How scientific evidence can improve your immigration reporting

By Natalie Skowlund

With immigration policy upended this year and the ramifications playing out in communities across the country, journalists face a daunting task in confronting a highly politicized topic on behalf of a polarized and skeptical audience.

Journalists can move beyond that political back-and-forth and more effectively combat misinformation and disinformation about the issue by turning to something one might not immediately consider when talking about immigration: scientific evidence.

From debates about crime, to economics, to health or activity along the country’s borders, rigorous evidence-based research exists. Accessing, understanding, and incorporating it into immigration reporting can help journalists paint a more accurate, contextualized picture from nonpolitical, trusted sources. 

This guide explores ways to use scientific evidence to inform reporting on immigration stories, including a look at some of  the latest research available on related topics.

Getting started

To better understand the economic impacts of immigration, regional Federal Reserve branches offer analysis and data on immigrant labor, such as this report on immigration trends over time and this chart tracking foreign-born employment levels. Though published with regional branches, these data and analysis reports often examine broader national trends. Other respected economic think tanks, such as the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Brookings Institution, also offer analysis and data on immigration and labor. 

Immigrant organizations and think tanks, although often playing an advocacy role, can also be vital sources of data. The American Immigration Council, for instance, offers an interactive map focused on immigrant economic impact and voting bases from national to state and county levels. The Migration Policy Institute offers explainers on niche immigration topics, from oft-requested immigration statistics to the impacts of immigration policy on schools. The Immigration Research Initiative documented the ways Spanish-speaking immigrants cite being impacted by recent immigration policy changes in a May report. 

Articles from think tanks and advocacy organizations often cite academic research, as in this article from the Migration Policy Institute, and can be great resources for finding credible academic sources to include in reporting.

Steven Hubbard, a data scientist with the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, recommends always seeking data and context from trusted sources before making generalizations about immigrant communities. 

“If you have data to show a thing, great,” Hubbard said. “But if you’re taking one incident and then trying to make generalizations—that, I think, is the biggest concern.”

Localizing the story

Local reporters often face the challenge of connecting the dots between their community and national research, or research focused on another area. Immigration issues can differ significantly across the country, and evidence-based research is one of the best ways for a local reporter to understand whether a national story is relevant in their coverage area. 

State and municipal research organizations may provide legal or policy guidance to localities statewide on immigration topics, like this example from Washington state. These guides can help reporters better understand how federal immigration actions may interact with state and local policies. 

For those without significant data-crunching experience, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse offers a slew of datasets, many broken down by state, city, or county levels, about immigration topics based on federal data records. And the Vera Institute of Justice’s tool tracking trends in detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement breaks down some numbers from the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project for easier access.

For a deeper dive into data, take a look at the Deportation Data Project. The database uses public records requests to increase public access to numbers relevant to ICE enforcement and deportation proceedings across the country. Working with raw data requires training in programming softwares like R or Python. Plus, always pay close attention to the codebook to ensure accuracy when interpreting findings. 

David Hausman, an assistant professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and faculty director of the Deportation Data Project, said the project’s data can be useful for journalists hoping to localize immigration reporting. Many local journalists have used the data to decipher the number of ICE arrests in their communities, proportions of detainees with criminal convictions, and more. 

But the data has many more stories to tell, such as evidence about how jails in different locations handle requests from ICE, when and why detainees are released or deported, and more. 

“There is really endless possibility,” Hausman said.

Missing context

Reporters should keep in mind the context behind the numbers. For instance, a rise in the proportion of ICE arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions has grabbed recent headlines. What audiences may not understand, Hausman said, is that those statistical changes represent a broader shift in ICE’s approach and tactics. 

“When you hear ‘an ICE arrest,’ you think of ICE arresting someone out on the street or in the community. And in fact, until recently, the vast majority of ICE arrests were actually transfers from local jails to federal immigration custody,” Hausman said. “This recent increase in raids out in public places is a really huge change.”

When examining the American public’s attitudes toward immigration, reference respected survey organizations. Both the Pew Research Center and Gallup have covered topics relevant to immigration, including recent reports about Americans’ views on the Trump administration’s immigration actions. 

For research and data on specific immigrant ethnic groups or localized populations, ethnic advocacy and regional immigration organizations may be able to offer support. For instance, AAPI Data offers research on Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations tracks civil rights issues in that population. Local organizations such as the New York Immigration Coalition and the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition provide localized context around larger immigration issues. 

When looking for information about immigrants’ countries of origin, international nongovernmental organizations may be helpful. For instance, the Council on Foreign Relations offers a map of destination countries for U.S. deportees. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs includes overviews of many immigrant countries of origin, such as this article explaining the state of affairs and human rights issues in Haiti.     

Resources such as Factchequeado’s bilingual guide to covering Latino and Spanish-speaking communities can help journalists better inform and orient reporting to reach impacted communities with accurate information. The guide includes step-by-step information on how to use different journalistic tools, a list of reliable resources for different thematic topics, and advice about how to best reach Latino and Spanish-speaking audiences with news coverage.

Amid changes to immigration policy and enforcement, comprehensive local reporting on immigration is more important than ever. By making use of sound data that’s already available, journalists can enhance the public’s understanding of crucial issues and promote evidence-based narratives about immigrant communities. 

What’s happening now

The U.S. is home to an estimated 48 million immigrants, according to the latest census data. Almost three-quarters are in the country legally. 

In 2023, the U.S. immigrant population saw the largest single-year increase since 2000, at about 1.6 million new immigrants that year. But with the arrival of the second Trump administration in 2025, illegal border crossings have dropped sharply and deportations have ramped up, leaving many immigrants in constant fear of deportation.

As of July 2025, 71% of immigrants detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lacked a criminal conviction, according to data analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Many detention facilities exceed capacity, and abusive practices and unsatisfactory conditions have been documented in some facilities.

Economic impact

With an aging U.S.-born population, immigrants are vital to the national labor force. A 2024 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City found an increase in immigration over a two-year period helped stabilize the U.S. labor market. A 2024 Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) analysis of relevant economic research found when businesses were permitted to accept lawful visas for basic or agricultural laborers, job opportunities expanded for native-born workers. 

Now, with threats of deportation and restrictive immigration policies, local industries—from Colorado’s ski resort towns to cherry farms in Washington—have felt impacts. A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas July analysis found economic growth likely slowed after a recent sharp decline in unauthorized immigration. The largest economic hits are anticipated in sectors like construction and agriculture, where immigrants make up substantial proportions of the workforce, according to a February report summarizing research and data analysis from the global investment bank Goldman Sachs. 

Steven Hubbard, a data scientist with the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, said examining the impacts of immigration policy on the agricultural sector is one way to localize larger economic issues related to immigration.

“If agriculture’s happening in a rural area, and there are workers who are coming in and working, and if we see decreases in that workforce, then we see it impacting local economies in a large way,” Hubbard said. 

Health disparities

Immigrants face hurdles to inclusion and well-being in the U.S. Restrictive immigration policies have negative impacts on immigrant mental health, according to a February report from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. A 2024 study based on National Health Interview Survey data from 2011 to 2018 and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found increased deportation rhetoric may result in higher psychological distress in Latinos without legal status—and even potentially among Latino citizens.

Immigrants are uninsured at higher rates than U.S.-born citizen adults, according to data analysis of a 2023 survey of immigrants in the U.S. by KFF and the Los Angeles Times. A KFF analysis of the 2022 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement found noncitizen workers are also more likely to be low-income than their citizen counterparts,  including among those who hold college degrees. 

Now, federal health policy changes as of July 2025 will bar many immigrants from accessing vital health care services, according to policy analysis by KFF.

Educational outcomes

Children of immigrants are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher than children with at least one U.S.-born parent, according to KFF analysis of the 2023 Current Population Survey. That’s despite pervasive social and economic disadvantages. 

Public schools may see funding decrease as fewer children of immigrants attend school, according to data and policy analysis published in April by KFF. 

Preliminary findings released in June from a study that analyzed attendance data from five school districts in California’s Central Valley over three years found 22% growth in student absenteeism after an increase in federal immigration enforcement activity in early 2025, with an absenteeism spike that was particularly pronounced among students in kindergarten through grade five. 

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy first created in 2012 to provide temporary protection from deportation and access to work authorizations for some young immigrants in the U.S. without legal status, has promoted upward mobility and psychological well-being among recipients, according to a 2021 report from the American Immigration Council. 

A 2024 study based on census data from 2007 to 2019 and published with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that in locations with significant populations of DACA-eligible workers, U.S.-born workers’ employment rates remained stable while their wages increased after the policy’s implementation. 

Restrictions on and challenges to DACA over the past decade, however, significantly reduced college enrollment among low-income students without legal status, according to a 2024 study examining enrollment trends in two California university systems published in the Journal of College and University Law. 

Impacts of immigration enforcement

Increased deportations tend to lead to poorer economic outcomes for U.S.-born workers as well as losses of tax revenue, according to the Brookings Institution. 

Research into the county-level impacts of the Secure Communities immigration enforcement policy launched in 2008 found it led to a decline in the number of foreign-born workers in affected counties, as well as declines in employment rates for local U.S.-born workers. 

Some research implies that for every 1 million unauthorized immigrant workers deported under Secure Communities, almost 90,000 native-born workers lost employment, according to analysis by PIIE. 

In states like Arizona that have mandated E-Verify, a system through which U.S. employers can check the legal work status of employees, the downwind impacts on labor supply decrease agricultural output and compel farmers to reduce acreage for labor-intensive crops, at least in the short-term, according to analysis from the American Enterprise Institute. A 2017 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found strict E-Verify mandates also led to lost tax revenue.  

Natalie Skowlund is an award-winning bilingual journalist based in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work often focuses on health disparities, justice issues and immigration, and it has been published with NPR, KFF Health News, Colorado Public Radio, the Index on Censorship and more.