A Bronx food pantry that feeds up to 8,000 people a month has gone silent after Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained its founder during a court hearing on Monday. Open Hand Association, based at 821 Lydig Avenue in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx, says it will not resume distributing food until Aleksander Nilaj returns, and warns the pantry could close indefinitely if he does not.
According to News 12 New York, Nilaj was detained on October 13 while attending a court hearing. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the arrest, describing Nilaj as an Albanian national who it says entered the country legally on a temporary basis on October 1, 2006, before overstaying his admission. DHS says an immigration judge ordered him removed on July 22, 2008.
Court records reviewed through Justia Dockets show Nilaj had been fighting that removal order in federal court well before his arrest, filing a petition for review and a motion to stay his deportation with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. A judicial panel denied his stay of removal and vacated an administrative stay in November 2025, clearing a path for the enforcement action that followed nearly a year later.
A Decade-Plus of Feeding the Bronx
Saimir Burgaj, chairman of the Open Hand pantry, told the station that Nilaj served the community for 14 years and ensured people in need had food for their families. The pantry's roots go back further than that: Nilaj founded the Albanian American Open Hand Association in 2012, and it received official 501(c)(3) non-profit status in 2014, according to the Albanian American Open Hand Association. The organization notes it started as a small weekly operation preparing 50 food packages per household before expanding its reach across the Bronx.
Nilaj's community standing extended into law enforcement circles as well. In July 2021, the Alliance Chaplains and Law Enforcement promoted him to Director of Community and Social Services and awarded him the rank of Chaplain Major, per records from the Open Hand Association. The pantry sits in a corridor often called Little Albania, which Pelham Parkway hosts as the residential heart of the largest Albanian-American population in the country, according to ALB Connection.
Not the First Crisis for Open Hand
This is not the first time the pantry has faced an operational emergency. When Open Hand Association completely ran out of food for the first time in a decade in January 2024, U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres donated $5,000 from his campaign account to purchase emergency supplies for more than 1,200 local residents, the Bronx Times reported at the time. That earlier crisis came as inflation and post-pandemic demand had doubled the pantry's weekly client count to 1,600, forcing staff to turn families away.
Jasmare Chaplin, the administrative director and treasurer of Open Hand, has urged community members to come to 821 Lydig Avenue to support Nilaj's return, the station reported. Pantry employees and community members held a petition drive on Lydig Avenue last Thursday asking for Nilaj's release and return. Staff say the pantry cannot handle its workload without him, which is why distributions have been frozen entirely rather than scaled back.
The Federal Policy Behind the Arrest
DHS said the administration would enforce the rule of law, and pointed to its self-deportation program as an alternative immigrants in Nilaj's position could have used. Under the department's voluntary departure framework built around the CBP Home mobile app, eligible non-criminal aliens can receive free travel, forgiveness of failure-to-depart civil fines, and a $3,000 exit bonus to leave the country voluntarily, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A DHS spokesperson said people who remain in the country illegally will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.
A Pantry's Closure Lands in the Hungriest Corner of the Northeast
The timing compounds an already dire hunger landscape in the borough. Bronx County has a food-insecurity rate of 19.7%. Nationally, 86% of counties in the highest food-insecurity group are in the South, and that group has rates of 20% or more, according to Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap 2025 report.
Nearly 22 million meals were distributed in the Bronx, and the borough's poverty rate is 27.6%. Federal budget legislation cutting $186 billion from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits is expected to add to existing strains on food providers, a pressure compounded in neighborhoods with up to 25 bodegas for every single supermarket, per City Limits.
For now, Open Hand's doors on Lydig Avenue remain open only for the petition drive, not for food distribution, as the community waits to learn whether Nilaj will return.
