Disappeared

Data and tools related to extralegal or ambiguous searches, detentions, and deportations

View the tracker at https://disappeared.us.

Send tips to tips at the domain disappeared.us. Inquiries may be sent to inquiries at the same domain.

Data

The data is in disappeared.xml.

Each person is documented using a person element:

    <person name="Rumeysa Ozturk" age="30">
        <affiliation>Columbia University</affiliation>
        <status>Student Visa</status>
        <taken when="2025-03-25">
            <link source="AP" url="https://apnews.com/video/watch-the-moment-officials-detain-turkish-student-rumeysa-ozturk-6d24235307a546fdb495813f890d8c5b"/>
        </taken>
        <moved to="Louisiana">
            <link source="AP" url="https://apnews.com/video/watch-the-moment-officials-detain-turkish-student-rumeysa-ozturk-6d24235307a546fdb495813f890d8c5b"/>
        </moved>
        <summary source="AP" url="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-detainees-students-ozturk-khalil-78f544fb2c8b593c88a0c1f0e0ad9c5f">
            <p>Federal officers detained 30-year-old Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk Tuesday as she walked along a street in suburban Boston. A senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said without providing evidence that an investigation found Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” a U.S.-designated terrorist group.</p>
            <p>Friends and colleagues of Ozturk said her only known activism was co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that called on Tufts University to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel.  Ozturk has been taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. A U.S. District judge has given the government until Friday to explain why Ozturk was being detained.</p>
        </summary>
        <link source="AP" url="https://apnews.com/video/watch-the-moment-officials-detain-turkish-student-rumeysa-ozturk-6d24235307a546fdb495813f890d8c5b"/>
    </person>

Notes on the XML

• At present, there is no formal schema definition (XSD), but that's coming.
• The person element can have zero or one affiliation element (to note any institutional association, e.g. a university).
• The person element can have zero or one status element, intended to denote, if available, the person's immigration/residence/citizenship status (before any noted detention/deportation).
• The person element can have one summary element.
• The text/HTML content in the summary element can be set in p elements or in a CDATA block (e.g. <![CDATA[<p>Hello, world!</p>]]>).
• The person element can have multiple link elements, each with source and url attributes.
• Each person element can have zero or more sought, taken, moved, and deported elements.
• The sought, taken, moved, and deported elements can each contain zero or more link elements.
• Each sought, taken, moved, or deported element can have a when attribute (presently untyped, though it's recommended one use dates of the form 2025-01-01 or 2025-01).
• The sought element(s) can have an at attribute.
• The taken element(s) can have a from attribute.
• The moved or deported element(s) can have a to attribute.

Validating XML

There is a RelaxNG schema in the repo (disappeared.rng). You can validate changes to the XML using any suitable tool. For example, using xmlstarlet:

$> xmlstarlet val --err -r disappeared.rng disappeared.xml

Generating HTML

Using virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper (from the top of the cloned repo):

$> mkvirtualenv disdev
(disdev)$> python -m pip install -e .
(disdev)$> dismg html disappeared.xml > disappeared.html

Mirroring

You can host the HTML by downloading the disappeared.html file from this repository:

$> wget https://codeberg.org/reed/disappeared/raw/branch/main/disappeared.html

Or:

$> curl -o disappeared.html https://codeberg.org/reed/disappeared/raw/branch/main/disappeared.html

Known Mirrors

• dedis.info/disappeared
• fm2279.xyz/disappeared

If you'd like your mirror listed here, submit an issue or pull request!

Put something like the above in a cron job for regular refresh/updating.

Additional CLI Tools

List

You can convert the XML data into a (tab-delimited) list:

$> dismg list disappeared.xml  | column -t -s'        '

Online/Other Tools

There is a tool for generating person elements at https://dedis.info/disappeared/add.cfm that may be useful for getting started with a new case.