ICE-Reported COVID-19 Detention Dataset

Data on confirmed COVID-19 cases and tests as reported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from March 24, 2020 through present. This data originates from hourly downloads of https://ice.gov/coronavirus. Vera updates the data in this repository on a daily basis.

Vera's dashboard visualizing this data is available here: https://www.vera.org/tracking-covid-19-in-immigration-detention

About the Data

On March 24, 2020, ICE launched a webpage that compiles information about COVID-19 in detention facilities, including the reported numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and tests for people detained by ICE. Researchers at the Vera Institute of Justice immediately began routinely archiving the page data, on a daily basis at first and then hourly as of April 17, 2020 at 5:00 PM EDT.

While ICE typically updates the numbers of cumulative and current cases for people in detention on this page about once per weekday, it replaces previously reported numbers rather than presenting them longitudinally, making it difficult to track how the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and tests administered have changed over time. The datasets included in this repository present selected data from these archived page downloads over time in four domains:

1. "Facility cases": The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases among people in detention per facility
2. "National cases": The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases among people in detention nationally
3. "National population": The current number of people in ICE detention nationally
4. "National tests": The number of COVID-19 tests reportedly administered to detained people

These data all pertain to people detained by ICE; while the page previously listed case data for ICE employees at detention centers, these statistics were not regularly updated by ICE, do not include other facility staff, and have since been removed from the webpage following the V5 update.

As this dataset is intended to make transparent what ICE has reported on COVID-19 over time, the data are presented "as is" and reflect what ICE reported on the webpage for each given download, including any errors in what ICE has reported. For example, at Immigration Centers of America Farmville, a decrease in cumulative cases was reported: on the page archived 2020-07-13 23:01:00 (page_id: 9d206de59d1e1aad42e49ca5c7f6cc60), the page listed 106 cumulative cases; on the page archived 2020-07-15 14:01:00 (page_id: df376692b19409cacac5d990e742b44f), 315 cases were reported; on the page archived 2020-07-25 01:03:00, this cumulative case count decreased to 289 (page_id: 3a805c09ad6c87fa5507ded71b3eaa0f).

ICE Webpage Versions

While the content of the ICE webpage changes roughly once per weekday, the page layout has undergone five major revisions affecting the data available and how it is parsed, outlined below:

Version	First Appearance	Description	Example
V1	2020-03-24 22:47:00	Original page layout. ICE included all information in a single "tab," reporting the national and facility-level number of confirmed cases. Test and population information not yet included.	Link
V2	2020-04-22 17:01:00	ICE began reporting the number of tests administered nationally within its webpage, reported in text as: "As of %m %d, ICE has administered {N} tests." Additionally, ICE partitions case data into a separate tab, "Confirmed Cases"	Link
V3	2020-04-28 22:01:00	ICE began reporting test information in its own container and began reporting the currently detained population in text.	Link
V4	2020-06-01 21:01:00	ICE created a separate tab, "ICE Detainee Statistics," for all COVID-19 summary statistics for people in detention.	Link
V5	2020-11-23 18:02:00	ICE removed an existing tab, "Employee Confirmed Cases," which ICE reportedly last updated on June 18, 2020.	Link
V6	2021-01-13 00:02:00	Current page layout. Page styling updated to reflect the USWDS standard. Tab layout was replaced by anchored navigation, but COVID-19 statistics among people detained was relatively unchanged.	Link

ICE Webpage Timestamps

Vera cautions users from relying solely on the the listed and available timestamps on a given archived page due to inconsistencies and issues observed. Instead, we recommend using the page_downloaded timestamp (that is, the date and time when Vera archives the webpage) alongside other timestamps provided by ICE.

The ice_date_updated timestamp, which on its face seems to be automatically generated, does not maintain fidelity to this expectation in all cases. For example, while the page data was known to have been updated between page_id 0d14fa23d8f6d79b9be212468c473164 (archived 2020-03-30 21:48) and page_id bb9d58d22b788cd20ff41b5e15c1e55e (archived 2020-04-02 01:24), this timestamp does not change.

The "as of" page timestamp has been subject to similar issues. For example, the page archived on 2020-06-30 18:01 (page_id: 8f0aba53265c8fd4012fdb8f19765ff8) lists the "as of" date as "6/2/2020," an apparent mistyping of "6/29/2020."

All timestamps within these data files have been converted to UTC.

Facility Name Standardization and Geolocation

A pervasive issue encountered in the archived pages is an inconsistency in how ICE refers to unique detention facilities across webpage versions - an issue similarly found in other ICE datasets. The facility_lookup table shows how Vera standardizes facility strings from all archived webpages with consistent names, assigned unique identifiers, and relevant metadata (such as geolocation). The table contains all detention facilities that have appeared in each available version of ICE's published dedicated and non-dedicated facility lists since March 13, 2020, including those with no COVID-19 cases reported by ICE to date.

To standardize facility strings, Vera uses the "name" column from the dedicated and non-dedicated facility lists as a standardized facility_name where a match is found; otherwise, Vera uses the listed facility name. As new facilities appear on ICE's COVID-19 webpage, facility_id and geolocation data for these entries may not be immediately available, as Vera manually matches newly listed facilities to known existing facilities on an ongoing basis.

Vera uses the following sources to standardize facility strings and assign geolocation to facilities as reported by ICE on its COVID-19 webpage:

1. Facility locations table from The Marshall Project: First, Vera attempts to match to the locations table produced by The Marshall Project, which draws from a November 2017 detention facilities dataset obtained by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

2. ICE.gov facility list: Vera then attempts to match to ICE's list of detention centers and uses available location information to determine facility latitude and longitude.

3. Dedicated and non-dedicated facility lists: Vera uses the latitude and longitude associated with the facility zipcode as listed in these facility lists.

4. Manual geocoding: If no match is found within any of these sources, Vera manually assigns an identifier and determines location data via Google Maps.

Cumulative Detained Population

ICE's COVID-19 webpage reports only on the number of currently detained people nationally. The agency does not report on the number of people detained cumulatively since the start of the pandemic, making it difficult to understand the relationship between the total number of tests administered, positive tests, and detained people at risk.

To fill this gap, Vera calculates the cumulative detained population by routinely archiving ICE's detention statistics reports, which are updated periodically and reported elsewhere on the ICE website. To compute the cumulative number of people detained between the start date and each available date thereafter, Vera uses the reported number of people currently detained as of March 14, 2020 and incrementally adds the number of people initially booked in to custody ("initial book-ins") between March 14, 2020 and each available date of subsequent archived reports.

Vera uses March 14, 2020 as the start date for the cumulative detained population, as it is the closest available report "as of" date relative to the date ICE confirmed the first COVID-19 case in detention (March 24, 2020), accounting for a seven-day-lag between exposure to COVID-19 and the onset of symptoms. (See the technical appendix to Vera's report "The Hidden Curve" for further explanation of this assumption.)

The archived ICE detention statistics reports aggregate the number of initial book-ins by month. Where the archived report's "as of" date occurs before the last date of a given month, the initial book-ins capture month-to-date. For initial book-ins between March 14-30, 2020, Vera subtracts the total for March 2020 reported as of March 14, 2020 (i.e., initial book-ins between March 1-14, 2020) from the final reported value for March 2020 (i.e. initial book-ins between March 1-30, 2020).

Data Dictionaries

We include in this repository data on the four domains above in two versions:

• "_hourly" These tables contain parsed data from all page archives available, and are made available as Apache Parquet files due to file size limitations in GitHub.
• "_daily": These tables are subsets of the corresponding data_hourly/ tables. Rather than including records for all archived pages for a given day, these tables retain only the records associated with the latest page_downloaded timestamp for a given day (defined as 0:00 to 23:59 Eastern Time).

The directory tree below outlines the organization, followed by data dictionaries for each data file.

ice-detention-covid/
    |-- README.md
    |-- License.md
    |-- data_hourly/
    |   |-- facility_cases_hourly.parquet
    |   |-- national_cases_hourly.parquet
    |   |-- national_population_hourly.parquet
    |   `-- national_tests_hourly.parquet
    |-- data_daily/
    |   |-- facility_cases_daily.csv
    |   |-- national_cases_daily.csv
    |   |-- national_population_daily.csv
    |   `-- national_tests_daily.csv
    |-- data_supplemental/
    |   `-- cumulative_detained.csv
    `-- metadata/
        |-- facility_lookup.csv
        `-- parsing_metadata.csv

data_hourly/

facility_cases_hourly.parquet

Reported COVID-19 cases, by facility

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded	datetime	The date and time when Vera archived the webpage
page_id	string	A unique identifier for each archived page
page_md5	string	The md5 checksum of the target page content, for deduplication
facility_listed	string	The facility name ICE listed on the archived webpage
facility_id	string	A unique identifier that Vera manually assigned to each listed facility
facility_name	string	The facility name standardized by Vera associated with each facility_id
facility_cases_cumulative	numeric	The number ICE reported on the archived webpage for each detention facility as "total confirmed COVID-19 cases."
facility_cases_current	numeric	Where available, the number ICE reported on the archived webpage for each detention facility as "confirmed cases currently under isolation or monitoring."
facility_deaths	numeric	Where available, the number ICE reported on the archived webpage for each detention facility as "detainee deaths" (i.e., the total number of people per facility who died in ICE custody after testing positive for COVID-19).
ice_date_updated	datetime	The italicized "Updated %mm/%dd/%yyyy" timestamp that appears below the page section corresponding to reports about people detained by ICE; for example, in the current version (V4), this timestamp is below the "COVID-19 ICE Detainee Statistics by Facility" table.
ice_date_as_of_case	datetime	Where available, the "AS OF %m/%d/%yyyy" timestamp at the top of the "COVID-19 ICE Detainee Statistics by Facility" table on the archived webpage.

./national_cases_hourly.parquet

Reported COVID-19 cases, nationally

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded	datetime	The date and time when Vera archived the webpage
page_id	string	A unique identifier for each archived page
page_md5	string	The md5 checksum of the target page content, for deduplication
cases_cumulative	numeric	The cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases ICE reported nationally.
cases_current_header	numeric	Where available, the number of current COVID-19 cases reported nationally in the page header
cases_current_total_row	numeric	Where available, the number of current COVID-19 cases reported nationally in the "TOTAL" row of the facility table
deaths_cumulative	numeric	Where available, the number of cumulative COVID-19 deaths reported nationally in the "TOTAL" row of the facility table
ice_date_updated	datetime	The italicized "Updated %mm/%dd/%yyyy" timestamp at the bottom-right of the case section
ice_date_as_of_case	datetime	Where available, the "AS OF %m/%d/%yyyy" timestamp at the top of the facility case table
ice_date_as_of_case_current	datetime	Where available, the "AS OF %m/%d/%yyyy" timestamp found alongside the current case report in the page header

./national_population_hourly.parquet

The reported population of people detained by ICE

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded	datetime	The date and time when Vera archived the webpage
page_id	string	A unique identifier for each archived page
page_md5	string	The md5 checksum of the target page content, for deduplication
population_current	numeric	Where available, the reported population in ICE detention, nationally
ice_date_as_of_pop	datetime	Where available, the "AS OF" timestamp reported alongside national population detained reports

./national_tests_hourly.parquet

Reported COVID-19 tests administered, nationally

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded	datetime	The date and time when Vera archived the webpage
page_id	string	A unique identifier for each archived page
page_md5	string	The md5 checksum of the target page content, for deduplication
tests_cumulative	numeric	Where available, the number of total COVID-19 tests administered nationally
ice_date_updated	datetime	The italicized "Updated %mm/%dd/%yyyy" timestamp at the bottom-right of the case section
ice_date_as_of_test	datetime	Where available, the "AS OF" timestamp reported alongside test administration reports

data_daily/

These tables are subsets of the corresponding data_hourly/ tables. Rather than including records for all archived pages for a given day, these tables retain only the records associated with the latest page_downloaded timestamp for a given day (corresponding to 0:00 to 23:59 Eastern Time).

Note one exception where the cases_current value in data_hourly/national_cases_daily.csv does not reflect that of the latest page_downloaded timestamp for a given day. On the page archived 2022-01-27 20:03:00, ICE reported "3,1292" current cases as of 2022-01-26. ICE did not correct this typo until the following morning (on the page archived 2022-01-28 13:03:00), when it updated the figure as 3,129 current cases as of 2022-01-26. Since the extra "2" in this typo incorrectly increased the number of current cases by an order of magnitude, Vera attributed the corrected value (3,192) to 2022-01-27 when summarizing daily numbers. The original values reported by ICE are documented in table data_hourly/national_cases_hourly.parquet.

./facility_cases_daily.csv

Variable	Type	Description
facility_id	string	A unique identifier that Vera manually assigned to each listed facility
page_downloaded_day	date	The page_downloaded field, floored to the day
facility_cases_cumulative	numeric	The latest value assumed by the facility_cases_cumulative field in "_hourly" for this facility-day
facility_cases_current	numeric	Where available, the latest value assumed by the facility_cases_current field in "_hourly" for this facility-day
facility_deaths	numeric	Where available, the latest value assumed by the facility_deaths field in "_hourly" for this facility-day
facility_name	string	The facility name standardized by Vera associated with each facility_id
facility_listed	string	The latest value assumed by the facility_listed field in "_hourly" for a given facility_id on this day
ice_date_updated	datetime	The ice_date_updated field, floored to the day
page_id	string	The page_id for this record

./national_cases_daily.csv

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded_day	date	The page_downloaded field, floored to the day
cases_cumulative	numeric	The latest value assumed by the cases_cumulative field in "_hourly" for this day
cases_current	numeric	The latest value assumed by the max(cases_current_total_row, cases_current_header) field in "_hourly" for this day
deaths_cumulative	numeric	The latest value assumed by the deaths_cumulative field in "_hourly" for this day
ice_date_updated	datetime	The latest value assumed by the ice_date_updated field for a given page_download_day
page_id	string	The page_id for this record

./national_population_daily.csv

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded_day	date	The page_downloaded field, floored to the day
population_current	numeric	Where available, the latest value assumed by the tests field in "_hourly" for this day
ice_date_as_of_pop	date	The latest value assumed by the ice_date_as_of_pop field for a given page_download_day
page_id	string	The page_id for this record

./national_tests_daily.csv

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded_day	date	The page_downloaded field, floored to the day
tests_cumulative	numeric	Where available, the latest value assumed by the tests_cumulative field in the "_hourly" table for this day
ice_date_as_of_test	datetime	The latest value assumed by the ice_date_as_of_test field for a given page_download_day
page_id	string	The page_id for this record

data_supplemental

./cumulative_detained.csv

Calculated cumulative detained population over time

Variable	Type	Description
as_of_date	date	The date on which the detention statistics resource was updated on ICE's website
cumulative_detained_cbp_arrest	numeric	The number of people cumulatively detained from CBP arrests, up to date
cumulative_detained_ice_arrest	numeric	The number of people cumulatively detained from ICE arrests, up to date
cumulative_detained_total	numeric	The number of people cumulatively detained from either agency, up to date

metadata/

./facility_lookup.csv

Variable	Type	Description
facility_id	string	A unique identifier that Vera manually assigned to each listed facility
facility_first_case	date	For facilities with any reported positive COVID-19 cases, the page_download_day on which this facility was first listed
facility_cases_cumulative_max	numeric	For facilities with any reported positive COVID-19 cases, the latest value assumed by facility_cases_cumulative
facility_cases_current_latest	numeric	For facilities with any reported positive COVID-19 cases, the latest value assumed by facility_cases_current
facility_name	string	The facility name standardized by Vera associated with each facility_id
city	string	Where available, the facility city
state	string	Where available, the facility state
zip	string	Where available, the facility 5-digit postal zipcode
lat	numeric	Where available, the facility latitude, in degrees
lng	numeric	Where available, the facility longitude, in degrees
facility_listed	string	The facility name(s) as listed by ICE on the archived webpage

./parsing_metadata.csv

Page timestamps and other associated metadata

Variable	Type	Description
page_downloaded	datetime	The date and time when Vera archived the webpage
page_id	string	A unique identifier for each archived page
page_md5	string	The md5 checksum of the target page content, for deduplication
ice_date_updated	datetime	The italicized “Updated %mm/%dd/%yyyy” timestamp that appears below the “COVID-19 ICE Detainee Statistics by Facility” table on the archived webpage.
ice_date_as_of_case	datetime	Where available, the “AS OF %m/%d/%yyyy” timestamp at the top of the “COVID-19 ICE Detainee Statistics by Facility” table on the archived webpage.
ice_date_as_of_case_current	datetime	Where available, the “AS OF %m/%d/%yyyy” timestamp found alongside the current case report in the page header.
ice_date_as_of_test	datetime	Where available, the "AS OF" timestamp reported alongside test administration reports
ice_date_as_of_pop	datetime	Where available, the "AS OF" timestamp reported alongside national population detained reports
ice_page_version	string	The page version; see above for details

License

By downloading the data, you hereby agree to all the terms specified in this license.

Contributors

For questions or feedback about the data, please contact Noelle Smart at nsmart@vera.org.

In acknowledgement of the effort put forth to assemble this resource and in an effort to make this data available to all interested parties, please attribute this data to "researchers from the Center on Immigration and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice" and link to this repository when using this resource. This work was a collaborative effort involving Adam Garcia, Noelle Smart, Zachary Lawrence, and Dennis Kuo. This data was first used in Vera's report "The Hidden Curve: Estimating the Spread of COVID-19 among People in ICE Detention."

The Vera Institute of Justice is a non-profit organization that works to build and improve justice systems that ensure fairness, promote safety, and strengthen communities.