less protective towards immigrants or do not exist at all, and where local police often assist ICE. 

The collateral arrest rates for the region’s specific jurisdictions, however, can only be approximated because ICE did not reveal in its data the specific counties where it processed 1,719 arrests downstate since August.

Overall, ICE classified roughly 36% of immigration arrests outside jails and prisons in Long Island and along the Hudson Valley up to Ulster County since August as “collateral”, compared to roughly 25% of such arrests in New York City. 

Immigrant advocates have been pushing state lawmakers to pass a bill called New York for All, which would extend sanctuary protections like those in New York City to the rest of the state, limit cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE agents. 

“You would think that the bare minimum that our state could do is pass the New York for All act that would prohibit the collusion of local law enforcement, which is also racially profiling people for the purpose of handing them over to ICE around the state,” Yasmine Farhang, the Director of the Immigrant Defense Project. 

The latest data indicates ICE’s arrest surge last summer — when masked agents were grabbing people at immigration courts and staking out check-in offices — remains the peak of the agency’s enforcement efforts thus far in the five boroughs. 

Arrests slowed for a period of time following a federal court order last August limiting the number of people ICE could detain at once inside 26 Federal Plaza holding cells — before picking up again between October and December, when THE CITY reported on an apparent increase in arrests on the street. 

ICE arrests then declined in New York City in the weeks after DHS agents surged into Minneapolis in December in an effort dubbed “Operation Metro Surge”, where they later killed two protesters in January — Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Collateral arrests, in particular, have dropped dramatically since Pretti’s killing in late January, with just a few a week, compared to dozens of each week logged in the fall.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Customs and Border Patrol Commander at Large Greg Bovino were both ousted in the aftermath of that politically unpopular operation. Honan was given a more prominent role as Trump confided to members of his inner circle that the mass deportation efforts may have gone too far, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

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This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Dylan Lopez Contreras sat waiting for a copy of his class schedule in a sunny fourth-floor room of his Bronx high school as his counselor walked in, wearing a “Free Dylan” button attached to the strap of his messenger bag.

Dylan stood, and Hedin Bernard lifted Dylan’s more-than-6-foot frame off the floor in a tight bear hug.

It had been more than 10 months since Dylan set foot in ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a high school geared toward older, newly arrived immigrant students. The last time the two had seen each other, Dylan’s hair was dyed purple and just covered his ears. Now, it fell below the 21-year-old’s shoulders and the purple dye had faded to yellow.

Last May, federal immigration officials arrested Dylan in a Manhattan courthouse after his asylum hearing, making him the first known New York City public school student detained during President Donald Trump’s second term. The Venezuelan native became the public face of an aggressive new phase of the government’s mass deportation campaign, remaining in custody until his release last week.

After Dylan’s arrest, his mom Raiza’s first call was to Bernard. Ever since then, Bernard has, along with ELLIS founding Principal Norma Vega, led the school’s efforts to rally behind Dylan — which included helping to put Raiza in touch with lawyers and advocates, organizing a student letter-writing campaign, and supporting a fundraiser for the family. With Dylan’s return to ELLIS, they hope he can focus on “what will happen, not what did happen,” Vega said.

But the jubilation of Dylan’s return has been mixed with frequent reminders of the looming threat of immigration enforcement facing him and other ELLIS students.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, released Dylan while he awaits a decision on an appeal in his asylum case. An immigration judge rejected his claim last year, and the appeals process could take years, according to his lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group. But ICE has the ability to take him back into custody at any time and requires regular check-ins, his lawyers said.

Shortly after Bernard reunited with Dylan Tuesday morning, as Dylan scarfed down a donut and drank coffee poured from Bernard’s thermos, the counselor invited him to join a college trip that week.

ELLIS staffers believe that preparing immigrant students for college is the surest path out of poverty. The trip would visit three colleges in upstate New York.

Dylan glanced down at his leg, where a black ankle monitor had been attached as a condition of his release. With his travel restrictions, Dylan knew he likely couldn’t attend.

But that didn’t slow down the ELLIS staffers for long. Later that morning, Bernard asked a colleague to invite college representatives to ELLIS, so Dylan wouldn’t have to leave school to meet them.

Detention Still Lingers

The swiftness of the changes over the past two weeks has been hard for Dylan to comprehend.

After months in Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a Western Pennsylvania detention facility, Dylan had stood at a crowded press conference, flanked by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, thanking his supporters in Spanish from under the blue brim of a New York Knicks hat.

He had been sleeping on a paper thin cot in a cell with more than 70 men. Now he was in his own bed, cuddled with his younger siblings, ages 8 and 10, who had asked to sleep next to him. And after losing about 30 pounds in detention because he often couldn’t stomach the food, Dylan had a phalanx of adults at ELLIS showering him with food, free school supplies, and affection.

“It’s a big contrast, to go through so much mistreatment, and then come back to people who love and support you,” he said in Spanish.

Still, his thoughts drift back to a friend in detention nicknamed “El Mayor,” or the elder, who has already called Dylan to let him know how happy he was to hear about his release and to ask if he could use his public profile to advocate for the release of others. (Dylan did exactly that at his press conference.) As long as those men remain in detention, Moshannon Valley is “not going to feel very far away,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to questions about the conditions in Moshannon.

ELLIS staffers said reintegrating Dylan into school will mean helping him catch up on all he missed over the past 10 months, while also processing the ongoing trauma of his detention.

While Dylan was incarcerated, his classmates had gone to Washington, D.C., prepared for or taken Regents exams they needed for graduation, and kept up with the guitar lessons Dylan enjoyed before his arrest.

Letters from his classmates helped sustain him as his detention stretched from days to months, and his optimism for a quick release faded. He watched new detainees — including grandparents and young kids — come and go while he remained locked up.

Dylan had no formal education in detention. But he was determined to do what he could to keep up with his English.

He practiced speaking with cellmates from places like China and the United Kingdom and to advocate for better treatment from the guards.

He devoured Manga and Marvel comics donated by the advocacy group ROCC NYC, which played a critical role in supporting his family and keeping public attention on his case. He scoured an English dictionary from the facility’s library to learn new vocabulary but had no one to check his pronunciation. And he tried to read some classics, such as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez.

When he returned to ELLIS last week, Vega stopped him in the hallway to hand him a gift from a staffer in her district office: a copy of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” another classic Dylan had asked to read but couldn’t get a copy of.

Dylan, who had fled Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s repressive regime, had been kidnapped by a Mexican cartel on his journey to the U.S., and spent 10 months in ICE custody, had said he wanted to understand Dante’s nine circles of hell.

ELLIS Gears Up

Staffers at ELLIS are accustomed to helping students navigate all kinds of trauma, but they’d never had a student return from long-term incarceration, Bernard said.

Dylan’s counselors at ELLIS plan to refer him to a Spanish-speaking therapist through a mental health clinic located on the first floor of ELLIS’ building, Bernard said. And staffers will watch for any signs that he is struggling.

They’re also hoping to give Dylan chances to enjoy himself outside academic courses, though his ankle monitor is complicating those plans. His counselor enrolled Dylan in a swim class, but Dylan worried about getting the device wet.

Schools in New York are required to continue enrolling students through age 21 — but state law doesn’t stop them from staying longer if the school agrees, Vega said.

ELLIS staffers don’t want to keep Dylan in high school longer than necessary, but are encouraging him to stay for two years so he can master English before applying to college.

In the meantime, he is eager to earn money to help his mom and siblings with rent. He hopes to take a bartending course so he can work at night without interfering with his school schedule.

Dylan worked long hours as a delivery driver before his arrest, and Bernard remains concerned about how long he’ll want to stay in school.

Staffers at ELLIS are working on finding him an internship that allows him to make money while learning new skills and burnishing his college resume.

Dylan said he’s willing to stay at ELLIS “as long as it takes.”

An Uncertain Future

Dylan’s arrest, and the aggressive escalation in immigration enforcement it represented, cast a long shadow over ELLIS over the past 10 months, reaching into every aspect of its work.

Students had begun to talk more openly about self-deportation. Pressure to abandon school for work grew as students confronted their diminished prospects for building a future in the U.S. And ELLIS’ enrollment, like that at immigrant-heavy schools across the city, has declined as border crossings slowed to a trickle.

Many of the ELLIS students who greeted Dylan Tuesday with tearful hugs and exclamations like “bienvenidos, loco!” (welcome back, crazy!) had endured their own brushes with immigration enforcement.

Dylan saw a friend whose mother was deported while he was in detention, leaving her without a way to pay rent or look after her toddler during school hours. Dylan’s friend Bridget is considering returning to Ecuador in part because of the fear of ICE. Another student saw Dylan’s ankle monitor and asked a staff member what the device did, adding that her dad had one too, Bernard said.

And when Dylan greeted two fellow Venezuelan students, one asked if he’d had to sleep on the floor — noting that’s where he’d slept after being detained while crossing the border. “I know the floor,” Dylan responded with a wry smile.

During lunch time, Dylan settled into a booth with friends and munched on mozzarella sticks. He had a newfound appreciation for school cafeteria food.

His friendships were what Dylan missed most about ELLIS, and there was lots to catch up on. The conversation soon turned to an ordinary high school concern: Dylan had to figure out what color to dye his hair next.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

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The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration has brought population growth in New York City to a screeching halt.

The city’s population in July 2025 was 8.58 million, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday, down about 12,200 from July 2024 and significantly less than the 8.8 million New Yorkers counted in April 2020.

International arrivals in the 12 months before July 2025 plunged to only 66,000, the lowest number since the pandemic and far less than the 220,000 immigrants who arrived over that same period in 2023-24.

About 114,000 left the city for other locations in the United States in the year ending last July, about the same pace that has existed since the pandemic. For decades, international migration has more than offset the number of New Yorkers leaving for elsewhere in the country.

“Today, New York has a big and robust economy, so a single year of downturn is not going to knock it off its balance,” said David Kallick, an economist specializing in immigration issues at the Immigration Research Institute. 

“But if we see a sustained drop in the number of people coming in — and that’s very much a story of immigration — then the city will shrink. New York saw in the 1970s how dire the results of population decline can be.” 

The numbers released Thursday are estimates derived from examining births, deaths and migration data. The Census also revised its estimates for previous years, which put the July 2020 population at 8.75 million, followed by a decline of about 400,000 during the pandemic and a rebound of about 220,000 since 2022.

The city continued to have a natural increase in population as births outpace deaths. Some upstate counties with older populations see deaths outpace births, meaning a decline in immigration contributes to an even steeper population decline, said Jan Vink of the program on applied demographics at Cornell University.

The Census Bureau did not include any estimates of those deported under Trump policies or those who left for other countries voluntarily. Data released by ICE and analyzed by THE CITY puts the number of deportations in the first six months of the year at fewer than 2,000.

Kallick notes that the period covers only the first six months of the Trump administration, when its crackdown on immigration was just ramping up.

Other cities also dependent on immigration like Los Angeles, Miami and San Diego saw more significant declines in population.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be forced to defend its detention practices inside holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza in a trial slated for the end of May. 

Immigrant advocates from Make the Road New York and attorneys from the law firm Wang Hecker and the NYCLU have argued that migrants were held there in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and denied access to lawyers. 

Their detention violated First Amendment rights because they couldn’t speak to lawyers, and Fifth Amendment rights because they were subject to “punitive conditions of confinement” without due process, the suit alleges. 

The trial, before federal judge Lewis Kaplan, will kick off on May 26.

The groups filed a class action lawsuit last August, as ICE arrests in New York were surging, on behalf of anyone who was or will be detained inside 26 Federal Plaza.

At the time, ICE was cramming people arrested in and around New York City inside the holding cells on the 10th floor in dire conditions, with limited access to food and water, according to detainees and corroborated by video evidence obtained by THE CITY. 

As part of the lawsuit, advocates submitted first-hand accounts of immigrants detained there, including a 20-year-old who spent days covered in menstrual blood because agents had given a room full of women just two menstrual pads. In another case, one detainee said a guard forced men to line up for water while they squirted drops in their mouths.

The video obtained by THE CITY showed the men cramped together laying down on the floor, within view of a toilet. 

At the time, THE CITY also conducted an analysis of ICE’s own data, finding the average time people were spending inside holding cells has surged up to more than four days, though the cells, which have no beds, were intended to hold people for less than 12 hours. On one night in early June, ICE kept as many as 186 people overnight, THE CITY found. 

Judge Lewis Kaplan stepped in swiftly last summer, putting a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction, that dramatically restricted capacity on how many people ICE could hold at once inside its holding cells and required ICE to provide food, water, sanitary products and access to legal counsel. 

In the months since, immigrant advocates and Trump administration attorneys have gone back and forth in discovery, deposing top-ranking ICE officials and seeking records on immigrant detainees. 

THE CITY recently reported that during one such deposition, William Joyce, ICE’s New York Deputy Field Office Director, had admitted it was holding detainees on a previously undisclosed 9th floor. 

On that floor the agency hadn’t been abiding by all the rules set out in Judge Kaplan’s preliminary injunction, a government attorney admitted. 
Both parties subsequently signed an agreement that ICE would apply Kaplan’s ruling to any, “any room, cell, or other space where individuals are detained for any length of time by Defendants at 26 Federal Plaza.”

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Housing officials are warning New Yorkers about how to tell a real city inspector from someone who may be impersonating one amid “increased immigration enforcement,” according to a recent PSA-style video from the agency.

The video was posted just one day before federal agents claiming to be police investigating a missing child got past Columbia security guards without a warrant to arrest an Azerbaijani undergraduate student in her campus housing, according to university acting president Claire Shipman. 

The video from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, posted in both English and Spanish, was made in response to a report made by a tenant association to Cea Weaver, a longtime tenant organizer and director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

The tenant association passed along information about an incident it said occurred in early February.

“We heard from tenants in Crown Heights that there was someone buzzing on the doors saying that they were an HPD code inspector and that they were trying to get access to the building, and that it felt weird for the tenants,” Weaver said Thursday at the city’s first Rental Ripoff Hearing in Brooklyn. “They called us, and they called their neighbors, and they were able to discern that it was not an HPD code enforcement inspector.”

THE CITY was not able to verify the account right away. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t return a request for comment right away. 

HPD made the video out of an abundance of caution, according to spokesperson Ilana Maier.

“No one should have to question whether the person at their door is truly there to help,” she said in a statement. “The very idea of someone posing as an HPD inspector is deeply disturbing. New Yorkers need to know that when someone shows up at their door claiming to represent the City, it’s legitimate.”

“We know it can be frightening when someone unexpected shows up at your door, especially with increased immigration enforcement,” a voice in the video narrates on top of images of HPD inspectors. “Here’s how to know it’s really us.”

The video explains that inspectors respond to 311 complaints and may need access to a building to examine conditions. HPD inspectors, the video says, carry city-issued badges and identification, wear uniforms with the name of the agency and identify themselves by name and with their agency association.

Inspectors will never ask about immigration status, wear a bulletproof vest or ask for personal documents unrelated to housing, the video explains. 

“If someone claims to be from the city and something doesn’t feel right, you don’t have to let them in,” the video said, which ends with a link to resources about rights regardless of immigration status.

Officials and organizers in Minneapolis received reports of federal agents pretending to be delivery drivers, construction workers and even anti-ICE protestors amid the crackdown there this winter.

This past August, a court settlement in a class action case in Los Angeles prohibited ICE officers there from identifying as state or local law enforcement or as officials from non-federal agencies. 

A DHS spokesperson has disputed that agents impersonated police to get into Columbia’s dorm saying, “the Homeland Security Investigators verbally identified themselves and visibly wore badges around their necks. They did NOT and would not identify themselves as NYPD.”  

Weaver said the city is exploring other types of ways tenants can verify whether an HPD inspector is in fact at their residence, such as through calling 311.

“We’re looking at different policy solutions we can look at to make sure that it’s clear who is at your building and what they want to talk to you about,” she said.

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The Columbia student arrested by ICE agents inside her dorm was released hours later following an intervention from President Donald Trump, who was apparently acting at the behest of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who met with him at the White House earlier in the afternoon.

Ellie Aghayeva, an Azerbaijani undergraduate student of neuroscience and political science, posted to Instagram that she’d been released from ICE custody shortly before 4 p.m. and was in an Uber headed back to the Morningside Heights campus. 

“I am so grateful for everyone of you. I just got out a little while ago. I am safe and ok,” she wrote in an Instagram story, which deletes after 24 hours. “I am in complete shock over what happened…”

Mamdani also gave Trump the names of four other immigrant students targeted by the Trump administration for deportation related to their criticism of Israel, asking that the president halt attempts to deport them, according to City Hall. It’s unclear how Trump responded to that request.

Aghayeva’s arrest early Thursday morning rocked the Columbia campus and prompted a spontaneous protest outside its gates by faculty and students angered that university security let DHS officers into her dorm without a warrant.

Columbia University Acting President Claire Shipman said agents “misrepresented” themselves and said they were investigating a missing person in order to gain entry. 

A DHS spokesperson disputed that account. “The Homeland Security Investigators verbally identified themselves and visibly wore badges around their necks,” the spokesperson said. “They did NOT and would not identify themselves as NYPD.”

DHS didn’t return a request for additional comment after Aghayeva’s release. 

As Mamdani brought up her detainment with Trump, he handed a list of four additional people to the president’s chief of staff asking for their dismissal as well, said Joe Calvello, a spokesperson for Mamdani. That list included Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and Columbia alum; Yunseo Chung; Mohsen Mahdawi and Leqaa Kordia, who never studied at Columbia but was arrested at campus protests of 2024, and remains in ICE detention in Texas nearly a year after her arrest.

“Shortly after the mayor left the White House, he received a call from President Trump who let him know the student who was detained this morning will be released,” Calvello said, while declining to comment on the identity of the other students, or if they were still in custody.  

Mamdani had flown to Washington, D.C. early Thursday in an unannounced meeting with Trump, who asked that it be private, the spokesperson said. 

After the pair met in November, the president told the then mayor-elect to come up with ambitious plans for housing. 

“The last time the president and the mayor met, the president asked him to come back with some big ideas of how we can build things together here in New York City, and that’s what he did today,” Calvello said Thursday.

“We proposed a project with an estimated 12,000 units,” he said.

It would be one of the largest housing projects in the last 50 years, Calvello noted, adding that President Trump was “very enthusiastic” about the idea. 

The proposal is for Sunnyside Yard, an ambitious plan to build 12,000 apartments along with new parks and schools. It was first introduced under Mayor Bill de Blasio and requires federal funding to build over rail yards. 

A smiling Trump held up two newspaper covers brought by Mamdani’s team. One was the infamous “Ford to City: Drop Dead” cover of the New York Daily News, which became a lasting vestige of the 1970s fiscal crisis. 

His team also mocked up a fake Daily News cover that read “Trump to City: Let’s Build” and “Backs New Era of Housing” to promote their pitch. 

The meeting was scheduled before Tuesday’s State of the Union, in which the president described Mamdani as a “nice guy” and said he was “speaking to him a lot” despite his “bad policy.”

“Even the communist mayor of New York City — I think he’s a nice guy, actually, speaking to him a lot. Bad policy, but nice guy, just said they want people to shovel snow but if you apply for that job you need to show two original forms of ID and a Social Security card,” Trump said, referring to the SAVE America Act, legislation that would require more documentation for voters to cast their ballot. 

Democrats have said the legislation would disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters.

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