Several New York county jails quietly joined the Trump administration’s rapidly growing immigration detention network this spring.

Seven jails booked a total of nearly 2,800 people arrested for immigration reasons and detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the first seven months of 2025, up from only 500 booked in New York jails all of last year, according to ICE data — a nearly sixfold increase.

In recent years, two jails, in Orange and Clinton counties, consistently held federal immigration detainees. But since February, Allegany, Broome, Montgomery, Nassau, and Niagara counties have joined them.

When the New York Attorney General’s conviction review bureau gets involved in someone’s wrongful conviction case, it often succumbs to pressure from the county prosecutors who originally landed them in prison. But in the vast majority of cases, the bureau doesn’t get that far. Instead, it acts as a mail forwarding service, passing cases on to the prosecutors who originally tried them.

That’s what happened to Alexander Reed.

This article was published in partnership with The New York Times.

An Orchard Park police officer found the man in the shoulder of a six-lane road, standing near his crumpled black BMW, arguing with his girlfriend.

It was 11 p.m. on a Saturday in 2021, in the suburbs of Buffalo. The BMW had slammed into a Jeep, smashing its left taillight. White high heels were toppled on their sides on the pavement, outside the BMW’s passenger door.

The man’s speech was slurred and his gait was unsteady, the officer, Andrew J. Kowalski, would later note in a report. His eyes were glassy, and he smelled strongly of alcohol.

The officer asked who had been driving. The couple looked at each other.

“We’re State Police,” the woman said. Her boyfriend, Ronald W. Wilson, was an off-duty investigator and had the identification to prove it.