By Rick Tzompa-Chimal
On Friday, April 10, Dr. Austin Kocher, Research Assistant Professor in the Office of Research and Creative Activity at Syracuse University led a discussion for the Metropolitan Washington Workshop on Immigration & Race (MWWI&R) on his research on immigration policy. In his presentation, “Untangling the Politics of Messy Immigration Data,” Dr. Kocher argues that data on immigration is a site of contentious politics: from the collection and classification choices that shape what we can know to the strategic withholding and distortion of data for political ends.
Hosted at The George Washington University and organized by Columbian College of Arts & Sciences through the Cisneros Institute, the Department of Geography & Environment, the Department of Sociology, and the Center for Immigration and Migration Studies, the conversation served as a practical guide for anyone working with immigration data — researchers, journalists, policy analysts, Hill staffers, and advocates — who aims for more transparent, rigorous public communication about immigration realities.
Informed by over fifteen years of experience in the field, Dr. Kocher writes, presents, and creates work that details the realities often missed in immigration data in a way that it can be understood by wider audiences. He argues: “Data does not speak for itself. You must confront the questions of what is present or not.”
Federal immigration data are typically collected for administrative purposes and thus they do not provide the level of detail necessary for research purposes nor are they shared in an accessible manner for informing the public. In fact, this research often only becomes accessible to the public because of the Freedom of Information Act. Because the government largely collects and publishes data digitally, Dr. Kocher argued that there should be proactive and required releasing of this data and congressional enforcement when it is not shared, in addition to public records requests and litigation.
Dr. Kocher also argues that we should think of immigration data as “produced” and not simply “discovered.” This is particularly relevant because of significant gaps and delays in immigration data reporting. At the time of his talk, the most recent detention and immigration data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was processed by the agency on April 5th, 2026, which showed that 60,311 individuals were being held in detention centers. He noted that this report was the first since February, “ending a 56-day gap during which the agency didn’t publish any new data.” While there is some value to these data, Dr. Kocher mentions that this is “summary data” that lacks detail on the characteristics that define who these individuals are. This lack of details limits analysis on who is detained and what the trends in detention are.
ICE Total Detained Population. Each point = single-day snapshot at time of biweekly release. Data current as of April 4, 2026. Chart by Austin Kocher.
Dr. Kocher further argues that the State is not a “reliable narrator of its own activities.” He explains that when it comes to data collection and its release, government agencies and interest groups across party lines are incentivized to interpret their work for political gain. One positive move in transparency was a require added to the fiscal year 2018 omnibus spending bill that ICE release data on detention statistics, governing contracts, and standards on a monthly basis. This success is limited, however, because there is no archive of these data prior to 2018. As Dr. Kocher puts it, “the state ‘un-documents’ itself and so does its agencies.”
Further, these data remain limited to certain kinds of detention. The data point on 60,311 detained individuals in April 2026, for example, does not include those who are currently in temporary holding facilities. Dr. Kocher says this fact “may have not been nefarious historically, but now these individuals in these facilities are being held for extended periods that has become an issue of non-reporting and a major point of obfuscation.” The recent decline in detained individuals reported by ICE since February may have many causes, such as rising negative public opinion, litigation against further detention, and other reasons that may become clearer as more data is released.
Immigration data has simply not been shared in ways that make it understandable. Dr. Kocher pointed to the Deportation Data Project, an organization that “collects and posts public, anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets,” as an example of how independent projects and infrastructures can fill that gap. Using data obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, they create datasets and visuals from raw data to share with journalists, researchers, lawyers, and policymakers.
Ultimately, Dr. Kocher argues that the need for an independent data infrastructure that is accessible to the public is “foundational and not a luxury.” This is true in any given political environment as good data collection is necessary for use by legislators, community members, and other interested parties. Still, Dr. Kocher remains hopeful, sharing that people’s curiosity, skills and interest will get us far in creating an “ecosystem of data for public use.”
The Metropolitan Washington Workshop on Immigration and Race is organized by the Cisneros Institute, the Department of Geography & Environment, the Department of Sociology, and the Center for Immigration and Migration Studies at The George Washington University, as well as by the Georgetown University Institute for the Study of International Migration.