The Deportation Data Project (DDP) released new immigration enforcement data last week. The day after the data came out, I live-blogged my analysis of the key findings so that reporters, researchers, policy folks, and the public could make use of the data as quickly as possible. But somewhere between opening up and analyzing DDP’s huge data files and taking my analysis at face value, there’s a middle ground where a lot of people want to interact with the data for themselves.
That’s why the team at Relevant Research built the Immigration Enforcement Dashboard and launched it a few weeks ago. After the positive reactions they received, they updated the dashboard with a new design, back-end improvements, and the latest data from DDP. For a description of the project, you can go back and read the initial announcement or read the project description on the website. The detainers dashboard is next in line and will be launched shortly.
New Layout and Design
The first thing you’ll notice when you visit the site is that it was redesigned to use cleaner icons, a snappier layout, and a more attractive splash of color. The colors are now more consistent with the Relevant Research style.
Making large datasets available through an online dashboard is much more complicated than it seems. The size of the datasets, the fact that the website is interactive, and the amount of traffic the site has received all place additional technical burdens on development. Version 1.0 had some occasional bugginess when too many users were on the site at the same time. To make sure that the site works great for everyone and can handle the growing sizes of datasets, the development team make behind-the-scenes improvements so that it runs much more smoothly now.
New Feature: Download the Data
The team added one of the most requested features: a simple download option based on the filter criteria users select. The Deportation Data Project also added a similar but more robust feature on their tools page.
Important Note: October Data Represents a Half Month
The most recent data from the Deportation Data Project goes through October 15, 2025. When we represent data monthly (which is my default preference for most cases), a partial month of data presents us with a decision about how to visualize this data. We had to ask ourselves, should we…
… cut off the data through the end of the last full month, in this case September? Good: maintains full-month trends. Bad: removes useful data.
… project the end-of-month numbers based on available data? Good: simple, defensible approach to maintaining monthly numbers. Bad: ICE data could deviate significantly, and imposes our methods onto the data.
… leave the data for the half-month, appearing to show a significant decline in arrests? Good: most thorough and objective, least imposition of outside methods. Bad: people might mistakenly think ICE arrests went down.
In this case, the team chose Option 3 even though there is a risk that some people may look at the graph and misinterpret it as ICE arrests going down. But—as I’ve said many times in talks and panels over the past year—the availability of more valuable immigration data in the public domain means that we need to raise our collective level of data understanding to accommodate these types of issues as they arise. To put it simply, instead of avoiding these design issues, we trust that users will learn about the issues involved in visualizing administrative data and become smarter data users along the way.
Immigration Enforcement Dashboard
If you have questions, comments, or feedback, reach out to Adam Sawyer at Relevant Research. Huge shout out to the whole team for doing a fantastic job.
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