The Deportation Data Project has obtained and posted publicly, for free, data from ICE on immigration arrests, detentions, removals, detainers, and encounters seven times in 2025 and 2026. The data have been used by journalists, by elected officials at the city, state, and federal level, and by organizations in advocacy and litigation.

We need your help to keep obtaining these data from ICE in a timely way.

We file FOIA requests regularly, because of the ongoing need for current data. ICE is required to respond within 20 days. They have never provided data in that time, and indeed they have never provided data at all without a lawsuit.

It should not have to be this way. In a lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of California filed on behalf of co-director David Hausman, we want to show that ICE has a pattern and practice of not providing data in a timely way as required by FOIA. We are seeking a court order requiring ICE to release updated national data on arrests, detentions, removals, encounters, and detainers on a regular basis.

Where you come in: sharing if you have submitted a FOIA request to ICE for individual-level data on arrests, detentions, removals, encounters, and/or detainers in the past; and sharing how you have used the data in your work, demonstrating why it is important, and when your work has been harmed by the delays in obtaining the data — for example the five month gap from Mar. 2026 to Aug. 2026.

Please fill out our four question Google Form today. It takes fewer than ten minutes. We’ll reach out if we think we can use your story.