I had the pleasure recently to host a panel discussion with three of the top Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) experts in the country: Kimbriell Kelly, currently Washington Bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times; Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed; and David McCraw, deputy general counsel for the New York Times.

The panel event “The Public Has a Right to Know” was hosted in partnership with the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), where I work as a researcher, and the Newhouse School of Public Communications. The turnout was amazing. We had more than 600 people register for the…

For two years — from January 2019 until February 2021 — the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), commonly known as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, forced over 70,000 asylum-seekers to await their US asylum claims in Mexico under conditions of violence and vulnerability. When the Biden administration took office, they ended new entries into MPP and by the end of February, migrants who had remained near the border, many in camps, were finally allowed to begin entering the United States to await their asylum cases. …

Originally published at https://www.latinorebels.com on February 25, 2021.

By Rebekah Sperling and Austin Kocher

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and attorneys general from Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York filed suit against Libre by Nexus this week for preying on immigrants through a convoluted program of exploitive fees, threats, and false promises of freedom. The lawsuit alleges that Libre was charging exorbitant fees for immigration bonds, then strapping immigrants with high monthly fees, a GPS ankle monitor, and unfounded threats that if they damaged the device, they would face felony charges. …

Visit AustinKocher.com for more short articles about the current state of the US immigration system or follow me on Twitter here for news, policy, and data about immigration.

The Department of Homeland Security announced plans today to process 28,000 asylum-seekers with active cases under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as ‘Remain in Mexico.’ When MPP was announced in January 2019, TRAC at Syracuse University responded quickly by making detailed data available to the public. Today, TRAC updated its publicly-available MPP data tool here.

As of the end of January 2021, immigration court records show that:

• 71,036 immigrants have…

Visit AustinKocher.com for more short articles about the current state of the US immigration system or follow me here on Twitter.

Depending on who you are, your emotional response to talking about death and the migration system ranges somewhere between uncomfortable to re-traumatizing. If you belong somewhere on the “uncomfortable” side of the spectrum, I believe we have a responsibility to make ourselves uncomfortable by actively analyzing and engaging with the ways in which our lives are ethically bound up with the suffering of others. …

Visit AustinKocher.com for more short articles about the current state of the US immigration system or follow me on Twitter here for news, policy, and data about immigration.

For most of us, from the time we are children, we learn that in an emergency we should call 911. Heart attack in the airport? Call 911. Someone broke into your car in Las Vegas? Call 911. Break your arm while hiking in Maine? If you can get reception, you know what you’d do. Call 911.

But according to a new report from No More Deaths released yesterday, 911 doesn’t work if…

If you’re looking for up-to-date non-partisan immigration data, let me introduce you to our work at Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse -or TRAC-at Syracuse University.

For the past 15 years, TRAC has been a valuable source of immigration data. TRAC’s reports and statistics are often cited in news articles, used in scholarly and legal publications, and referred to by government officials. TRAC’s data tools and applications are accessed by thousands of people each month and TRAC reports are sent to people across the US and around the world. This report provides a brief introduction to our immigration data and tools. …

Conspiracy theories were a driving force behind right-wing violence at the Capitol last week. Here’s one conspiracy theory you might not have heard of.

The term ‘conspiracy theory’ has worked its way into common discourse due mostly to our Snake Oil Salesman in Chief Donald Trump’s efforts to convince the public (or maybe just himself) that he really won an election that he so clearly lost.

The violence on Wednesday at the US Capitol was a manifestation of Trump’s conspiracy theory, but also the culmination of years of conspiracy theories invented and propagated to assuage mostly white voters of what…