Feedback heard. I am taking the position that increased ICE detainments and lengths of detainments are bad for this dashboard, so I am going to be avoiding green for increases (as that can be interpreted as good). But I understand it can be a bit strange coloring, will consider other options
Yes, I have always thought cloudscape design is a great framework to build dashboards like this. Feel free to check out the source code for the whole project as an example, everything is open-source!
Hey, totally with you on this. Others also suggested adding some anecdotes and accounts from detainees, so this will be a top priority going forward. My goal was just to get this data in front of people, so we can accurately direct our outrage. Documenting the statistics as early as possible, as I expect these numbers will continue to rise
The data is provided by ICE in terms of financial years (FY), so I’m showing the most recent FY 2025. But they do have back to FY2019 on their site, and I plan to add that historical data soon!
This may just be the wrong behavior from what people expect. The center percent is just the percent that are not convinced of the selected filters. So depending on what you select, that will change.
We, in fact, do have a presumption of innocence in the US. So yes, other than those convicted of crimes, others are non-convicted detainees. These people may be detained for quite a long time, too. That is the point this dashboard is making
This increase in the last 6 months is concerning, to me. Especially when we realize the vast majority, and even more so now, are non-criminal “No Threat Level”, as designated by ICE themselves. Check out the map at the bottom to see how many people with zero criminal history are being held daily in each state. It should be concerning, and I think these numbers need to be shouted from the rooftops that things are going in a bad direction here
Deporting no threat people is important as to start encouraging them to actually self deport. Without it there would be no rush and they could rely on being at the bottom of the list and stay in the US longer.
Yea, I want to make it as clear as possible these numbers are not a good thing, but I’m always going to lose the personal element in the numbers. But we need to know the numbers, unfortunately. They help us direct our outrage. Each of these are a person stripped away from their family for overwhelmingly no good reason
Hey, this is super fair. I debated whether to include these numbers, but I felt it was a powerful message that, in a time when no one can afford an emergency in the US, the average detainment would be a massive cost. I understand if you feel going further and having the big number and the tax number is a bit insensitive, but my thinking was this could be a convincing common ground for conservatives who only care about $$$.
Let me know if you think I could frame it better than I am, always open to feedback
I think the lost-revenue number is important and relevant, it underlines the hypocrisy of US fascism to be claiming on the one hand to balance the books while spending billions of dollars on performative cruelty. But I do think only presenting the numbers in isolation is insufficient, and comes off a little strange. Even a little blurb at the top (this is an unprecedented failure of the rule of law, ICE agents frequently arrest people illegally, this kind of thing) would be an improvement. It isn't actually clear at face value whether you think this project is morally wrong, or just expensive.
There are some quantitative questions it would be good to clarify, too. For instance, "convicted criminal" - does this cover people convicted of real crimes, or fake ones engineered by the administration? "pending criminal charges" - are these arrests illegal or likely illegal? should they be portrayed in a hostile light, or just neutrally, as if the courts are going to find these people guilty they just haven't got to it yet. Other useful segments that are relevant include the splitting up of families, the detention of children and the vulnerable, withholding of medication and religious materials. Unfortunately, the list goes on.
Definitely keep it. If someone is focused on the humanitarian aspect of this, they're the choir. No need to preach to them. See my above comment about including some credibly-neutral description of detention conditions, including the psychological aspect of there being zero process and total chaos.
My reply seems at face value to contradict this one, but I don't actually disagree, depending on what you mean by neutral. Certainly any comment should be based in facts, but I would be hard-pressed to describe what the admin is doing both truthfully and in a non-negative light.
Yea I was gonna say: frame it in some quantifiable terms of human suffering, except half the country enthusiastically cheers for human suffering, and would also turn it into a “suffering leaderboard.” We are living in dark times.
Any suggestions to change that perception? My goal is to educate how significant the impact is right now with these detainments & deportations, especially on people with zero criminal history.
I'm an experienced activist and if this was my issue area I would be heartened to see this kind of work.
As a non-expert who cares about this issue, the "criminal/other" split is very clear and was the first thing I looked for.
This is very counter to the administration narrative that our country is teeming with foreign gang members, and it is presented in a chill, non-shrill, high credibility way. That's very helpful!
Some more explanation or breakdown on what types of "other" violations dominate (e.g. are these all just overstays?) might be nice, but the point is still well made. I would also like to see what percentage were felony charges/convictions if there's a significant percentage of misdemeanors.
I expect with the recent ICE funding boost and the hiring spree they're about to go on, the "criminal"/"other" ratio going to plummet as ICE climbs the s-curve. It will be very useful to have a live measure of that as it happens.
One meta point: I'm always shocked at how rare it is, for issues that are current and important in the public discourse, that someone makes a technically and visually competent, single-purpose website contributing to the debate. I have seen them to be extremely valuable on campaigns I've worked on, such as the campaign to stop the SOPA/PIPA site-blocking bills in 2011/2012, but it's so rare anyone makes one. Thank you for creating an exception to a generally disappointing rule!
Really appreciate these kind words, will take them to heart. I actually recently completed my PhD, and my research was in getting this kind of data for public health & building these kinds of dashboards for vaccine hesitancy from social media. I’ve always felt it’s important to present this stuff super clearly, so I’m happy to have a chance to do so on a seriously important topic like this.
Maybe it's just me, but the words, "Other Immigration Violator" rubbed me the wrong way. I see it's a term from the source data and ICE describes the category as, "Other immigration violators are individuals without any known criminal convictions or pending charges in ICE's system of record at the time of the enforcement action."
ICE alleges these people have violated the civil code so calling them "violators" assumes guilt and comes across as inflammatory. Something like like "No Criminal Status" would be accurate and more neutral.
Personally, I'd call them "Productive Members of Society The Rest of Us Depend On."
Great feedback, will work on improving the language for these categories. I agree that ICE has chosen pretty inflammatory names for these otherwise presumptively innocent detainees
You don't find it ironic at all to call the names ICE has chosen 'inflammatory', while you're here brainstorming with multiple people trying to come up with the perfect terminology, phrases, graphs to include vs not include, even the perfect colors to use in order to best impart your political ideology onto the reader?
I don’t. The data is published with a strong political bias which is morally antithetical to our legal system. The point of publishing in this way is to shed light on the human cost rather than the dehumanized political speech currently embedded within it.
Like it or not, this data is highly political. You can’t correctly interpret it in a vacuum.
You already calculate the economic impact of the loss of workers, you could reframe the detention rates based on that. Any way to obviously state, “more is worse,” is a good start.
One other suggestion would be to include, somewhere, an image or oral account of detention conditions.
You could collect oral accounts and invite people to submit them.
From the grapevine (and this makes sense because they're pushing into new numerical territory, and also don't care at all) the conditions are very crowded / harsh. You could also include accounts from family members about the kafkaesque absence of information, e.g. It's good to make the point that almost every number in this chart is a human, and a family and circle of friends, who harmed no one and is being severely harmed.
Maybe the economic impact to the top as a single line? Many people are single issue economics voters so make it clear how much this is hurting the economy. The human rights abuses are unfortunately irrelevant to many.
Also loans forgiven would be nice to see since ICE signups now get a $10K reduction. Not a large number but more to make a point.
I actually think this highlights an important point: the majority of "criminals" in the statistics are likely not to be criminals in any serious sense, and would pose no serious harm to any community whatsoever. After all, the US is a notorious over-incarcerator, and crimes are selectively enforced to keep the underclass in place (you may recall after all that the richest man in the country is an illegal immigrant).
This also underplays the current cruelty of the US system, far out of proportion with any proper policing of immigration (which obviously reasonable people can argue about). So, I don't think you're wrong exactly, and you can play the victim if you want ("I know I will be downvoted", sad violin).
Agree heavily with this. I will be adding more stats on this soon, but you can see on the map chart at the bottom that these detainees are overwhelmingly categorized (by ICE) as low or no threat level, even those convicted of minor offenses & misdemeanors. Very few are “Threat Level 1”, which are the “violent” offenders we hear so much about.
You're downvoted because you're wrong. Illegal entry can be a crime, but that's far from the only way to there the country without legal status, and last I knew visa overstays were the most common immigration violation.
