American data professional launches a ‘United States Disappeared Tracker’
by Dr. Piyush Mathur
March 30, 2025 – For the ‘disappearing’ humans of the United States (US), there may be an odd ray of hope—if that’s what to call it.
Danielle Harlow, a resident of the Midwestern state of Ohio, announced around two days ago on LinkedIn that she has created ‘a dashboard to track individuals who are deported, detained, or renditioned for political reasons’ in the US President Donald Trump’s second term.
Self-described as a ‘public policy and data solutioning professional’ on her profile, Harlow cited concerns in her post about a growing authoritarian trend in the US. She also states in her post that she was inspired by the work of the USA Disappeared Tracker, a BlueSky account that posts links to media reports about similar cases.
Harlow’s own project, however, is a proper dashboard that utilizes Tableau.
Her effort reflects broader concerns among activists, data professionals, and people generally about transparency and human rights in the current political climate inside the United States.
Harlow’s LinkedIn post has predictably generated considerable interest and positive feedback—but especially from fellow female professionals on LinkedIn. Suzanne Turner, President of Turner 4D/Turner Strategies, thanked Harlow for her initiative, and Abigail Dubiniecki, a privacy lawyer and data strategist, called her undertaking 'critical work.' There were many other compliments on her post.
Given that her post also sought volunteers 'to help maintain the data', Harlow quickly received such offers publicly from two female software developers.
A male commentator also supplied information that Alireza Doroudi, one of the renditioned, was being held in Jena, Louisiana; this locational information was not available when Harlow launched her dashboard, she pointed out.
This is a partial screenshot of Danielle Harlow’s LinkedIn post, made in late March 2025, regarding the launch of her United States Disappeared Tracker.
One commentator, however, raised a red flag about people’s growing trust in Bluesky, given that Harlow mentioned an account on that platform to have inspired her own project.
Perhaps on a more urgent note, Mary Joy Cunningham—whose LinkedIn profile describes her as a social worker with experience working with immigrants in the US—alerted Harlow to the possibility that her tracker could be used by government authorities or ‘bad actors’ to endanger former asylum seekers to the US.
These are screenshots of two comments made by two different respondents to Danielle Harlow’s LinkedIn post announcing the launch of her United States Disappeared Tracker.
Yet another commentator wondered whether Harlow intends to extend her tracker backward also into previous years, which have also seen several cases of ‘disappearing’ people in the US.
Responding to a query regarding how she collects her information about these 'disappearing' people, Harlow stated that her sources are media reports.
As of March 30, 2025, Harlow’s LinkedIn post can be accessed here. Her tracker, once again, can be accessed here.
Dr. Piyush Mathur is the editor of Thoughtfox. Check out his book Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017).