ICE arrests in Onondaga County surge 500%, most detainees lack records

ICE arrests in Onondaga County climbed from 56 in 2024 to 161 by October 2025, and 114 of those cases were classified as “other immigration violator” rather than criminal arrests. That means most people swept up locally were not being held on pending charges or convictions, even as enforcement across the county surged sharply.

The county-by-county data show a pattern that reaches far beyond Syracuse and its suburbs. More than 80% of the people arrested in Onondaga County were men. The largest nationality groups were 42 people from Ecuador, 27 from Guatemala and 17 from Cuba. Of the 114 arrests without criminal charges, 36 people had already been deported to their home countries.

The rise in Onondaga mirrors a wider upstate spike. Erie County went from 59 ICE arrests in 2024 to 620 by October 2025. Albany County rose from 20 to 190, and Monroe County from 6 to 224. In Onondaga, the jump has stirred sharper concern because the arrests are landing in households, workplaces and school communities that are already navigating legal uncertainty and the fear of separation.

The New York Immigration Coalition said the numbers reflect a broader statewide pattern of racial targeting. Its report, based on ICE detention data collected by the Deportation Data Project from September 2023 through July 2025, found that Central and South Americans make up 25% of New York’s immigrant population but account for 74% of ICE arrests. The coalition said ICE is as much as 115 times more likely to arrest non-citizen Latinos than non-citizens from other ethnic and racial groups.

Mario Bruzzone, the coalition’s vice president of policy, said the data show ICE enforcement is discriminatory and called for passage of the Access to Representation Act so immigrant New Yorkers can get legal services and due process. Chloe East, an economist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said community arrests, especially of Latino men without criminal records, have been the biggest driver of the increase.

Onondaga County Sheriff Toby Shelley has drawn a line of his own. In February 2025, he said his office would hold undocumented immigrants in the county jail only when a judge signed a warrant, not on a federal ICE detainer request. He also said the sheriff’s office recently notified ICE when 28-year-old Galindo Lopez was set to be released after a sexual-assault charge in Cicero. The numbers now place Onondaga County inside a broader debate over who ICE is targeting, how far local agencies should cooperate, and what due process looks like when arrests rise faster than public confidence in the system.