Women arrested at illicit spas in Nassau risk deportation, but not in Suffolk

Hadjira Allab fled Algeria in 2023 after she said she was raped and later faced death threats for rejecting Islamic rule.

After graduating with a degree in law and political science, the 31-year-old arrived in New York on a tourist visa, obtained a U.S. work permit and set out to pursue her version of the American dream.

But after trying to make a living for about two years — waitressing at a hookah lounge in Manhattan — her income barely allowed Allab and her boyfriend to pay the rent for a tiny bedroom in Queens.

She sought work at a massage spa in Hempstead, where she said she faced constant threats from the spa's owner to provide illicit services.

On Long Island, the consequences of being arrested at an illicit massage spa depend less on the alleged crime than on the county where police make the arrest. A Newsday investigation found at least 22 women arrested in Nassau massage spas were transferred to ICE under the county’s partnership with federal immigration authorities. In neighboring Suffolk, women arrested under nearly identical circumstances were released with summonses. The result is a two-tiered justice system where one arrest can result in immigration detention hundreds of miles away before a criminal case is ever resolved.

"I came legally," Allab told Newsday in a telephone interview from a U.S. immigration detention center more than 1,000 miles away in Pompano Beach, Florida, before she was deported to Algeria in June. "I applied for asylum. I didn’t cross the border."

Newsday reviewed dozens of court records detailing the arrests of the 22 women transferred to ICE by Nassau police. Reporters interviewed their attorneys, visited their apartments and monitored their stays in ICE detention across four states.

A tale of two counties

Under a partnership with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement led by Nassau County Executive and gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, the fate of women like Allab comes down to an on-the-spot decision in a Long Island police precinct.

Nassau police entered the federal partnership known as 287(g) to transfer defendants to ICE, shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term. Local authorities have handed over at least 144 defendants to federal agents since then, data shows.

Blakeman, who pursued the agreement with ICE, said handing over women to federal agents helps protect them from dangerous situations.

"We're concerned in Nassau County that the women are working against their will," Blakeman told Newsday. "A lot of these women were brought here and are working against their will, or are working off fees that were paid to those who smuggled them in."

Asked why officials transfer women to ICE custody, Blakeman said, "They're better off going there and being safe and going back to their countries and being reunited with their families than being here under the control of somebody who has them enslaved."

After an arrest, Nassau officers try to confirm a defendant’s immigration status and, in some cases, contact ICE agents, who may transfer the defendant to an out-of-state detention center.

Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told Newsday it is not always clear to police whether someone is in the U.S. illegally. Detectives collect information from defendants themselves, and from state and federal databases, he said. Last year marked the first time Nassau police transferred defendants to ICE who would otherwise be released, Ryder previously told Newsday.

In Suffolk, police are taking a different approach.

"There’s a possibility that some of these women may be forced into that type of work, so we always want to make sure that we understand exactly what’s going on," Suffolk Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina told Newsday.

It’s a mix of investigating criminality and "concern for the people involved," Catalina said.

Some arrested spa workers are aware of the consequences of working in Nassau versus Suffolk. Sitting in a Central Islip court, one 27-year-old Venezuelan woman told Newsday she wasn’t worried about her pending criminal charges.

"I’m more scared of ICE than the court," said the woman whose name is not being used to protect her privacy.

There are other counties in New York where one jurisdiction cooperates with ICE and the one next door does not. But those counties are much smaller than Nassau and Suffolk and have lower arrest numbers, Newsday found.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, Latino Justice PRLDEF and the Hofstra Law Clinic are suing Nassau County, Ryder and the police department — claiming the 287(g) agreement violates state law. Blakeman has maintained the partnership is valid.

'Good luck to you'

As women sit in immigration detention centers miles away, their Nassau criminal cases often proceed. Judges may not know where the women are and attorneys sometimes cannot locate them. Warrants are sometimes issued when they fail to appear.

Newsday observed several cases where women’s names were called in a courtroom on Main Street in Hempstead while they were in federal detention more than 1,300 miles away.

It took six weeks for Stuart Austin, who has represented more than 50 spa workers, to find one of his clients, who was arrested Jan. 1 at W & L Spa in Westbury.

"It’s crazy the hoops you have to jump through," Austin said in his Mineola office.

Resolving the criminal charge can be critical to the woman’s immigration case, but arranging a remote appearance may take weeks.

On April 29, a Chinese woman appeared on a rolling courtroom screen in an orange detention uniform. From a Louisiana detention center, she accepted a plea reducing prostitution and unlicensed-massage charges to disorderly conduct and a $120 fine.

Nassau District Court Judge Diana Hedayati told her, "Good luck to you."

As of July 21, after months in ICE detention, her name no longer appeared in federal ICE records. Austin said he did not know whether she was deported.

From Flushing to Freeport

A Newsday investigation analyzed the cases of 22 arrested spa workers who spent months in immigration detention sites in Pompano Beach; Monroe and Basile, Louisiana; Houston; and Newark. 

At least 16 were from China, five were Hispanic and Allab is from Algeria. Their median age was 45. A large share of illicit massage workers in the U.S. are from China, research shows.

As of mid-July, 10 women were no longer listed in ICE’s detainee locator. Four remained in ICE detention in Louisiana. Newsday could not confirm the outcome of the other cases.

Newsday analyzed the cases of nearly 400 women arrested at Long Island’s illicit massage spas. About one-third were charged with giving massages without a license, not prostitution.

In New York, you must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to get a massage license.

Some women work at spas to pay off debt they accrued immigrating to the U.S. The cost can range from $10,000 for a visa to $50,000 to cross the southern border illegally, experts told Newsday.

"The debt gets bought and sold between [spa] owners," said Ian Hassell, founder and CEO of The Network, a group that has investigated illicit massage businesses for years. "The first storefront where a woman ends up, that owner pays off the debt to the person back in China who lent it originally."

‘Pushed me to leave Islam’

Allab said armed militants kidnapped and raped her in Algeria when she was 15, targeting her family because her father had served on an antiterrorism police task force. Government records reviewed by Newsday show militants shot and seriously wounded her father years earlier. She said she concealed the rape until her parents attempted to arrange her marriage.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in law and political science from the University of Algiers, Allab began to question her religious upbringing, and "faced a lot of hostility" for it, said Daniel Porcerelli, one of her immigration attorneys.

Things deteriorated in September 2023, when Allab launched a live broadcast on TikTok called, "The main reason that pushed me to leave Islam."

She said she started to receive daily menacing phone calls. One day, Allab found a blood-stained shirt on her doorstep, her lawyer said.

"I was scared to stay in my country," Allab told Newsday.

In November 2023, when Allab arrived in New York, she began to look for work. A woman running a spa in Hempstead offered her a job. Allab worked long hours waxing clients until she said her boss demanded she have sex with a customer.

Allab said her boss listed her on sex sites like Bedpage as "Arabic. 20 minutes. $60."

A woman’s ethnic background is a moneymaker for spa owners.

More listings on Bedpage read, "New Asian girl," "exotic Caribbean caramel girl" and "all American redhead."

Allab's deportation

On Jan. 21, Nassau undercover detectives arrested Allab and another worker on prostitution and unlicensed-massage charges after an encounter at the spa, police records show. Allab disputes that she voluntarily offered sex.

Allab applied for asylum after her tourist visa expired. Her asylum application was pending and she had federal authorization to work when Nassau police transferred her to ICE.

Spokespeople for the Nassau Police Department did not respond to questions about why detectives transferred Allab to ICE custody. ICE also did not respond to an inquiry.

By the time she was due in Hempstead court on Feb. 4, Allab was already at ICE’s Broward Transitional Center in Florida.

On March 11, Nassau police arrested Suman Kundu, the spa’s co-owner, on felony charges of managing and profiting from a prostitution business. He was released without bail and his case is ongoing.

In ICE custody, Allab’s mental health deteriorated, said Mohamed Elsharnoby, one of her immigration attorneys. Sleeping in a cell with a handful of other women, barred from receiving incoming calls or emails from her boyfriend or parents, passing time before the long-anticipated day when an immigration judge would decide her fate.

On May 19, Allab appeared in a video conference before U.S. Immigration Judge Frank T. Pimentel. Her application for asylum was denied.

In the nearly six months she was held in federal custody, Allab worried that if she were deported, Algerian authorities would arrest her at the airport. She feared persecution from her government back home and attacks by religious extremists.

Back at her Queens apartment, remnants of Allab's life with her boyfriend — three Trump flags and two framed Quran verses — remain.

Allab said she came to America believing it would protect someone who spoke out against oppression.

For Nassau police, her arrest was a routine prostitution case. For immigration authorities, it became another deportation. For Allab, whatever hopes she had in coming to America ended with a flight back to Algeria, plunging her into a life she thought she had escaped.

In her last call with Newsday before being deported, she said, "If I knew it would be like this, I never would have come here.”