ICE Exaggerates Immigrant Criminality
The federal government under Trump has exaggerated criminal activity among undocumented immigrants in its campaign to justify mass deportations.
The incoming Biden administration has a lot of work ahead to change the legacy of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Reliable data is central to this project.
I recently spoke with Juan Carlos Chavez at the Tampa Bay Times, who wanted to understand the relationship between criminality and immigration enforcement. Here is an excerpt—with some additional comments—of that article Deputies in Florida help enforce immigration law, but Biden aims to change that. (Give Juan Carlos a follow here on Twitter while you’re at it.)
Before we get into it, if you’re a reporter or researcher looking for timely data-driven insights into the immigration system, please reach out on Twitter (@ackocher, DMs open) or by email (ackocher@syr.edu).
“The federal government under Trump has exaggerated criminal activity among undocumented immigrants in its campaign to justify mass deportations, said Austin Kocher,” a geographer at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse — a repository of federal data maintained by Syracuse University.
Using federal Freedom of Information laws, TRAC analyzed records from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and found that during the first three years of the Trump administration, the growth in the number of immigrants detained is attributed entirely to immigrants with no criminal convictions.
“Even among detained immigrants with criminal convictions, ICE’s data show a decrease in serious convictions and an increase in minor convictions,” Kocher said. (Here are the two reports I am talking about: report 1, report 2.)
He hopes the office under Biden will be more forthcoming with its data so people can analyze what’s happening for themselves. (The background here is: ICE is incredibly slow and reluctant to follow its obligations to release records under the Freedom of Information Act, creating real problems for public oversight.)
“To this end,” Kocher said, “we hope that ICE decides to end its strategy of stonewalling public requests for data and chooses instead to adopt a spirit of greater transparency going forward.” (Specifically, I’d like to see the Biden administration devote more resources to FOIA responsiveness at DHS and create better policies within the administration to save everyone from the cost of delays and lawsuits.)
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