NEW: Florida caught fudging immigration data

Florida’s latest dashboard exposed a chilling pattern: citizens caught in ICE operations, data quietly deleted, and a government once again manipulating the truth to fit its narrative.

In August, Florida officials unveiled yet another malfunctioning public dashboard intended to track arrests, detainments, and deportations of individuals targeted by ICE and other authorities for suspected immigration violations.

What was billed as a step toward accountability quickly revealed itself to be another exercise in state-sanctioned obfuscation and propaganda.

The dashboard, hosted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, purported to display “encounters,” arrests, and ICE-related activities statewide, alongside basic demographic and geographic data.

Note: An ICE “encounter” includes traffic stops, workplace raids, home visits, or any other interaction where ICE is enforcing immigration laws.

Missing, however, was one of the most crucial elements: immigration status.

That data exists within federal repositories like DHS and ICE, easily integrable through established APIs. Yet Florida chose not to include it — opting instead to highlight “country of citizenship,” a field that would soon become the center of controversy.

Within days of launch, journalists began to notice anomalies.

The database showed dozens of arrests and even more encounters involving U.S. citizens.

When reporters inquired about the discrepancies, the state quietly altered the numbers — then removed the “United States” entirely as a listed country of citizenship. That decision required manually deleting all cases involving Americans from the dataset prior to publication — an unmistakable act of data tampering.

“This incident raises fundamental questions about both the accuracy of Florida’s immigration enforcement data and the due process rights of everyone who resides in our state,” said Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. “If U.S. citizens can be arrested under these operations, that’s alarming enough. But the fact that the information was then deleted from public view is even more worrisome. Facts are being hidden from Floridians, and we deserve to know why.”

For many, the déjà vu is palpable.

Florida has become ground zero for politically motivated data manipulation. In 2020, the state’s COVID-19 dashboard that I designed and managed — once lauded for its clarity — was abruptly altered to downplay outbreaks as officials pushed to reopen the state.

The pattern continued with the state’s manipulation of vaccine safety reports in 2023, when Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo altered data to exaggerate the risks of mRNA vaccines, according to a Politico investigation. Internal emails later revealed that his office deleted key information showing vaccines reduced cardiac deaths in most age groups.

Now, the same playbook appears to be in motion again — this time targeting Florida’s immigrant community.

By selectively erasing data that contradicts the narrative of law-and-order, state officials are not merely distorting statistics; they are rewriting reality.

And as with the COVID dashboards before it, the victims of this data manipulation are not abstract — they are real people whose lives and liberties depend on accurate, transparent public records.

The quiet deletion of U.S. citizens from ICE data isn’t just a clerical concern — it’s a warning sign.

When governments can make citizens disappear in the data, they can make them disappear in life. Records are the backbone of accountability; without them, abuse thrives in silence.

If the state can erase the evidence of Americans unlawfully detained today, it can erase anyone tomorrow.

Data is not just numbers on a screen — it is proof that people exist, that their rights matter, and that the state can be held to account. When that proof is erased, so too is justice.

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Suggested resource for tracking ICE activity:

New Immigration Enforcement Dashboard Makes ICE Arrest Data Accessible to More People