We help immigration researchers and organizations execute on their most important data, web, and strategic communications projects by working alongside you from concept to completion.

What we do

Our Work Work

From immigration policy to public health — helping research reach further.

Detention Pregnancy Tracker

The Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) knew that immigrant detention can be uniquely dangerous for women who are pregnant, postpartum, and nursing—but they had no way of collecting data on this sensitive population.

Visit project

ICE Detention Dashboard

The recent growth of immigrant detention generated new demands for facility-level data from reporters, policymakers, and researchers.

Visit project

Immigration Professor Blog Platform

The Immigration Professor's Blog (ImmProf Blog), created by Professor Kevin Johnson, has been a crucial source of immigration news and analysis since 2005—but it was almost lost to digital history.

Visit project

Immigration Enforcement Analytics

The Immigration Enforcement Dashboard is an independent project developed by Relevant Research to enhance public accessibility of immigration enforcement data.

Visit project

American Families United (AFU)

One of the most overlooked groups in the national immigration debate are U.S. citizens married to immigrants with no pathway to legal status.

Visit project

See all our projects

Leadership

About our Co-Founders

Austin Kocher

President

Austin is a nationally-recognized academic expert in immigration data, law, and policy, with a background in critical social science research, government transparency, non-profit leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from the Ohio State University and has spent more than fifteen years studying immigration enforcement, resulting in academic and popular publications, regular features in national news outlets, and a substack dedicated to immigration research at austinkocher.substack.com. He envisioned Relevant Research as critical support infrastructure to academics, non-profits, and policy advocates who need reputable, rigorous, and responsive research to support their mission and goals.

Adam Sawyer

Director of Research

Adam leads the data science team and works through each problem alongside the client until discoveries emerge. He was a data researcher at TRAC at Syracuse University and the International Organization for Migration, where he contributed to the World Migration Report 2022, and he taught English to immigrants and refugees. He holds an MA in International Relations from Syracuse University and an MS in Geospatial Information Science from the University of Texas at Dallas, and is bilingual in English and Spanish. Committed to collective social progress, he creates public goods like Detention Reports.

Riwaj Chalise

Director of Software Development

Riwaj leads technical development, turning research into working systems that scale as projects grow. A software engineer and project manager, he holds a Master of Information Technology in Cloud Analytics from La Trobe University and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Information Technology from the Deerwalk Institute of Technology. He has built backend systems for a real estate platform and an HR system, and has taught web development and database management. He cares most about the public impact of what he builds, from advancing electoral processes in Nepal to the research he supports today.

Trusted by