Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not published detention data amid the government shutdown, raising concerns about lack of transparency.
In 2018, Congress passed a law requiring ICE to publish detention data on a biweekly basis. Among other things, data includes how many people ICE and Customs and Border Protection arrest, detainees’ level of criminality and where they are being detained.
During the Trump administration, academics have used this data to show that most people arrested by ICE agents do not have violent criminal records — disproving the official White House narrative that federal agents are targeting the “worst of the worst.”
For example, the last dataset ICE published on Sept. 25 shows that 34% of the people the agency arrested have criminal convictions.
Without regularly available data, it becomes difficult to fact-check the federal government, said Max Weinzierl, the creator of Open ICE, a website that tracks detention data.
“I think it’s important that we’re able to audit,” he said.
