About the Deportation Data Project
The Deportation Data Project collects and posts public, anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets. We use the Freedom of Information Act to gather datasets directly from the government, and we also post datasets that the government has posted proactively or in response to others’ requests. We expect these datasets to be used by journalists, researchers, lawyers, and policymakers.
We post mostly individual-level datasets. Individual-level data is most useful to those with a background in data analysis, allowing these users to make their own decisions about how to analyze the data.
We write documentation for each dataset, including its limitations and how it was obtained. We also provide a codebook for ICE data, which includes information about the variables in the dataset, their definitions, and their values. In addition, we post documentation from the agencies.
We are grateful for the work of others, and especially of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), in first obtaining access to many of these datasets. Please get in touch if you have done relevant work in this area and we can do more to acknowledge your contributions.
Team
We are academics and lawyers who share a commitment to transparency in immigration enforcement data.
Graeme Blair
Co-Director
Website
Graeme is an associate professor of political science at UCLA. He focuses on data analysis and infrastructure for the project. He studies state violence and how to make social science more credible, ethical, and useful. His book, Research Design in the Social Sciences was published by Princeton University Press, and his book Crime, insecurity, and community policing was published by Cambridge University Press. He received a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and a B.A. in political science from Reed College. He received the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize in Open Social Science.
David Hausman
Co-Director
Website
David is an assistant professor of law at Berkeley. He works on litigation strategy and data analysis for the project. He studies immigration enforcement, drawing on a background in quantitative methods and litigation experience at the ACLU. He has conducted data analysis as a consulting expert in numerous immigration cases. He has also published scholarly research using immigration enforcement datasets. He received his J.D. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and clerked for Judge Stephen Williams on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Amber Qureshi
Co-Director
Website
Amber is the founder and owner of Law Office of Amber Qureshi, LLC. She leads the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation for the project. Her firm primarily represents individuals and organizations in FOIA litigation. Prior to starting her firm, Amber worked as an attorney at the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School, B.S. in educational studies from Johns Hopkins University School of Education, and B.S. in finance from the University of Maryland College Park. Amber was born and raised in Pakistan.
Elora is the Jerome L. Greene Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School and a globally recognized advocate, practitioner, and voice for immigrants, asylum seekers, and unaccompanied migrant children. For more than a decade, Mukherjee has worked on issues related to enforcing the Flores Settlement Agreement, which sets a limit on the length of time children can be detained in federal immigration custody. Mukherjee began her career as a clerk for the Hon. Judge Jan E. DuBois of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and then won a fellowship with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. From 2007 to 2010, she worked at a law firm, specializing in police misconduct, prisoners’ rights, housing, and employment discrimination, and then rejoined the ACLU as a staff attorney until 2013.
Celena is an associate at the San Francisco-based plaintiffs’ law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP. She works primarily on mass torts, including on the Social Media Teen Mental Health MDL and representing victims of the recent wildfires in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School. While at Stanford, Celena worked for the Community Law Clinic and was involved with Stanford Law School’s Latinx Law Students Association.
Michael is a partner at the San Francisco-based plaintiffs’ law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP.
Elena Gonzalez LinkedIn
Elena is a Team Lead in the Faculty Support Unit at Berkeley Law. She earned her BA in International Relations and Spanish from the University of San Diego. There, she engaged with local community groups and organizations to support direct service efforts for migrant communities. Most recently, she worked in the Housing Practice at the East Bay Community Law Center as an intake/program coordinator.
Alex Stratton LinkedIn
Alex is a research fellow at Berkeley Law. He processes and analyzes data for empirical law and economics projects. Alex studied economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he worked on applied mathematics and computer science research.
Lucas Guttentag, Senior Advisor. Website
Lucas is Professor of the Practice of Law at Stanford Law School and Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School. With a career that spans litigation, advocacy, academia, and government, he is one of the nation’s leading experts on immigration law and civil rights. He founded and directed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Immigrants’ Rights Project (IRP) for 25 years until 2010 arguing major cases throughout the country including in the United States Supreme Court. He served in senior immigration policy positions in the Biden administration Department of Justice, and in the Obama administration Department of Homeland Security. He has received many honors recognizing his contributions to the field, is often cited in the media, and regularly advises NGO’s, philanthropies, advocates, and others on immigration policy and litigation strategy. In 2017 he created the Immigration Policy Tracking Project, a website with searchable database that comprehensively compiles, summarizes, and indexes all Trump administration immigration policies and documents. Guttentag received his BA in history from UC Berkeley and his JD from Harvard Law School.
Michael K.T. Tan, Senior Advisor. Website
Michael is a Visiting Clinical Lecturer in Law, Clinical Lecturer in Law, Associate Research Scholar in Law, and Executive Director of The Movement Project at Yale Law School. The Movement Project is an initiative to reform migration laws and frameworks to manage climate and demographic change, advance the interests of working people, and honor humanitarian goals. Tan previously served as Senior Advisor to the Co-Presidents of Community Change, a nationwide organization that empowers low-income people, particularly low-income people of color, to lead movements for social change. From 2008 to 2022, Tan held a range of roles at the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he began as a recipient of Yale Law School’s Arthur Liman Fellowship and later worked as a Skadden Fellow. Most recently, he served as the Project’s Deputy Director. In 2017, Tan received the Best LGBT Lawyer Under 40 Award from the National LGBT Bar Association. He was also recognized with the Best Under 40 Award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association in 2016 and named California Lawyer of the Year in Immigration Law by California Lawyer in 2014.
Alumni
Lorena Ortega Guerrero LinkedIn
Lorena graduated from Berkeley Law in 2025. Before law school, Lorena worked with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, helping represent detained non-citizens in removal proceedings. She has worked as a legal intern for the ACLU of Northern California’s Immigrants’ Rights Program and the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. Lorena earned her B.A. from Yale University. Lorena is committed to a career in advancing immigrants’ rights and advocating for her community.
Claudia Liss-Schultz LinkedIn
Claudia graduated from Berkeley Law in 2025. Claudia is interested in free speech and government transparency and has worked at National Public Radio, the Knight First Amendment Institute, and the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. Before law school, Claudia worked in documentary film.