BATAVIA, New York — The Buffalo Service Processing Center in Batavia, Genesee County, is already the largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in New York state — and it is about to grow. Documents released by U.S. Representative Tim Kennedy show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pressing ahead with an expansion costing nearly $17 million over two years, designed above all to do something the centre has never done: hold women detainees.
Source: WXXI News via Radio Catskill, Oct 5, 2026
The facility, on the federal campus in Batavia between Buffalo and Rochester, has a stated capacity of 650 beds and, according to WXXI News reporting, typically operates well over that capacity. Until now it has housed only men. Women detained by ICE in western and upstate New York have had no detention facility of their own in the region — they were held under contract in county jails or transferred out of state, including as far as Louisiana, WAMC Northeast Public Radio reported on October 27.
Source: WAMC Northeast Public Radio, Oct 27, 2026
How the details came out: a 76-day wait for an oversight letter
The expansion's details became public only because Kennedy, a Democrat who represents New York's 26th district and sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security, demanded them. Kennedy sent an oversight letter on July 8 asking for all records on the decision to build, including cost estimates and contractor communications. DHS's reply, signed by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, arrived on September 29 — 76 days past the July 15 deadline Kennedy had set, his office said. Even then, DHS supplied a single approval memo with the pricing details and the planned number of beds redacted, and said staffing levels for the new facility were 'still being discussed.'
Source: Office of Rep. Tim Kennedy (NY-26), press release, Oct 2, 2026
On October 21, after receiving that written confirmation, Kennedy made an unannounced visit to the Batavia centre to inspect conditions and question ICE officials firsthand, according to his office's Homeland Security updates page.
Source: Office of Rep. Tim Kennedy (NY-26), press release, Oct 2, 2026
The number at the centre of the fight: 72 percent with no criminal record
The most politically explosive figure in the DHS reply concerns who is actually held at Batavia. DHS's own numbers show that 72 percent of detainees at the facility have no criminal record; Secretary Mullin's letter put the share with a criminal history at 28 percent. DHS did not present that as a problem. It wrote that a known criminal history 'is not a prerequisite for immigration enforcement action and never has been,' and Mullin pointed to the 2024 election, writing that the department intends to deliver 'mass deportations.'
Source: Office of Rep. Tim Kennedy (NY-26), press release, Oct 2, 2026
"This administration told the American people it was going after the worst of the worst. Now they've admitted in writing that it isn't true. More than 70 percent of the people held in Batavia have no criminal record, and DHS says that doesn't matter," Congressman Tim Kennedy said. He added that his office receives calls every day "about people who are picked up by ICE while dropping their kids off at school or going to work."
Tent or building? Washington's own paperwork disagrees with itself
What exactly will be built remains genuinely unclear — because the federal government's own documents describe two different structures. ICE's contract-approval paperwork describes a 'soft-sided temporary detention facility' — in plain terms, a tent facility. A contract modification filed on September 29 added roughly $7 million and stated the intent was to establish a 'soft-sided facility and support services for detained female aliens,' WXXI reported from the contract records. Yet in his letter to Kennedy written the same day, Secretary Mullin referred only to a 'hard-sided' structure, said construction had not yet begun, confirmed no children would be housed there, and said the new structure is planned for women — though men could be held there too 'if the needs of the service dictate.'
Source: WXXI News via Radio Catskill, Oct 5, 2026
The construction contract itself was awarded on a sole-source, no-bid basis to Akima Infrastructure Protection, LLC, which has also been put in charge of running the Batavia facility. In a June 15 letter, ICE Deputy Director Charles Wall urged approval 'as soon as possible,' estimating the soft-sided expansion would take six months or less to build and citing $5 million for contingencies. Project Salt Box, reviewing federal contracting records, reported that DHS added $7.2 million to Akima's work specifically for the soft-sided tent facility for women, on top of a $9.4 million order signed in July for detention and transportation services at the centre — and that on September 20 DHS signed a separate contract worth up to $1.5 billion over five years with Rapid Deployment Inc. of Mobile, Alabama, for detention work, under which no work or money had yet been ordered at Batavia.
Source: Project Salt Box, federal contracting records report
Why ICE says it needs the space: New York's new non-cooperation law
Federal officials tie the expansion directly to a New York state law signed in May and in force since August that prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration authorities — including barring county jails from housing ICE detainees. That removed the region's stopgap for women detainees overnight. The law is itself contested: 15 county sheriffs are suing the state over it. ICE's Wall wrote that keeping the expansion inside the federally owned perimeter was 'necessary to meet the immediate and urgent bedspace requirements in the Buffalo area of responsibility,' even while acknowledging the approach 'may be more expensive.'
Source: WXXI News via Radio Catskill, Oct 5, 2026
Medical plans — at a facility previously cited for medical care
The expansion paperwork includes substantial medical infrastructure: exam and consultation rooms, airborne-infection isolation rooms, a nurses' station, and added staffing ranging from nurses to a dentist and recreation coordinators, according to the documents Kennedy released. That detail matters because the Batavia facility has previously been cited for insufficient medical care and staffing shortages, WXXI reported. Kennedy, who in July demanded DHS halt construction over concerns about rapidly built tent facilities and detainee health and safety, says he will continue to press for answers.
Source: WXXI News via Radio Catskill, Oct 5, 2026
What it means on the ground in the Finger Lakes and Rochester
The human backdrop is the immigrant workforce of upstate New York's farms. Reporting by WXXI's Jose Sandoval, aired by WAMC on October 27, describes a region built on a couple of thousand H-2A seasonal farm workers, year-round dairy-farm families who fall outside the seasonal program, and growing Jamaican, Afghan, Ukrainian, Venezuelan and Ecuadorian communities around Rochester, where the nonprofit Ibero-American Action League has helped resettle families. With New York's ban on 287(g) agreements now in effect, advocates say people detained in the region are routed to Batavia — and community groups have responded with rapid-response networks that deliver groceries and drive family members who no longer feel safe driving themselves. For Punjabi and other South Asian families in New York and neighbouring states with relatives anywhere in the immigration system, Batavia is the facility their cases are most likely to pass through in the Northeast.
Source: WAMC Northeast Public Radio, Oct 27, 2026
What happens next
By DHS's own account, construction had not begun as of September 29, the bed count and full costs remain redacted, and staffing is undecided — so no opening date has been announced. A spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told WXXI his office was compiling information and was not prepared to comment, and ICE did not clarify the soft-sided versus hard-sided contradiction beyond re-releasing its summer statement. Kennedy says the oversight fight continues. Readers should treat the $17 million figure as the administration's own two-year project cost, and the 72 percent figure as DHS's own data — both are attributed to the department's documents, not to its critics.
Source: Office of Rep. Tim Kennedy (NY-26), press release, Oct 2, 2026