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OpenICE: Open-Source US Immigration Detention Dashboard
- allthedatas 1y agoSeems more like a scoreboard -- this may have the opposite effect the creators intended? The top 10 virus lists published by some vendors became that for virus writers.
- supermaxman 1y agoAny suggestions to change that perception? My goal is to educate how significant the impact is right now with these detainments & deportations, especially on people with zero criminal history.
- imoverclocked 1y agoYou already calculate the economic impact of the loss of workers, you could reframe the detention rates based on that. Any way to obviously state, “more is worse,” is a good start.
- imoverclocked 1y agoAlso, if you can manage to get the amount of funds used by ICE/CBP per period then you can also show how much is being sunk into this process too.
- supermaxman 1y agoGreat ideas, I will look into getting this data into the stats. Thanks!
- holmesworcester 1y agoOne other suggestion would be to include, somewhere, an image or oral account of detention conditions. You could collect oral accounts and invite people to submit them. From the grapevine (and this makes sense because they're pushing into new numerical territory, and also don't care at all) the conditions are very crowded / harsh. You could also include accounts from family members about the kafkaesque absence of information, e.g. It's good to make the point that almost every number in this chart is a human, and a family and circle of friends, who harmed no one and is being severely harmed.
- supermaxman 1y agoThis is a great idea, will start to curate existing accounts & find a way to show alongside. Thanks!
- giingyui 1y ago[dead]
- holmesworcester 1y agoI'm an experienced activist and if this was my issue area I would be heartened to see this kind of work. As a non-expert who cares about this issue, the "criminal/other" split is very clear and was the first thing I looked for. This is very counter to the administration narrative that our country is teeming with foreign gang members, and it is presented in a chill, non-shrill, high credibility way. That's very helpful! Some more explanation or breakdown on what types of "other" violations dominate (e.g. are these all just overstays?) might be nice, but the point is still well made. I would also like to see what percentage were felony charges/convictions if there's a significant percentage of misdemeanors. I expect with the recent ICE funding boost and the hiring spree they're about to go on, the "criminal"/"other" ratio going to plummet as ICE climbs the s-curve. It will be very useful to have a live measure of that as it happens. One meta point: I'm always shocked at how rare it is, for issues that are current and important in the public discourse, that someone makes a technically and visually competent, single-purpose website contributing to the debate. I have seen them to be extremely valuable on campaigns I've worked on, such as the campaign to stop the SOPA/PIPA site-blocking bills in 2011/2012, but it's so rare anyone makes one. Thank you for creating an exception to a generally disappointing rule!
- supermaxman 1y agoReally appreciate these kind words, will take them to heart. I actually recently completed my PhD, and my research was in getting this kind of data for public health & building these kinds of dashboards for vaccine hesitancy from social media. I’ve always felt it’s important to present this stuff super clearly, so I’m happy to have a chance to do so on a seriously important topic like this.
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- bix6 1y agoMaybe the economic impact to the top as a single line? Many people are single issue economics voters so make it clear how much this is hurting the economy. The human rights abuses are unfortunately irrelevant to many. Also loans forgiven would be nice to see since ICE signups now get a $10K reduction. Not a large number but more to make a point.
- dave_walko 1y agoI know I will be downvoted but technically, they did commit a crime by coming here illegally.
- danlitt 1y agoI actually think this highlights an important point: the majority of "criminals" in the statistics are likely not to be criminals in any serious sense, and would pose no serious harm to any community whatsoever. After all, the US is a notorious over-incarcerator, and crimes are selectively enforced to keep the underclass in place (you may recall after all that the richest man in the country is an illegal immigrant). This also underplays the current cruelty of the US system, far out of proportion with any proper policing of immigration (which obviously reasonable people can argue about). So, I don't think you're wrong exactly, and you can play the victim if you want ("I know I will be downvoted", sad violin).
- supermaxman 1y agoAgree heavily with this. I will be adding more stats on this soon, but you can see on the map chart at the bottom that these detainees are overwhelmingly categorized (by ICE) as low or no threat level, even those convicted of minor offenses & misdemeanors. Very few are “Threat Level 1”, which are the “violent” offenders we hear so much about.
- SauciestGNU 1y agoYou're downvoted because you're wrong. Illegal entry can be a crime, but that's far from the only way to there the country without legal status, and last I knew visa overstays were the most common immigration violation.
- danlitt 1y agoIs visa overstay not a crime?
- SauciestGNU 1y ago
- cheriot 1y agoMaybe it's just me, but the words, "Other Immigration Violator" rubbed me the wrong way. I see it's a term from the source data and ICE describes the category as, "Other immigration violators are individuals without any known criminal convictions or pending charges in ICE's system of record at the time of the enforcement action." ICE alleges these people have violated the civil code so calling them "violators" assumes guilt and comes across as inflammatory. Something like like "No Criminal Status" would be accurate and more neutral. Personally, I'd call them "Productive Members of Society The Rest of Us Depend On."
- supermaxman 1y agoGreat feedback, will work on improving the language for these categories. I agree that ICE has chosen pretty inflammatory names for these otherwise presumptively innocent detainees
- thegrim33 1y agoYou don't find it ironic at all to call the names ICE has chosen 'inflammatory', while you're here brainstorming with multiple people trying to come up with the perfect terminology, phrases, graphs to include vs not include, even the perfect colors to use in order to best impart your political ideology onto the reader?
- imoverclocked 1y agoI don’t. The data is published with a strong political bias which is morally antithetical to our legal system. The point of publishing in this way is to shed light on the human cost rather than the dehumanized political speech currently embedded within it. Like it or not, this data is highly political. You can’t correctly interpret it in a vacuum.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> I'd call them "Productive Members of Society The Rest of Us Depend On.” This is only useful for in-group messaging.
- bb88 1y agoOne thing to do is to focus on the negative impacts. Number of children separated from Families. Number of US citizens illegally detained. Number of lawsuits against ICE. Cost of ICE vs each Detainee.
- supermaxman 1y agoAgree on all of these. Let me know if you know of any good sources of data for these numbers, I am actively looking to add them.
- Nesco 1y ago[flagged]
- ryandrake 1y agoYea we are talking about politicians who proudly tweet about ruining people’s lives and tearing apart families, and their voting base cheering this on. There is no wording that you can use to turn this into a negative for these irredeemable people.
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- timr 1y ago> we are talking about politicians who proudly tweet about ruining people’s lives and tearing apart families, and their voting base cheering this on. There is no wording that you can use to turn this into a negative for these irredeemable people. I am so tired of this kind of inflammatory rhetoric. Can we please remember that the people who are being deported did, in fact, break the law? While I have empathy for people who want nothing more than to be productive citizens in the USA, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. If you did it the wrong way, you're subject to deportation. That's just how it goes. More than anything, I'm profoundly embarrassed that our politicians have allowed the situation to get this bad. While I don't support all of the methods the current administration is using, do not support using immigration for weaponizing speech, and certainly wish we had a saner system of immigration, characterizing "enforcing our immigration laws" as some kind of "irredeemable" act is just...beyond the pale. It is not irredeemable to enforce laws. I have friends who have been waiting for years to get a green card, in large part because of the consequences of years of our de facto open border situation, which have jammed the courts with "refugees" who knew that it was easier to enter the country and claim asylum than wait in line for legal immigration channels. Edit: I have been respectful and polite in this comment, but it has now been flagged down twice (EDIT: three times). Those of you who abuse the flagging system to censor speech you do not like should be ashamed of yourselves.
- fingerlocks 1y agoYeah just CSS color swap the gains and losses to match fidelity or your preferred broker’s website. Seeing a bold green 175% gain in 6 months would make my lizard brain instinctively say “Hell Yeah!” before I even processed what I was reading.
- TiredOfLife 1y agoGood old "If you don't like the data change the presentation"
- danlitt 1y agoSeems over-focussed on the economic impact. I have never seen a museum of concentration camp victims that highlighted how much they could have made number go up.
- supermaxman 1y agoHey, this is super fair. I debated whether to include these numbers, but I felt it was a powerful message that, in a time when no one can afford an emergency in the US, the average detainment would be a massive cost. I understand if you feel going further and having the big number and the tax number is a bit insensitive, but my thinking was this could be a convincing common ground for conservatives who only care about $$$. Let me know if you think I could frame it better than I am, always open to feedback
- ryandrake 1y agoYea I was gonna say: frame it in some quantifiable terms of human suffering, except half the country enthusiastically cheers for human suffering, and would also turn it into a “suffering leaderboard.” We are living in dark times.
- tehjoker 1y ago[flagged]
- holmesworcester 1y agoDefinitely keep it. If someone is focused on the humanitarian aspect of this, they're the choir. No need to preach to them. See my above comment about including some credibly-neutral description of detention conditions, including the psychological aspect of there being zero process and total chaos.
- danlitt 1y agoMy reply seems at face value to contradict this one, but I don't actually disagree, depending on what you mean by neutral. Certainly any comment should be based in facts, but I would be hard-pressed to describe what the admin is doing both truthfully and in a non-negative light.
- tiahura 1y agoSo we went from just shy of 25000/mo under Biden to 35000/mo under Trump and supposedly this is just unbelievably over-the-top?
- uoaei 1y agoThe concern has never, ever been about amount. It's always been about the methods that employ violence and a disruption of the social order.
- Trasmatta 1y agoIn case you missed it, congress just gave ICE an unprecedented $175 billion. They want this to escalate much, much further.
- supermaxman 1y agoThis increase in the last 6 months is concerning, to me. Especially when we realize the vast majority, and even more so now, are non-criminal “No Threat Level”, as designated by ICE themselves. Check out the map at the bottom to see how many people with zero criminal history are being held daily in each state. It should be concerning, and I think these numbers need to be shouted from the rooftops that things are going in a bad direction here
- charcircuit 1y agoDeporting no threat people is important as to start encouraging them to actually self deport. Without it there would be no rush and they could rely on being at the bottom of the list and stay in the US longer.
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- Nasrudith 1y ago
- monkaiju 1y agoLove to see people trying to quantify the violence of the state. Like some other comments I agree focusing on the economic impact might be a bit of a distraction, but if it helps put a stop to this then so be it... In Utah we have a pretty powerful tool for tracking police activity that can also be applied to ICE and focuses much more on identifying cops and linking them with incidents: https://app.copdb.org/ https://app.copdb.org/
- supermaxman 1y agoYea, I want to make it as clear as possible these numbers are not a good thing, but I’m always going to lose the personal element in the numbers. But we need to know the numbers, unfortunately. They help us direct our outrage. Each of these are a person stripped away from their family for overwhelmingly no good reason
- one-note 1y agoWhat is the meaning of the percentage inside the “Detainee Criminal Information” pie chat? I see 71.2% nominally, then 100% whenever filters are applied.
- supermaxman 1y agoThis may just be the wrong behavior from what people expect. The center percent is just the percent that are not convinced of the selected filters. So depending on what you select, that will change.
- one-note 1y agoSorry… what does “the percent that are not convinced of the selected filters” mean? Could you specifically explain what that 71.2% figure is? Edit: Ah, if you hold your phone rotated the label “Not Convicted” appears. That is… a very odd way of spinning this data.
- supermaxman 1y agoWe, in fact, do have a presumption of innocence in the US. So yes, other than those convicted of crimes, others are non-convicted detainees. These people may be detained for quite a long time, too. That is the point this dashboard is making
- one-note 1y agoI understand the intended spin. The claim is that it’s implantation is heavy handed and half baked.
- shrubble 1y ago[flagged]
- lazide 1y agoTypical ‘illegals’ (aka laborers, line workers) IF they’re paid a W2 payroll, certainly do pay taxes like everyone else. They’ll generally never be able to actually draw down that SS tax, etc. they’re paying in, however. The SSA could easily stop this, but isn’t interested in doing so. They’ll happily go after folks trying to get payments out however. Being paid under the table is of course different, but then that is as much the employer as anyone else eh?
- cavisne 1y agoIn every country there is a $ income level where you move from a net drain on the government to a source of tax revenue. The sort of job that looks the other way to employee illegal immigrants would not be the sort of job that pays enough money to be a net benefit in tax revenue.
- fnimick 1y agoThat would be accurate, if those immigrants could access benefits in order to be a drain on the government. They can't.
- cavisne 1y agoThats always the claim, but they have stolen SSN's to get those jobs in the first place (those without SSN's aren't paying income tax). Not to mention states like California which explicitly spend federal money on illegal immigrants through Medicaid.
- lalaland1125 1y ago> Thats always the claim, but they have stolen SSN's to get those jobs in the first place (those without SSN's aren't paying income tax). Where are the criminal prosecutions if that is actually happening? For all of Elon's efforts, even he was unable to find much (if any?) social security fraud. > Not to mention states like California which explicitly spend federal money on illegal immigrants through Medicaid. With the exception of pregnancy and emergency care (which are relatively minor), this is not the case.
- wskinner 1y agoWhy do the data only go back to October 2024? It would be great to be able to see the longer term trends.
- supermaxman 1y agoThe data is provided by ICE in terms of financial years (FY), so I’m showing the most recent FY 2025. But they do have back to FY2019 on their site, and I plan to add that historical data soon!
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- octo888 1y agoNot to denigrate the work but: I hate it and I can't fully describe why. There are no pictures of any people and barely any human element at all. There's too little context. Too much potential for it to be a scoreboard. It's the kind of data I'd expect to see embedded in a long-form interactive report from a media outlet (with stories and pictures of what's going on etc)
- supermaxman 1y agoHey, totally with you on this. Others also suggested adding some anecdotes and accounts from detainees, so this will be a top priority going forward. My goal was just to get this data in front of people, so we can accurately direct our outrage. Documenting the statistics as early as possible, as I expect these numbers will continue to rise
- paulmist 1y agoCuriously they used AWS' design system https://cloudscape.design/ https://cloudscape.design/
- supermaxman 1y agoYes, I have always thought cloudscape design is a great framework to build dashboards like this. Feel free to check out the source code for the whole project as an example, everything is open-source!
- jeremynixon 1y agoThis blog post is flawed. "Life insurers can predict when you'll die with about 98% accuracy." Is not even properly framed and is found nowhere in the cited report. Predictions of when you will die need a range in order to be attached to a number like accuracy. The attached report is not about this but about population-level mortality trends.
- supermaxman 1y agoI think you posted on the wrong article. I do not believe I included any life insurance claims in this dashboard
- noracists 1y agoSending people back to their home country, especially when 50% are criminals, is not the same as the holocaust. Comparing it to such is disgusting and insulting to the actual victims of Nazi violence. ICE is often operating in a racist and dehumanizing way, but it is nowhere near the level of organized atrocity that it is regularly compared to.
- Trasmatta 1y agoThese things escalate and evolve over time. The holocaust didn't suddenly happen in a vacuum or overnight. Please don't discount or normalize the danger of things like the way the right has been talking about things like "Alligator Alcatraz". Or about the insane funding ICE has received, and the additional camps they want to build.
- maxlin 1y agoThat kind of slippery slope is so silly it could be as well applied to IRS.
- Eextra953 1y agoThis is great work thank you for creating this. There a few times when technical skills can help with national discourse and this is a great example of that. The dehumanization and persecution of immigrants by the current administration is disgusting and is immoral. I'm glad to see tech being used for good.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hopelite 1y agoI find this topic rather interesting from a historical and sociopolitical one. I’m assuming the creators of this site are attempting to make an economic argument for how Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad that the detentions are because it has “$1.49 billion” economic impact which is “$438.10 million annually in lost tax revenue”. But it is really a rather abusive perspective that ignores the inverse, because the inverse is that it is “$1.49 billion” that Americans are not earning and the “$438.10 million annually in lost tax revenue” would not have been lost if it had been Americans doing the work. Arguably, the case could also even be made that the tax revenue would have been higher because Americans would have been paid higher wages simply due to the increased effects of the supply decline and demand that would increase wages/salaries. Additionally, arguably, considering that official estimates are that foreign national workers of all manner send ~$150,000,000,00.00 out of the USA every year, that is also money that is not only not earned by Americans, or kept in the American economy. No one seems to want to care about the actual American working and lower class. Why should foreign nationals that have broken the law and are being used by the ruling class to enrich themselves by lowering wages and salaries take priority over American citizens? Are we no longer doing this democracy thing? Do citizens no longer have rights in their own countries anymore; while we advocate for the “rights” of foreigners to remain in a country they did not even ask, let alone receive permission to be in? It does not seem like that can go on indefinitely without things breaking, economically, culturally, socially. Are we just not going to care about that?
- leoqa 1y agoI always like to frame it this way: ask someone what a reasonable response would be if they flew to Paris and then decided they didn’t want to leave. What is the French government allowed to do in their moral framework to enforce their immigration laws. People don’t have a great answer. The asylum process actually works- it just turns out that many, many cases aren’t valid and it was abused to gain entry once we allowed asylum seekers to remain in country.
- djleni 1y agoI’m sure some people don’t like any deportations, but I think the reason the bulk of people are upset with the current administration’s approach is its insane militarization, lack of due process, refusal to identify, apparent targeting of normal hard working people, sending people directly to foreign prisons, and sending people to war torn countries they are not from with minimal notice and no opportunity to contest. Not that deportations are happening.
- sudosteph 1y agoI know the color scheme was probably selected to emphasize that increased ICE actions are bad, but it's weird to me to see positive percentages in red. The negative ones are kind of yellowish? I think maybe black or green for positive and red for negative would make it look more serious.
- supermaxman 1y agoFeedback heard. I am taking the position that increased ICE detainments and lengths of detainments are bad for this dashboard, so I am going to be avoiding green for increases (as that can be interpreted as good). But I understand it can be a bit strange coloring, will consider other options
- yablak 1y agoI'd like to see this breakdown of ICE employees themselves. If they're "public servants", is this data also public?
- maxlin 1y agoAnonymized, maybe. But the risk of crazies deanonymizing them for doing their appreciable job is still there so probably not best to store those centrally anywhere, if they're even meaningfully collected.
- int_19h 1y agoMaking the bullies afraid is a good thing.
- maxlin 1y agoOh yeah making people afraid of upholding the law and trying to avoid whole unlawful areas being established is a good thing? Why don't you move to Somalia. Good people will respect the most basic laws of a country to uphold a humane standard of living for those that deserve it.
- danlitt 1y agoFound the fascist
- maxlin 1y agoThose are rookie numbers, got to pump them up!
- pacomerh 1y agoSo you're essentially trying to increase the negative economic impact, not to mention the inhumane treatment.
- maxlin 1y agoWhat a ridiculous assertion for just wanting the law to be followed. There's no inhumane treatment, especially for people respecting the basics of the laws of a country, and if you're in one illegally, you're the definition of an outlaw. If hostile invaders suddenly just rushed the border to my home country, people wouldn't even talk of things such as "inhumane treatment". Shoot on sight wouldn't be abnormal.