A supporter of Bustamante outside 250 Delaware Ave. Wednesday. Credit: J. Dale Shoemaker | Investigative Post

This story originally appeared in Investigative Post, a nonprofit news publication providing in-depth coverage of Buffalo and Western New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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.

“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 courtseeking 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.”

Bustamante and her supporters said the same thing ahead of her appointment Wednesday.

“She has battled many years to try to make everything right and legally stay here,” said Bustamante’s grandson, 17-year-old Axmir Sanchez Gonzalez. “Separating families like ours is not right for someone who came here to escape from danger and to provide and build a better future, not just for oneself but for their families.”

Congressman Joseph Morelle, D-Rochester, agreed.

“She is the kind of person our country depends on, but too often fails to protect,” Morelle said in a statement. “Now she faces possible detention and deportation because of a cruel immigration system that targets people like her.”

Bustamante’s journey

Fleeing an abusive husband — described as “severe gender violence” in her lawsuit — Bustamante entered the United States in 2003 with her three-year-old daughter. She first landed in New Jersey and found work in a factory and as a janitor. She needed to work two jobs to pay rent, send money back to her three other children in Mexico, and pay for childcare for her daughter, she said in a 2019 interview. 

“I found myself not seeing my daughter at all,” she said.

She then moved to Florida and began picking zucchini and oranges, she said, and “everything was good.”

The work, however, was physically demanding.

“I had not done this kind of work before so my body ached all over,” Bustamante said in the 2019 interview. “The only advantage I saw in this job was that I had a little more time with my daughter. The work was very hard, especially picking the oranges.”

She said she also began to experience sexual harassment from the men she worked with and eventually paired up with a different man for protection. They lived together but he became abusive. 

After six years of traveling around the South, working at different farms, Bustamante moved to New York and found work as an apple picker in 2009. After a return to Florida, she settled upstate permanently in 2012. Again, however, she faced exploitative labor conditions, according to her lawsuit, as well as sexual harassment.

At a 2022 event, she described the labor conditions: “In theory, we have the right to a day off,” she said. “But if the boss says, ‘Can you work today? I’ll pay you in cash,’ and they’re providing the housing, what are we supposed to say?”

In the 2019 interview, Bustamante said joined Mujeres Divinas — literally, “divine women” — a collective of women working on farms across the state. 

“I started learning about my rights, and about men trying to harass me,” she said. “This allowed me and other women workers to talk to the owners of the ranch to inform them about the problem of sexual harassment, the importance of workers knowing their rights, and the responsibility the owner has for the worker.”

Over the years, according to her lawsuit, Bustamante’s activism took many forms. She would educate other female farm workers about how to combat sexual harassment and worked to ensure their complaints were heard by employers and labor agencies. During the pandemic, she pushed for better health standards for farm workers. Most recently, her activism has focused on workers using pesticides safely, distributing community-grown produce to local families, and helping other immigrants obtain driver’s licenses.

Working through the process

Bustamante had no legal troubles until 2014 when she was pulled over by a state trooper for a traffic violation. The troopers called Border Patrol agents, “allegedly to help translate,” her lawsuit states. The agents took her into custody and issued her a notice to appear at a future immigration hearing.

In May 2018, an immigration judge denied her asylum application and ordered her deported to Mexico. Bustamante appealed her deportation order and continued to live and work in New York. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed her bid in 2020 and she appealed to the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. 

In May 2023, the federal judges rejected her petition and she was issued a final deportation order. Such orders expire after 90 days. ICE didn’t arrest her during those three months. 

“Instead, [ICE] exercised [its] discretion to continue Ms. Bustamante’s enrollment in an alternatives-to-deportation program that combined telephonic and in-person reporting,” her lawsuit states.

She subsequently attended four such check-ins.

One of Bustamante’s daughters now plans to apply for citizenship, and Bustamante is attempting to reopen her asylum case. Should her daughter be granted citizenship, it could provide a pathway for Bustamante to apply herself.

Asked how he was feeling after hearing the news of her arrest, Sanchez Gonzalez, Bustamante’s grandson, said only that he was, “Scared. Upset.”

Others said ICE was wrong to detain her.

“People should want someone like Dolores to be their next-door neighbor. She’s kind and generous. She puts food on the table for all of us,” said Jim Renfrew, a retired Presbyterian pastor who said he’s known Bustamante for years.

“It’s so short-sighted, the deportation and incarceration of immigrant farm workers. Who’s going to do this work? Are you going to do it?”

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