RESEARCHERS: ASYLUM RECORDS MISSING IN PUBLIC DATA RELEASE
3,800 present in August report unaccounted for
Though the federal government promised to review a public data release of immigration court cases after researchers pointed to missing records relating to asylum, the issue has only gotten worse.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, has for years frequently published reports analyzing immigration court data that many media outlets rely on for information from the latest count of pending court cases to asylum grant rates. On a monthly basis, through public records requests, it receives data tables exported from a software program that immigration court officials use to store case information.
The organization told James Mchenry, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency within the Department of Justice responsible for immigration courts, that records were missing from a September data release that had been present in an August release.
An agency representative said that one of its offices would review future data releases, according to TRAC.
When TRAC received data a few weeks ago that had been updated through November, however, the organization found even more inconsistencies with what it has received previously.
“The increased disappearance of immigration court records amplifies previous concerns about the agency’s commitment to providing the public with accurate and reliable data about the immigration court’s operations,” TRAC said in a statement in middecember.
EOIR did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
The Trump administration has frequently used immigration court statistics published by the agency as justifications for its policies that seek to limit the ability to seek asylum at the southwest border.
TRAC, in a new letter sent to Mchenry, called for EOIR to make public the findings of the data review done by the Office of Information Technology and for the agency to commit to publishing accurate data.
At the end of October, TRAC began raising alarm with the public about what it called “gross irregularities” in immigration court data releases, including more than 1,500 missing records of applications for ways to stay in the U.S. that had been in the August data release. The organization said it had tried working with EOIR to fix the issue with no success.
TRAC also compared the September data with a data release from the year prior and found that nearly 897,000 records had been removed.
“Policymakers and the public routinely put their faith in federal agencies to provide complete and accurate information about their work. The value of government transparency is even higher in the area of immigration law and the immigration courts, which have become topics of considerable concern for Americans from all walks of life and for all three branches of government,” TRAC said in a statement at the time. “Of greatest concern is the lack of commitment from EOIR to ensuring the public is provided with accurate and reliable data about the court’s operations.”
In the updated data released earlier this month, none of the missing records had been added back into the data, according to TRAC. The number of missing applications for relief, or ways to stay in the U.S., that had been in the August release rose to about 3,800, including 1,714 asylum applications.
“It is deeply troubling that rather than working cooperatively with TRAC to clear up the reasons for these unexplained disappearances, the agency has decided to dig in its heels and insist the public is not entitled to have answers to why records are missing from the data EOIR releases to the public,” TRAC said.
TRAC has been the main source of statistics regarding the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program. Media frequently cite the organization’s reports on how many have been granted asylum — at 117 according to TRAC’S analysis of the problematic November data — and a few have even done their own analyses of the public data releases requested by TRAC every month.
It’s not clear whether the missing records include asylum seekers who were returned to Mexico to wait for their cases as part of that program.
kate.morrissey@ sduniontribune.com