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New York

Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for New York.

867Documented
24In custody
787Released
2Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in New York

Where New York’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1950s 137 1910s 137 1970s 87 1960s 87 1980s 81 1930s 65

Documented cases

867 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.

Art Young
Released
Wisconsin-born socialist cartoonist for Puck, Life, The Masses, and later The Liberator and The New Masses. In...
Martin Young
Released
Martin Young was a labor organizer (Transport Workers Union and Steelworkers) arrested on October 26, 1951 and...
Mohamed Yousry
Released
Mohammed Yousry was an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at York College and court appointed translator...
John Peter Zenger
Released
John Peter Zenger was the New York printer whose acquittal on a charge of seditious libel became the founding...
Michael Zweig
Released
Michael Zweig, a Stony Brook economics professor, was jailed for refusing to answer grand-jury questions about...
Emile de Antonio
Released
Emile de Antonio was a Marxist American documentary filmmaker known for Point of Order (1964), In the Year of...
Nicole d’Entremont
Released
Nicole d’Entremont was a Catholic Worker editor jailed after an antiwar sit-down at New York’s Armed Forces Da...
Franz von Rintelen
Released
Franz von Rintelen Captain Franz von Rintelen was a German Imperial Navy officer who ran German covert operati...
G
Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer
In Custody
Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, 25, Palestinian foreign national, was indicted August 28, 1997 for plotting to detonat...
T
Tareq Mousa Al Ghazi
In Custody
Tareq Mousa Al Ghazi, age 62, was Monzer Al Kassars associate in the 2007 DEA-FARC arms-dealer sting. Convicte...
S
Sam Brown
In Custody
Samuel Brown, who took the New Afrikan name Sekou Abdullah Mtetezi in prison, was a Black Liberation Army memb...
J
John J. Ford
In Custody
John J. Ford, age 47, was president of the Long Island UFO Network. He and two co-conspirators were arrested i...
L
Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy
In Custody
Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy, a Chilean national age 60, was Monzer Al Kassars associate in the 2007 DEA-FARC arms...
K
Karrem Nasr
In Custody
Karrem Nasr, 23, of New Jersey, was charged in late December 2023 by SDNY with attempting to join and provide...
I
Irving Aarons
Released
Irving Aarons was an organizer for Local 1250 of the Department Store Employees Union and one of five leaders...
S
Shuaib Abdur Raheem
Released
Shuaib Abdur Raheem was the eldest of the four young Sunni Muslim men known as the Williamsburg Four. On Janua...
D
Dawud Abdur Rahman
Released
Dawud Abdur Rahman is one of the four young Sunni Muslim men known as the Williamsburg Four. On January 18, 19...
H
Hyman Abramowitz
Released
Hyman Abramowitz was one of the named participants in the 1935 'March of the Cripples' — a sit-in by disabled...
W
Wil Ackalitis
Released
Wil Ackalitis was a New York longshoreman jailed for contempt in 1954 for his part in leading an International...
S
Salvatore Adalchi
Released
Salvatore Adalchi was a needle-trades worker arrested on a New York picket line during the 1932 garment strike...
M
Mark Adams
Released
Mark Adams, a long-term Occupy Wall Street organizer, was widely identified by the movement as OWS's first sen...
T
Timothy Adams
Released
Timothy Adams was a 25-year-old man from Bennettsville, South Carolina, alleged to be a member of the Black Li...
N
Nasser Ahmed
Released
Nasser Ahmed became a prominent figure in late-1990s civil-liberties disputes over the use of “secret evidence...
A
Akil Al-Jundi
Released
Akil Al-Jundi (born Herbert Scott Dean in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands) was sentenced to life for murder in...

Institutions in New York

Prisons, jails, and detention centers in New York that appear in the census’s case files.

Ellis Island Immigration StationNew York, New York
184 cases
Manhattan House of Detention (the Tombs)New York, New York
17 cases
Sing Sing Correctional FacilityOssining, New York
14 cases
Attica Correctional FacilityAttica, New York
13 cases
Metropolitan Correctional CenterNew York, New York
11 cases
MDC BrooklynBrooklyn, New York
9 cases
Metropolitan Correctional Center, New YorkNew York, New York
9 cases
Blackwell's Island PenitentiaryNew York, New York
8 cases