KPBS Border Reporter Gustavo Solis hosted Austin Kocher from Syracuse University for a brief conversation about immigration detention data. They showed how officials manipulate data to create false narratives and what consumers can to about it. Kocher also broke down different datasets to give us a more accurate picture of what the federal government is doing. He writes a newsletter on Substack that explores the complexities of the U.S. immigration system.
This transcription has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You wrote about how government agencies can shape public narratives through selective data releases and, sometimes, how reporters like me parrot those narratives. So, as an example, we have these social media posts from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Tell us what we're looking at and what could be problematic about this.
Kocher: Sure, so in the first week of the Trump administration, in an effort to show and to highlight the immigration enforcement activities that the administration was taking, ICE began posting numbers on their Twitter (X) page that showed growing numbers of arrests and detainees. The first time I saw this, I thought, I'm a big advocate of government transparency, so nothing I love to see more than data — so, potentially, great.
However, there was no context or information about the data. It really didn't allow us to look at what the norm was before Trump took office. So that's that was one red flag for me.
The other red flag for me when I saw this was knowing how long it takes the agency, many times, to produce this data. I was concerned that the data wasn't really getting validated. My concern was: did they really take the time to make sure those are correct? The data systems that the government uses, they're huge, they're enormous, they're very dynamic. And so there really does need to be some validation to make sure the numbers are correct.
The big picture problem here that I think everybody needs to be aware of is that even though it's great when government agencies post data, if they're not taking the time to do it accurately and to do it responsibly, it runs the risk of data being used to advance a political agenda more than actually provide meaningful transparency to the American public.
That brings us to like the second question. As a reporter, one of my favorite things to do is correct misleading narratives. And you kind of did that recently when it comes to who ICE is arresting.
The prevailing narrative coming out of the White House is that they're arresting the worst of the worst, right? The "bad hombres," the murderers and the rapists. But is that what the data show?
Kocher: The data is really inconsistent on this, and so it doesn't necessarily support the government narrative at all.
The government is not really backing up those claims with data points. We don't have detailed case-by-case data on the people that they've arrested. They could release that data, but they haven't yet.
What we do have is a spreadsheet that Congress requires ICE to produce on a biweekly basis.
I've looked at this data very carefully and closely over the last several years. So, I feel very comfortable with the data. And what this data shows is: based on the number of people in detention at any given point in time, we've gone from about 38,000 people up to around 43,000 people in detention.
And when we look at that breakdown, what we see is: yes, the largest fraction of people in immigrant detention are people with criminal convictions. However, the number that has grown the most, which shows possibly who ICE is really focusing on, are people that don't have any criminal convictions and don't have any pending criminal charges.
Interesting. Tell me what we're looking at here with the graph. What should people be focusing on?
Kocher: ICE has a lot of detailed data on detainees’ criminal histories, but the data that they report to the public in this spreadsheet really just breaks it down into three categories.
Immigrants held in detention with conviction — and let's be very clear about what it means to have a criminal conviction; this could be anything from theft, stealing something from a grocery store and getting in trouble all the way up to potentially murder. So even that convicted criminal category represents a huge variety of people.
It also may include people with criminal convictions that are years, sometimes even decades old, not people who represent any kind of real public threat. So we can't assume that convicted criminal necessarily means a real public safety threat.
The second category is immigrants held in detention with pending criminal charges.
And then the last category, other immigration violator.
That's what ICE refers to as people who have immigration violations but don't have criminal charges or convictions.
It went from 800 in January to almost 5,000 now. That's a big jump, right?
Kocher: As a researcher and someone who focuses on this data, I'm looking at these three categories and just saying, "where is the main growth happening?" Because that is a little bit of a signal to me and hopefully to other people that, oh, this this is where ICE is putting their efforts.
When Trump took office, the smallest portion was other immigrant violator with 800 or 900 people in detention at that one point in time followed by the next largest group criminal charges and then the largest group is convicted criminal. Now, when we look at the percent of that on the right, we look at the breakdown, that's really where we can see that change.
We see that the lowest level of offender, immigrants with only immigration violation, went from 6% of the detained population back at the beginning of January up to then 18% of the detained population by the beginning of March. Whereas the percent of convicted criminals in detention as an overall percentage of the population, that has actually gone down from 62% to under 50% now.
This is a very predictable pattern. We've seen this happen many times over my career. There really aren't enough immigrants in the United States who have serious criminal convictions that the Trump administration could drive their detention and deportation numbers solely by focusing on.
The simple data reality is they're going to have to focus on people who don't have serious criminal convictions if they want to reach millions of deportations. It's sort of the reality.
"The simple data reality is they're going to have to focus on people who don't have serious criminal convictions if they want to reach millions of deportations. It's sort of the reality."Austin Kocher, Syracuse University
Lastly, I wanted to ask: Another one of your recent posts was about ICE detention numbers. They're at capacity now, but Congress approved $430 million to increase capacity. Do we know how they plan to spend that money? Does it tell us anything about who they want to target and where they want to put them?
Kocher: No, I'm not clear on where they plan on spending all $430 million or how they plan on dividing it up.
The truth is immigration enforcement is expensive. It costs taxpayers a lot of money in addition to the economic cost of deporting people that we need in our workforce.
Detentions are very expensive, deportation flights are very expensive. Setting up a detention center in Guantanamo Bay and setting up tents that’s really, really expensive.
ICE is running short on money if they're to accomplish what the Trump administration is asking and logistical challenges, frankly, are the main bottleneck.
But this $430 million additional dollars, I'm sure that's going to go into detention. They're building new detention centers and reopening old ones that they haven't used for a while. They're bringing back family detention in South Texas which is very expensive. It's very expensive to keep mothers and children in detention centers together with all of their needs. They're going to have to hire more staff. They're probably having to pay their ICE officers and their deportation officers overtime wages, which is going to cost a lot of money.
Jet fuel is not cheap these days and finding pilots to fly deportation flights is very expensive. So, you can see how it adds up.
Thank you. If anyone wants to follow you, where can they keep up with your work?
Kocher: I'm on most social media platforms at this point at @ackocher. And really where I put most of my effort these days is Substack.
So if you go to austinkocher.substack.com, most days of the week I've got new analysis out there. It is really just to break down what's happening in our system in a very simple, nonpartisan way that tries to help more people not just understand what's going on, but try to take an interest in it.
