A supporter of Bustamante outside 250 Delaware Ave. Wednesday. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker.
Dolores Bustamante Romero, a well-known advocate for upstate farm workers, was arrested by ICE Wednesday after appearing for a routine check-in appointment at the agency’s downtown headquarters.
An asylum seeker from Mexico, Bustamante, 54, has lived in upstate New York since 2012 and has worked as an apple picker and farm manager in Wayne County, east of Rochester. She’s a member of the Alianza Agricola, which advocates for farm workers, and sits on the board of the Workers Center of Central New York.
In 2019, she was part of a successful effort to adopt the state’s Green Light Law, which allows migrants to obtain driver’s licenses. She was also instrumental in getting Gov. Andrew Cuomo to issue an executive order in 2017 that banned State Police from inquiring about a driver’s immigration status.
Bustamante has no criminal record and had been permitted to live and work freely since arriving in the United States in 2003. She was issued a deportation order in 2023 after exhausting one legal pathway but President Joe Biden’s administration opted to let the order expire. She was never detained. Instead, ICE ordered her to attend check-in appointments. She subsequently attended four such appointments in downtown Buffalo and left unaccosted each time.
Ahead of her appointment Wednesday, Bustamante said she knew it was possible she’d be arrested. In an interview with Rochester NPR station WXXI, her immigration attorney said he advised her not to go.
“I will go to my check-in because I have tried to do things the right way,” Bustamante said in a statement issued Wednesday morning. “I have been in court for more than 10 years, trying to navigate my case the right way. I pay my taxes, and I contribute to this community’s economy. I have committed no crimes.”
Outside of ICE’s headquarters at 250 Delaware Ave. on Wednesday morning, Bustamante’s friends and family members said they were nervous. They hoped to see her emerge from the lobby of the Delaware North building, through the silver sliding doors. That, her son-in-law Josh Badts said, “would let us get some sleep tonight.”
“It’s been a stressful month or so,” he said.
Shortly after 12 noon, however, word came from Bustamante’s daughter, who had attended the check-in, that she had been detained. Friends gathered outside on the sidewalk began crying. Bustamante’s family stood by stoically, holding back tears.
Bustamante’s grandchildren, left, stand with a member of Justice for Migrant Families after hearing of her arrest. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker.
“I’m just in shock and I’m angry and I can’t believe it,” said Carly Fox, a friend who said she’s known Bustamante for more than a decade. “We love her and we’re going to feel the loss.”
Minutes after Bustamante was detained, immigration attorney Rhidaya Shodhan Trivedi filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to have her released.
“Though no circumstances had changed since her prior check-in appointments, which had proceeded without incident, [ICE] abruptly arrested [Bustamante], detained her and … are currently processing her for imminent removal to Mexico,” the lawsuit states.
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Check-in arrests are now routine
ICE arrests like Bustamante’s have become routine since Donald Trump’s return to office last year, according to agency data analyzed by Investigative Post.
Bustamante and other migrants like her are enrolled in a program known as “alternatives to detention,” meaning they might have been issued deportation orders that ICE didn’t intend to act on. Past administrations have noted the program is cost effective: ICE spends just $4.20 per day managing a migrant’s case and having them attend check-in appointments. The agency spends $152 per day housing them in a detention center.
For Bustamante, enrollment meant she had an ICE app installed on her cell phone but could live and work in Wayne County.
As of October 2024, some 7.6 million were enrolled in the program. That year, under Biden, just 12 migrants enrolled in the program were arrested across all of upstate New York, data shows.
Investigative Post determined, via ICE data and federal lawsuits, that check-in arrests jumped to 105 last year.
Attorneys representing migrants say such arrests are “low-hanging fruit” for ICE, and allow them to boost arrest numbers without apprehending people on the street.
“None of these people are flight risks or a danger to the community,” immigration attorney Matthew Borowski told Investigative Post in January. “If you voluntarily show up to your check-in appointment, you’re not a flight risk, right? You’re showing up.”