Scholars at Columbia University organized a six-day ācrisis researchathonā to try to answer one question: Where are the children?
Gil and Ahmed, a historian at Columbia, assembled a team of what Gil calls ādigital ninjasā for a ācrisis researchathon.ā These volunteers were professors, graduate students, researchers, and fellows from across the country with varied academic focus, but they all had two things in common: an interest in the history of colonialism, empire, and borders; and the belief that classical research methods can be used not just to understand the past but to reveal the present.
They set up a Telegram chat and a master Google spreadsheet, and then they began looking for any publicly available dataāgovernment immigration records, tax forms, job listings, Facebook pagesāthey could use to isolate and locate the detention centers that could be holding these children.
The result of their week of frantic research is Torn Apart / Separados, an interactive web site that visualizes the vast apparatus of immigration enforcement in the US, and broadly maps the shelters where children can be housed. The name is meant to evoke not only the families who have been separated, but the way in which this sundering rips the social fabric of our country.
