“The main bulk of inaccuracies and records going missing concerned asylum applicants who were facing deportation and have applied for asylum in the immigration court system,” Kocher told Border Report.

Data from asylum cases, in particular, often went missing and got so bad by November 2019 that TRAC officials sent McHenry a letter pointing out issues they were seeing. But he said they were ignored.

“They initially ignored us, then stonewalled us and then eventually dismissed the issues outright,” Kocher said.

At one point it got so bad that TRAC for several months had to pull its asylum-case tracking tool bar offline, which is used by thousands of immigration lawyers, advocates and journalists.

He said EOIR even supplied the U.S. Supreme Court with inaccurate immigration data, which it had to walk back.

“The real problem is the American people and policymakers and American public should know and have a sense of how many people are applying for asylum relief and the outcomes of those cases. It’s really just a fundamental transparency and accountability issue and with those records missing it was presenting a very incomplete picture and potentially undermining the agency’s ability to monitor itself,” Kocher said.

With a new leader, Kocher is hopeful that the agency will be more consistent with its data management and more receptive to outside input.

“In this case, with the EOIR it was really unfortunate just how hostile Director McHenry was and we certainly hope the incoming director will be more open to a frank conversation and to just understand we have a shared interest in fixing issues,” he said.