Browsing by Subject "immigration court proceedings"

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Skype at the Border: A Qualitative Analysis of Video Teleconferencing in Immigration Court Proceedings During the Trump Era
(2020-05) Arceneaux, Sydney
Since 1996, immigration courts have used video teleconferencing (VTC) in immigration court proceedings surfacing questions about the ethicality of its use. Initially, scholars raised strong arguments against the use of VTC because of the inability to build trust between respondent and judge through video-mediated communication. Later, Ingrid Eagly, a law professor at UCLA, found that the correlation between depressed rates of relief in detained cases conducted via video teleconferencing was a consequence of litigants’ disengagement with the legal process involved in applying for relief. To evaluate the current use and impact of VTC on immigration court proceedings during the Trump Era, I interviewed immigration attorneys and law students, as well as visited detention centers and observed an immigration court proceeding. I found that restricting access to the legal resources necessary to navigate the U.S. immigration system exposes much deeper, more structural inequities in our asylum system. The prevalence of video-mediated communication is but a symptom of this inequality, a tool in the detention-to-deportation timeline.