Awaiting an avalanche of activity

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The ICE detention center in Batavia could become a very busy place when Donald Trump acts on his campaign pledge to begin mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. 

Dan Herbeck of The Buffalo News recently spent time at the facility and produced an inside look at life inside for its 530 detainees and what the future holds. The story notes that there are serious logistical and procedural issues that will likely preclude Trump from deporting immigrants en masse as quickly as he wants.

Herbeck’s account includes statements from ICE officials about how well detainees are treated, a claim that’s been disputed over the years by attorneys for those held in Batavia. Our Geoff Kelly wrote about it in 2022 and Phil Gambini before that. 

Meanwhile, Politico published an interesting story about America’s history of mass deportations. It started with the Irish in the mid-1800s.

The Marshall Project reported on “perverse” incentives that might prompt some local governments to cooperate with federal deportation efforts.  

The Buffalo Common Council has a Police Oversight Committee, not that it’s doing any meaningful oversight, as evidenced by how infrequently it meets. 

Think taxpayers got a raw deal on the Bills stadium deal? (We did.) But taxpayers are getting screwed all over the place when it comes to pro sports facilities.

The Albany Times Union is taking the state to task for using outdated data to determine education aid. The paper wrote the “formula is based on laughably old data. 

“The 2000 census is being used to calculate the number of students in poverty in each district, and the 2004 Regional Cost Index is used to measure an area’s median wages. This means districts don’t always get the funds they need to address their current needs, as opposed to the needs of two decades ago.”

Given how much money the state spends on education and the poor academic achievement of so many students, the Times Union argues that it’s past time for change.

Good Jobs First provides smart intelligence of the state of New York’s economy.

Writes the corporate subsidy watchdog:

New York is a tale of two economies: The struggling upstate one, which giant subsidies have failed to revive, and wealthy New York City, which gives out almost $4 billion in tax breaks and “competes” with neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut for offices and stadiums in a race to the bottom.

Good Jobs first goes on to say the state “fails to … thoroughly evaluate the effectiveness of its subsidies.”

The Olean Times Herald reported on a push by three state Senate Republicans for New York to reduce the state’s $6 billion debt it owes the federal government from unemployment claims made during the Covid-19 pandemic. Employers are paying down the debt in the form of higher premiums for unemployment insurance. 

The Times published two pages of what it called The Most Surprising, Intriguing, Fascinating Facts of the Year.

Among them: 

• Before France abolished capital punishment in 1981, executions were still carried out by guillotine, as they had been since the French Revolution.
• America’s approximately 100 historically Black colleges and universities have produced at least 70 percent of the country’s Black doctors and dentists; half of the Black lawyers; and 40 percent of Black engineers.
• Americans discard roughly 36 million tons of plastic each year, which is more than any other country. But the plastic recycling rate has languished below 10 percent for decades.
• Only 15 percent of previously married women say they want to do it again, according to a Pew Center for Research study. That’s half the portion of men who want to remarry.
•  In the United States, more than 60 percent of the work force lives paycheck to paycheck. The average American is in five- to six-figure debt and often has only cursory knowledge of how they got there.
• Globally, the number of lives lost to alcohol is about three million a year. (That’s about four times more than the number of women who die of breast cancer every year.)
•  According to a 2023 Ipsos survey, cornhole is the most-played sport in America, ahead of bowling, swimming and golf.
• According to one 2020 United Nations study, an estimated 90 percent of female migrants traveling along the Mediterranean route were raped.
• A person trying to escape an abusive relationship, on average, needs seven attempts to actually leave.
• Only about a third of the countries in the United Nations have ever had a female head of the government. Just 13 of the body’s 193 member countries are currently led by women, according to the Pew Research Center.
• At 5,525 miles, the border separating the United States and Canada is the longest between any two countries.

Video time: Two names in the news – Jimmy Carter and Bob Dylan, talk about each other.

Jim Heaney