TRAC offers helpful data on immigration

By Alex Kingsbury
akingsbury@niemanwatchdog.org

Immigration is one of the most contentious topics in the public square. The vitriol surrounding it makes the need for objective data acute.

As the French thinker Georges Bernanos put it, "The worst, the most corrupting of lies, are problems poorly stated." So, in an effort to better define and thus more clearly understand the problems and issues surrounding the immigration debate, TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, has compiled a variety of tools indispensable to reporters.

TRAC’s project on immigration, developed with the support of the JEHT Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Syracuse University, offers a broad array of authoritative information about what is now one of the largest single enforcement and control efforts in the country.

A series of reports on the site discuss issues germane to the immigration debate:

• What does the history of border enforcement show about the relationship between adding agents and illegal immigrant apprehension? A report finds that "from FY 1995 to FY 2005, for example, beginning in the Clinton Administration, the number of full-time BP employees more than doubled, jumping from 4,876 to 11,106. But for the whole period, BP apprehensions went the other way, dropping by over 10 percent from 1,324,202 in 1995 to 1,188,977 in the most recent available year."
•  How many people attempting to enter the country through specified "ports of entry" are actually denied entry? The report says less than one tenth of one percent were refused entry.
•  What impact did 9-11 have on border agent distribution and staffing? "While the number of the agents policing the borders is now more than twice what it was a decade ago, much of this increase occurred in the years before 9/11 and the agency's growth rate since the cataclysmic events has actually slowed," a TRAC report says.

TRAC has several reports in the works, including an analysis of discretion by judges in the Justice Department's immigration courts and an examination of civil suits in which the federal government is the defendant.

In another service for reporters, TRAC also compiles and catalogs reports  from the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, and many other governmental organizations.

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