In a snapshot data analysis of one ICE detention facility, the American Immigration Council found some inherent problems with immigration detention and the data collected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when tracking who is impacted by detention, a new data analysis shows. Specifically, in the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico, the report found gaps in record-keeping of race and ethnicity. The approximately 2,500 people detained at Torrance over a roughly two-year period represented a total of 54 distinct nationalities spanning five different continents. However, ICE labeled 86 percent of them (that is, over 2,000) as racially white, including all people from Yemen, Iran, Mauritania, Turkey, Syria, Peru, and Mali. The report says that this problem is due to ICE not having a standardized way of tracking race and ethnicity.
The report also found that non-Europeans classified as “white” spent some of the longest times in detention. But because of the unreliability of ICE’s racial classification, it was difficult to properly investigate whether certain vulnerable populations were subject to disparate treatment. “These data deficiencies make it difficult to properly measure which populations are most impacted by detention, at a time when some policymakers and political leaders are calling for a massive expansion of deportation and detention,” the report concluded.
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