Community-built map tracks ICE activity across Tucson, Arizona

Tucson migrant advocates have designed a new tool to help track immigration-related enforcement in and around the city as arrests increase under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

Tucson Migra Map allows people to document and visualize enforcement activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. While revealing trends, the tool also raises questions about the security, transparency and limits of public tracking tools.

“This indicates the level of chaos and how disruptive this is to our community,” activist Lucia Vindiola said in a statement. Vindiola launched the La Bodega mutual aid group to provide groceries and other aid to people affected by the tightened controls.

“We’re seeing firsthand the impact on families, preventing them from getting their groceries and supplies,” Vindiola said.

In the year since Trump took office, immigration detentions more than tripled in fiscal year 2025, from fewer than 200 at the end of 2024 to more than 800 in June 2025. The response in communities across the country has been rapid, with groups such as the Tucson Rapid Response Network organizing to monitor and track federal immigration action on the streets.

Geographer Dugan Meyer, one of the map’s creators, has a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona who volunteers with Tucson Rapid Response and other related organizations.

“This project came out of documentation work done by Rapid Response, but also in the city,” Meyer said. “This is a community research project, a community mapping project.” The data is taken from spreadsheets maintained since January 2025 that track and document federal enforcement actions in Greater Tucson, such as raids, vehicle stops and aerial surveillance.

These include the December raid at one of several targeted Taco Giro locations where U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva was pepper-sprayed by federal agents.

Incidents on the map are reviewed and classified as “confirmed” or “credible but unconfirmed” based on the level of evidence.

“If we have photographs of, for example, an officer wearing a tactical vest that says ICE, that’s confirmed,” Meyer said. “Believable unconfirmed, we are very confident something happened.”

Meyer said a qualified rapid response observer witnessing an event, even if he or she did not photograph it, would be an example of a credible unconfirmed event.

“Their testimony on this subject would be enough for us,” he said.

Hundreds of people, including noncitizens, contributed their eyewitness accounts of immigration enforcement to the map and the database from which it draws, according to the Tucson Migrant Map website. Information from local news is included, as well as reports collected by Rapid Response and other neighborhood networks such as Migra Watch, as well as information shared on social media and in WhatsApp groups.

Rapid Response member Steven Davis documented five incidents, including one in which he was pepper-sprayed by law enforcement. He says having these incidents recorded and published strengthens his efforts to better show people what ICE is doing in their communities.

“The value of observation is that we bring this out of the shadows and make it public,” Davis said. “The Migra Map is a publicly accessible map that makes visible this activity which mainly takes place behind the scenes.”

Davis said knowing the data he collects will be used for Migra Map makes it more important for him to document diligently.

“There’s the saying ‘garbage in, trash out.’ I want to make sure the information I provide is the most accurate I can provide,” Davis said.

Meyer said that as of the end of April, the team had reviewed about 562 incidents, of which about 300 met the threshold for inclusion. The goal is to review reported incidents within a week and then add eligible cases.

“We know the map is underestimated by any estimate,” Meyer said.

The map also includes police facilities and immigration detention centers, as well as flight paths of surveillance flights from various federal agencies.

The accuracy of the reports has been confirmed as more data is collected, Meyer said. For example, repeated vehicle reports often confirm surveillance cases.

Meyer said he hopes the map will eventually become a publicly accessible information platform.

He said he thinks the map “can show in a way that people may already know intuitively.”

“It really helps us think straight when we can see these things in relation to each other,” he added.

Meyer said this makes it easier to spot trends and identify hot spots like the El Super grocery store on Tucson’s south side, which is frequented primarily by Latino customers and has seen a high concentration of stops.

“It’s used as a hunting ground for this, but there are others as well,” Meyer said, such as specific apartment complexes targeted by ICE or other agencies.

The Tucson Migra card was not the first of its kind.

Last year, an initiative called People over Papers was used nationally to track immigration controls before being shut down by its host site, Padlet, for violating its content policy.

Federal officials have said this type of tracking puts agents at risk, and that other tracking sites, including ICEBlock, have already been taken offline after the Trump administration called for them to be taken down.

Meyer said he hoped the Constitution’s protection of free speech would protect Migra Map from a similar fate and that citizens in other places would be encouraged to launch their own initiatives.

Davis, the observer, said that unlike previous trackers, the Migra Map doesn’t attempt to alert people to events happening in real time, but reports enforcement actions after the fact.

“It doesn’t tell you where ICE is active right now. It tells you where ICE has been active over the last several months,” Davis said. “You can file a Freedom of Information Act with the Tucson District Office and get the exact same information we provide on the map.”

Meyer also noted that he and the other developers have made the project public.

“It’s not a crime to collect and share this information,” Meyer said.

However, some contributors choose to report anonymously out of fear.

“I think anyone paying attention is concerned, to say the least,” about the current administration, Meyer said. He said he felt privileged to be able to publicly partner with the project.

But he admits that Migra Map is far from perfect.

“The important thing is that it doesn’t tell us much,” Meyer said. “As much as many people would like this to be a real-time warning system, this map cannot be one,” he said.