New York county jails billed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nearly $18.1 million between January 2025 and July 2026 for holding immigrants in detention, according to available records reviewed by New York Focus in a report published on October 26. The records do not include the Nassau County Jail on Long Island, one of the largest ICE detention sites in the state, and New York Focus said population data and ICE reimbursement rates suggest that facility billed at least another $1.3 million over the same period, taking the statewide total to roughly $20 million.

Source: New York Focus

The Broome County Jail illustrates the scale of the business at county level. The jail housed around 50 immigrants during a peak month and charged ICE nearly $170,000 for that month alone, New York Focus reported, citing the photo and records from the Broome County Sheriff's Corrections Division.

Detentions rose sharply before the ban

The billing followed a sharp rise in the use of county jails for immigration detention. In the first seven months of 2025, New York county jails detained approximately 2,800 people for ICE, compared with about 500 during all of 2024 — an increase of more than six times, according to figures cited by State Senator Julia Salazar, the prime Senate sponsor of the legislation that ended the practice. Before the ban, ICE held contracts with seven local jails: Orange, Broome, Allegany, Montgomery, Clinton and Niagara county jails and the Nassau County Correctional Center.

Source: Bolts

That system has now been shut down by state law. Under the Dignity Not Detention Act, which took effect on August 25, New York State and local governments can no longer enter into or renew agreements to detain people for ICE for civil immigration violations, and existing agreements were required to end. The law removes state and local facilities from ICE's detention network in New York.

Compliance is still being tested. Bolts reported that Orange County, whose jail had become a waystation in ICE's national detention network under a contract first signed in 2008, has become an early test of the law's aftermath, with the transfer of immigrant detainees out of the jail described as opaque. Immigrant-rights advocates have supported the ban but say they are tracking detainees to connect them with lawyers before transfers move them farther from families and legal help.

For Punjabi and other immigrant families in New York, the figures show how deeply local jails were drawn into federal immigration enforcement before the state stepped in — and why the end of the contracts matters: people held only on civil immigration matters can no longer be kept in a New York county jail under a paid ICE agreement, though ICE itself continues to operate federal detention elsewhere.