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The Justice Department’s statistics agency is building a single database that will hold immigration court records alongside the arrest, prosecution and prison data it already collects, and it plans to let federal agencies and outside researchers link those files using a person’s Alien Registration Number. The Bureau of Justice Statistics announced the system, called BJS Statistical Data (JUSTICE/OJP-017), in a Privacy Act notice published in the Federal Register on Oct. 15, and the notice says none of the individual records may be used to enforce the law or to decide anyone’s benefits.
The timing matters because the most contested numbers in immigration politics are about crime, and they have long been argued with partial data. The government’s own figures show how easily those numbers mislead. In its last major report on the subject, released in August 2019, BJS found that non-U.S. citizens made up 64 percent of all federal arrests in 2018, up from 37 percent in 1998. The same report showed that 85 percent of those noncitizen arrests were for immigration offenses such as illegal entry, and another 5 percent were immigration-related. A share that folds border cases together with violent crime answers a different question than most readers assume.
What goes into the system. The notice’s record categories list “civil and administrative proceedings information from immigration courts,” including immigration charges, bond requests, applications for asylum or withholding of removal, and the court’s decisions, along with each person’s citizenship status and country of nationality. A-numbers appear next to Social Security and FBI numbers as identifiers. One routine use lets federal agencies link records with those identifiers for approved statistical projects; another allows disclosure to other federal agencies, the Congressional Budget Office, state, local and tribal governments, and researchers for statistical, research and evidence-building work. BJS says it may combine survey answers with administrative records “where practical and permissible,” and the records will be kept indefinitely until the National Archives approves a retention schedule.
The practical effect is that analysts could ask questions the current data cannot answer cleanly: how many people in removal proceedings have criminal records and of what kind, whether bond outcomes track criminal history, and how often people released from immigration custody later turn up in arrest data. Those answers could support either side of the enforcement debate, which is why the method behind them is likely to draw as much scrutiny as the results.
Can immigration enforcement use it? On paper, no, and the protection rests on statute rather than agency policy. Federal law limits BJS data to statistical purposes (34 U.S.C. 10134) and provides that research and statistical information identifiable to a private person may be used only for the purpose for which it was obtained and is immune from legal process (34 U.S.C. 10231). The notice also cites the Office of Management and Budget’s 2024 Trust Regulation, 5 CFR part 1321, which sets confidentiality and independence duties for federal statistical agencies. The notice does not name DHS, ICE or the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the immigration courts, as a source or recipient. The open question is oversight: approval of linkage projects is left to BJS, and the notice describes no outside review.
Can people see or correct their records? Probably not. A companion proposed rule published the same day would exempt qualifying records from the Privacy Act provisions that let individuals obtain an accounting of disclosures, see their records and request corrections, relying on the statistical-records exemption in 5 U.S.C. 552a(k)(4). The department’s reasoning is that no decision about an identifiable person is made from these files. For someone with a pending asylum claim or bond request, nothing in the system changes the case itself.
Comments on the notice and the proposed exemption are due Nov. 16 to the Justice Department’s Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties. The routine uses take effect after the 30-day comment period, while the exemptions apply only if the department finalizes the rule. The notice does not say when BJS will first publish findings from immigration court records, and that first report will show whether the new data clarifies the crime debate or simply supplies it with fresh numbers.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: Federal Register, Privacy Act of 1974; Systems of Records, BJS Statistical Data, JUSTICE/OJP-017 (Oct. 15, 2026); Federal Register, Privacy Act of 1974; Implementation, proposed exemption for JUSTICE/OJP-017 (Oct. 15, 2026); Bureau of Justice Statistics, Immigration, Citizenship, and the Federal Justice System, 1998-2018 (August 2019); BJS press release on that report (Aug. 22, 2019); 34 U.S.C. 10231, Confidentiality of information; OMB, Fundamental Responsibilities of Recognized Statistical Agencies and Units, 5 CFR part 1321 (Oct. 11, 2024).
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