i-213-analysis

Public analysis of non-sensitive scraped content from ICE/CBP I-213 forms obtained by UWCHR via FOIA lawsuit against DHS.

Source

I-213 "Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien" forms are generated by ICE and CBP upon apprehension of a subject. Under FOIA, UWCHR requested all I-213s produced by both CBP and ICE in the state of Washington from 2012-2017; when the agencies failed to adhere to the requirements of FOIA — first claiming privacy waivers were needed for every individual form and then claiming that as law enforcement agencies, they were exempt from providing such records — UWCHR sued in September 2018. UWCHR underwent separate settlement negotiations with each subagency. In these discussions, CBP agreed to provide a sample of all documents produced by staff in the agency’s Blaine and Spokane sectors from January 1, 2012 to September 30, 2017, and ICE agreed to provide copies of all documents produced from January 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020 by staff from the agency’s Seattle field office.

UWCHR later submitted an identical FOIA request to ICE for April 1, 2020, through November 30, 2021, and underwent a second lawsuit and settlement, resulting in the release of an additional 2895 records.

The resulting PDF forms were scraped and cleaned in a separate private repository developed by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) and maintained by UWCHR.

Data scraping

PDF forms delivered by ICE/CBP are parsed, scraped, and cleaned in a separate repository developed by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) and maintained by UWCHR. Scraping and cleaning code available upon request. Data cleaning is ongoing and dataset in import/input/ will be updated as new versions become available.

Non-public data

Dataset in this repo consists of scraped I-213 forms, withholding descriptive "narrative" fields which may contain sensitive information.

Tasks

• import/ - Contains public verison of dataset exported from private I-213 scraping repository; contents of import/input/ are symlinked to import/output/
  • import/input/uw-chr-i213-public.csv.gz - Public version of I-213 dataset, compressed pipe-separated (|) CSV format.
• county-pop/ - Downloads county and state population data for per-capita calculations from ACS via tidycensus. Requires ACS API key.
• map/ - Generates I-213 maps and per-capita table used in 2021-08-11 UWCHR report "Protecting Immigrant Rights: Is Washington’s Law Working?"
• write/ - Descriptive analysis notebooks
• docs/ - Documentation published at https://uwchr.github.io/i-213-analysis/

I-213 fields

form fields

The following fields contain data scraped directly from I-213 forms and associated I-831 "Continuation Page" forms. Where data is missing or contradicts apprehension narrative, we prefer data drawn from narrative. Notes below clarify which I-213 form field data is drawn from and any relevant data cleaning or explanatory notes.

• year: scraped from "Date/Hour" field
• month: scraped from "Date/Hour" field
• day: scraped from "Date/Hour" field
• hour: scraped from "Date/Hour" field
• minute: scraped from "Date/Hour" field
• last_entry: "Date, Place, Time, and Manner of Last Entry"
• date_of_action: alternate date field
• at_near: approximate location of enforcement action
• location_code: encodes ICE/CBP sub-office/field-office responsible for apprehension
• age
• sex
• cmplxn: "Complexion"
• country_of_citizenship
• us_address_zip
• us_address: usually redacted, or address of detention center. Withheld from public version of dataset as precaution.
• method_location_apprehension: "Method of Location/Apprehension"
• foreign_address
• status_at_entry: often garbled but can be standardized, not fully cleaned
• status_when_found: often garbled but can be standardized, not fully cleaned
• mother_nationality
• father_nationality
• spouse_nationality
• number_nationality_minor_children:
• disposition: often garbled but can be standardized, can be used as flag for jail/prison transfers/encounters
• charge_code_words: often garbled/partially scraped
• accompanied_juvenile: binary flag, rarely flagged
• unaccompanied_juvenile: binary flag, rarely flagged
• custody_redetermination_flag: binary flag, rarely flagged

narrative fields

Most I-213 forms include a narrative describing the apprehension and other subject details. Narratives are withheld in the public version of this dataset because they may contain non-redacted sensitive information.

record identifiers and other code-generated fields

• file_hash: unique reference to file/record
• filename: source filename
• source: agency which released form via FOIA (ICE, CBP); note ICE-released forms include enforcement actions by CBP
• lat: Latitude of at_near value via Google Maps API
• lon: Longitude of at_near value via Google Maps API
• state: County of at_near value via Google Maps API
• county: County of at_near value via Google Maps API
• kww_in_force: TRUE if date of form is post coming-in-force date of Keep Washington Working act (2019-05-21), FALSE if not
• cota_in_force: TRUE if date of form is post coming-in-force date of Courts Open To All act (2020-06-11), FALSE if not

mentions_* fields

The following fields are generated in separate scraping repository by simple regex string searches of I-213 narratives, as below:

• mentions_airport: '[Aa]irport'
• mentions_anonymous_tip: '[Aa]nonymous tip|concerned citizen'
• mentions_border_patrol: '[Bb]order [Pp]atrol'
• mentions_bus: '([Bb]us |[Bb]us\.|[Bb]us,)'
• mentions_corrections: '[Cc]orrections'
• mentions_courthouse: '([Cc]ourthouse|[Cc]ourt [Hh]ouse)'
• mentions_database: '[Dd]atabase'
• mentions_detainer: '[Dd]etainer|[I1]-247|[I1]-2[0Oo][0Oo]'
• mentions_family_unit: '[Ff]amily [Uu]nit'
• mentions_greyhound: '([Gg]reyhound|[Gg]rey [Hh]ound)'
• mentions_hsi: 'HSI|[Hh]omeland [Ss]ecurity [Ii]nvestigation'
• mentions_jail: '[Jj]ail'
• mentions_juvenile: '[Jj]uvenile'
• mentions_police: '[Pp]olice'
• mentions_prison: '[Pp]rison'
• mentions_probation_office: '[Pp]robation [Oo]ffice'
• mentions_secure_comm: '[Ss]ecure [Cc]ommunities|Immigration Alien Response|(IAR)'
• mentions_sheriff: '[Ss]heriff'
• mentions_state_patrol: '[Ss]tate [Pp]atrol'
• mentions_surveillance: 'surveillance'
• mentions_task_force: '[Tt]ask [Ff]orce'
• mentions_traffic: 'traffic'
• poss_collateral: 'another known|collateral'
• poss_passive: '[Rr]oster|jail check'
• poss_proactive: '[Rr]eferral from|[Ee]-?mail from|[Cc]all from|[Ll]ead from|[Cc]all for|[Cc]ontacted by'