ICE detained Bronx food pantry founder Aleksander “Alex” Nilaj on October 13 while he was attending his own immigration hearing, and the pantry he built has stopped handing out food until he comes home.
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Nilaj is the founder and president of the Albanian American Open Hand Association, a food pantry at 821 Lydig Avenue in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx. The pantry feeds between 7,000 and 8,000 people every month. On Thursdays alone, volunteers say about 1,000 people line up for groceries.
Nilaj was taken into custody at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, the federal building where many immigration cases are heard. He went there for a scheduled hearing, the kind of appointment immigrants are required to keep. He was then moved to Delaney Hall, a privately run ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey. Congressman Richie Torres confirmed his location in a post on X.
The Department of Homeland Security says Nilaj is from Albania and entered the United States legally on a temporary visa in 2006. DHS says he stayed after that visa expired and that an immigration judge ordered him to leave the country in 2008. A removal order is a judge’s ruling that a person must be deported. ICE detained him 18 years after that order, at a hearing he walked into on his own.
Nilaj founded Open Hand in 2012. It began as a small weekly operation putting together about 50 food packages and grew into one of the busiest pantries in the borough. Saimir Burgaj, chairman of the pantry, told News 12 that Nilaj spent 14 years making sure families in need had food on the table, every day and at any hour. Burgaj called the detention “the saddest thing ever.”
The Bronx food pantry has nearly closed before. In January 2024, Open Hand ran out of food for the first time in a decade. The pantry had no refrigerator, so it lost hundreds of dollars of fresh food every day and had to give away almost everything the same day it arrived. Torres and others stepped in and kept the doors open. In 2025, rent and bills pushed it toward closing again. A Bronx mechanic fixed its delivery van, and a local car dealership donated a new one. Each time, Nilaj was the one holding the operation together.
That is why the pantry stopped distributing food after his arrest. Staff say they cannot handle the workload without him, and they have warned that Open Hand could close indefinitely if he does not return. PIX11 reported that the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center has agreed to take the pantry’s food in the meantime so it can still reach people.
The neighborhood has rallied behind him. Pantry workers and residents stood on Lydig Avenue collecting signatures on a petition for his release. Bronx Community Board 11, the local board that advises city officials on neighborhood issues, is sending a letter supporting his release. The letter says Nilaj has deep roots in this country and has built a life around family, work, and service to others.
For the families who line up on Lydig Avenue every week, the loss is immediate. “A lot of people really need that right now,” neighbor Geraldine Callejas told ABC7.
Nilaj remains in ICE custody at Delaney Hall.
