Much of what the public knows about immigration enforcement comes from aggregate figures that agencies choose to release. The Deportation Data Project works from the underlying records instead.
About the resource
Based at UC Berkeley and UCLA, the project uses Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation to obtain anonymized, mostly individual-level data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection, the immigration courts, U.S. Attorneys’ offices, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is co-directed by Graeme Blair (UCLA), David Hausman (Berkeley Law), and attorney Amber Qureshi.
Each dataset is posted with documentation of how it was obtained and its limitations, and ICE data comes with codebooks. An online data explorer lets visitors query arrests, detention stays, detention facilities, 287(g) agreements, immigration court cases, and DACA and TPS applications without downloading files. Journalists, researchers, and human rights organizations regularly cite the data, and everything on the site is released into the public domain.
From: Deportation Data Project, UC Berkeley and UCLA
For: Journalists, researchers, lawyers, and policymakers
Format: Downloadable datasets, codebooks, FOIA documents, and an interactive explorer
Where to start
- Open the data explorer to browse records without any software.
- Read the data guide before analyzing the full files; individual-level records require care.
- Subscribe to release notices to follow new datasets.
This resource builds an alternative archive through the government’s own enforcement records avoiding the censorship and distortions of public agency’s official statements.