Biden Administration Keeping Public in the Dark About Immigrant Detention Numbers
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is actively undermining Congress by failing to release accurate information about the number of immigrants in detention on a regular basis. While minor data issues with ICE’s regular immigration detention data releases certainly occurred during the Trump administration, ICE’s spreadsheet of detention data has seen more significant errors recently. The most recent detention data released by the agency on November 11, 2021, appears to be an attempt to fix botched year-end data that the agency released at the end of October. At this point, the public is in the dark about any new detention data for FY 2022.
Background
As ICE states on its detention management website, “Congressional requirements described in the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill (2020) require ICE to make the following data publicly accessible.”
Since at least 2019, ICE has released data about immigrant detention that allows the public to see how many immigrants are held in detention, criminal history, detention center locations, and more—essential information for ensuring that the public understands this important policy area. (See my previous explanation of detention data here.)
Detention Data Gets Worse Under Biden
On several occasions since Biden took office, inconsistencies have begun appearing in the data. I wrote about this a month ago, at the time noting ongoing issues with errors in the data on how many immigrants are enrolled in Alternatives to Detention Programs. Troubling as those inconsistencies were, they did not (at the time) completely undermine the data on immigrant detention altogether.
I also noted on Twitter that the previous release of detention data was wildly inaccurate. Instead of showing data for October or even the end of fiscal year 2021, the data released to the public was for FY 2020. When this kind of more systematic error has occurred in the past (once or twice), ICE has re-uploaded the correct data in a few days. They did not make any immediate attempt to fix that error and instead left the public with no usable information at all.
I wondered if perhaps Congress has not required ICE to continue to release this data in the new FY 2021 appropriations act, since ICE’s website still uses the old data of 2020. But in the spreadsheet itself, in the tab for ATD data, ICE clearly states the following: "These statistics are made available to the public pursuant to the Fiscal Year 2021 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill.” This is a clear message (to me anyway, though correct me if I’m wrong) that nothing has changed regarding ICE’s obligation to release this data on a regular basis.
No New Data for FY 2022 (Yet)
The new fiscal year started on October 1, 2021. Over a month into the new fiscal year, the public is still in the dark about current immigrant detention numbers. The data on alternatives to detention claims to be updated through October 23, not terribly out of date. But the rest of the data is over a month old now, and with the unpredictable cycle of data releases by the agency, it’s up in the air as to when the agency will provide more recent numbers and even then, it will require still further validation to ensure that the data is even in the ballpark of being accurate.
What to read next:
To learn more about how asylum cases have been decided under Biden so far, check out this short, punchy article by Jasmine Aguilera in TIME that relies, in part, on quotes from my discussion with her about our new research findings.
