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ICE is the chief repository for undocumented immigrant-related crime data: It maintains arrest records, tracks detainers (a formal request to law enforcement agencies to hold a potentially deportable individual up to 48 hours longer), charts whether a given person was deported and notes the most serious crime they committed. But according to the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) research center at Syracuse University, which compiles and analyzes statistics under various federal agencies through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), ICE is no longer willingly supplying that information.
TRAC co-director Susan Long says they filed suit against ICE in May for unlawfully withholding records related to its immigration enforcement actions. Supposedly, the new VOICE office will provide some of that information, but only to victims’ families. “There’s a big difference between the selective release of compiled statistics that they have decided are in their interest to release versus public information,” Long says.
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