Special for the 2013 Specialized Reporting Institute on immigration reform. ©Lise Olsen, The Houston Chronicle http://immigrationreportingworkshop2013.borderzine.com/

1. Immigration reporting:
data, tools and sources
Lise Olsen,The Houston Chronicle
Immigration Forum from the Border
to the Heartland -UTEP 2013

2. Immigration yearbooks:
http://www.dhs.gov/yearbook-immigration-statistics

3. Explore trends and slice and dice
to put local stories in context.:

4. File FOIA requests… early and
often

5. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement -FOIA library
http://www.ice.gov/foia/library/

6. A sample of what you get.What
could you do with it?
• A sample of what you can get

7. US Citizen and Immigration
Service and border patrol
CIR story based on border patrol data

8. Explore mapping and viz data
tools. Some options include:
• Tableau Public – mapping and viz and dashboards
• Batch Geo – very easy datapoint maps
• Google fusion tables – from spreadsheets to maps to
relationship diagrams. Easy to learn. Kind of ugly…
• Arcview’s free mapping tools.

9. Here’s the CIR pot party
interactive
http://static.apps.cironline.org/border-seizures/:

10. Other sites – international
tourism and travel
• State department travel advisories and consular
statements
• State departmentreports of deaths of American citizens
abroad (RODAC)
• Visa stats from Department of State:
http://travel.state.gov/visa/statistics/statistics_1476.html

11. Learn to recognize data opportunities
Request electronic records,
use Google advanced search options to explore
• Pdfs – are image files or files with text embeded
• Text files - .txt can be separated by columns or
commas and imported into Excel
• Spreadsheet files - .xls for Excel
• Database files - .dbf
• Search forms on the internet =data

12. Courts: immigration court,
federal court, local courts

13. PACER –get an account and
explore query tools to
search

14. Sample of what you can get:

16. Data can drive narratives:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/data_ce
ntral/item/Money-Laundering-8792.php

17. Use spreadsheets to build
timelines and explore connections
http://www.johntedesco.net/blog/

18. Experiment with simple relationships/ maps
in Google FusionTables
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S457047pVkn

19. Conventional public records
• Don’t forget business licenses, liquor licenses,
• Property records
• Voter registration (mass registrations of naturalized
citizens for example). US Election Assistance Commission
has reports by state http://www.eac.gov/registration-data/
• Corporate records
• Maps/satellite maps…I found a guy with a moat that way.

20. Cross reference data sets:

21. EOIR – and Immigration courts
Includes data on disciplined judges (stats only) and disciplined attorneys.
http://www.justice.gov/eoir/discipline.htm

22. TRAC :
http://trac.syr.edu/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartoma

23. Check out TRAC data – but
there are data downloads too:

24. TRAILS OF BLOOD AND BODIES:
http://azstarnet.com/online/databases/border-deaths-database/html_c104ad38-3877-11df-
aa1a-001cc4c002e0.html

25. Lawsuits: Beyond court records, lawyers can have e-mails,
depositions with amazing details.
Temporary visa ring

26. Immigration sources who can
unlock doors (or jail cells):
• AILA members
• ACLU immigration/refugee resettlement offices
• Immigrants’ rights groups
• Chaplains and volunteers in immigration detention
• Federal agents
• Local police officers – especially those on federal task
forces

27. Schools data – universities, state
government, local school systems
• Students in bilingual education
• Students in ESL.What languages are
represented?What schools are most
international? How well are immigrant
schools funded?How many teachers are
immigrants?

28. Many other sources…
• People on the street.
• Academic researchers/investigators
• Businesses/business licenses/property records.
• Ethnic chambers of commerce
• Restaurants/bars. Go hang out.
• Churches, mosques and temples.
• Yellow pages
• Ethnic media editors
• Economists
• International organizations…Where the money goes

29. http://mexodus.borderzine.com

30. Questions? Ideas?
Rants?
Lise Olsen
Lise.olsen@chron.com
The Houston Chronicle
@chrondigger