Weekly Member Update - February 9, 2026

We’re starting this week’s installment with a reminder about tonight’s Monthly Member Meeting at The Love Albany Center at 8 Kate Street in the City of Albany. We’re really excited about tonight’s meeting for three reasons. First, this is our first Member Meeting of 2026 and, second, it is the first-ever meeting at our new gathering spot within the Albany City limits at The Love Albany Center. But we’re most excited to present our Forum on the Police State: What the Flock?, where we will discuss how Flock camera systems work, where they are, how the data is retained and, most importantly, how this data is being funneled to federal agencies such as Border Patrol and ICE to target and track immigrant communities. We will also discuss actions that you can take to fight back against the installation of Flock cameras and demand accountability for those already in use. It’s not too late for you to let us know you’ll be attending this important and informative discussion of the rapidly expanding surveillance state, including right here in the Capital Region. In case you are unfamiliar with The Love Albany Center in Albany’s Delaware Neighborhood, here is a map; it’s only a block or so away from the intersection of Delaware Avenue and Whitehall Road, with a dedicated parking lot off of Kate Street and additional parking behind 73 Whitehall Road.

Of course, Flock is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the proliferation of the surveillance state. Amid reports this week that the Department of Homeland Security is pressuring tech companies to disclose data about the Regime’s critics, a host of other firms are making money on the backs of our collective oppression. We talked last week about Palantir, the tech company with a $30 million contract to build a system for DHS to track individuals for deportation (and who knows for what else) using federal Medicaid data. As we noted last week, Palantir’s principals, Alex Karp and Peter Thiel, are hardly proponents of democracy, and then this week it was revealed that Thiel features prominently in the Epstein files (because of course he does). Nonetheless, a host of Democratic politicians are personally investing in Palantir, and two local Congressmen — Pat Ryan and Josh Riley — top the list of Palantir’s Democratic donor list. Moreover, if you work for New York State, or New York City, or New Jersey, your retirement funds are likely heavily invested in Palantir.

As Palantir reports “iconic” profits from its dealings with the Trump regime, it’s not just anti-democratic tech oligarchs that are profiting hand-over-fist. Britain’s Financial Times has reported that corporations have already received more than $22 billion from their participation in Trump’s brutal immigration crackdown, and detention center contractors are reaping massive profits along with tech companies like Palantir. Simply put, the private prison business in America is booming, essentially turning the violence of ICE and Border Patrol into a for-profit enterprise for the companies that imprison human beings on behalf of the federal government. And then, of course, those very same companies then turn around and pour money into the pockets of both Republican and Democratic politicians to help perpetuate the craven cycle; elected officials beget governmental policies that incarcerate our neighbors, our tax money is given to companies to facilitate the execution of those brutal policies, and the companies then donate heavily to the politicians who put the policies in place. It’s the perfect circle of capitalism, cruelty and corruption.

As we process the abundant reporting about the inhumane and deplorable conditions, especially for children, inside ICE’s opaque network of existing detention facilities — as well as the relief efforts being marshaled by organizers outside the walls — we need to also reckon with the staggering statistics concerning Trump’s incarceration machine. There are currently more than 70,000 human beings in immigration detention, an all-time high marking a 75% increase in just over one year. Between Trump’s Inauguration and the end of November 2025, ICE had brought 104 new detention facilities online, a 91% increase from 2024. Moreover, in January 2026, the ACLU revealed a treasure trove of documents obtained via litigation which revealed that ICE has plans to build 16 new “processing centers” and an additional seven mass-detention “warehouse camps” each capable of holding up to 10,000 detainees — by comparison, New York’s largest prison, Sing Sing, only holds 1,700 inmates — an expansion that would more than double ICE’s existing detention capacity. However, what is also abundantly clear is that the American public is quickly souring on the burgeoning archipelago of concentration camps being created by ICE and its corporate partners. ICE detention facilities are opposed almost everywhere — red and blue — that they have come to light, from Surprise, Arizona to Merrimack, New Hampshire, from the Catholic enclaves of Kansas City to the Mississippi exurbs of Memphis, bipartisan and grassroots opposition to these new facilities has been vociferous and increasingly effective in stalling ICE’s expansion efforts. Hell, even John Friggin Fetterman is opposed to facilities proposed for eastern Pennsylvania, and if The Regime can’t keep their favorite Democrat on board, you know they are truly on thin ice in their ambitions to build a network of concentration camps across the Country. As we have learned time and again during the current reign of the Orange King, however, it will not be the opinions of elected federal officials that will carry the day in the fight against ICE’s detention facilities, and it will instead be grassroots community action which will defeat them.

Finally, an important deadline is coming up later this week if you are interested in voting in New York’s closed primaries this coming June. We will likely have both Democratic and Republican primaries for Governor and in the NY-21 Congressional District, a potential Democratic primary for State Comptroller, and, as of this past week, Democratic Party primary in the 44th NYS Senate District. If you want to vote in any of these primary races this coming June 23rd, you need to be registered voter for the Party in question. So, if you are currently registered to vote as an independent and want to vote in Democratic primaries — or if you’re a Democrat and want to vote in Republican primaries (you do you…) — you have until this Saturday, February 14 to change your Party registration. You can change your Party registration online at the State Board of Elections website, or in-person at your local County Board of Election Office, or you can send in a party registration by mail, so long as it is received by the Board of Elections by Valentine’s Day.