Videoconferencing in Removal Hearings: A Case Study of the ...

immigrant’s upper body. 44 There is a device for projecting documents onto the television
screen, so that the immigrant can view them.
At Broadview, the remote site, immigrants sit in a row of chairs in a narrow
hallway while they wait for their hearings. An ICE guard escorts them one-by-one in and
out of a small room with an open door, a 27-inch television, a small table and two chairs
– one for the guard, and one for the immigrant. Although attorneys may, in theory,
appear at Broadview to represent their clients, few choose to do so, since appearing at
Broadview means sacrificing access to the court, the trial attorney, and files, and losing
the ability to gauge the dynamics of the courtroom. 45 The guard sits next to the
immigrant, regulates the equipment, and performs clerical duties like giving application
forms to immigrants and checking the general Broadview fax machine for documents
sent by the Court. From his chair, the immigrant can watch the judge, the attorneys, and
the interpreter (if there is one) in Chicago.
The judge and attorneys often carry on lengthy, untranslated conversations off the
record. Court proceedings are not transcribed by a stenographer but taped from a
recorder controlled by the judge. The judge usually commences the hearing by asking
the immigrant his or her name to assure that the equipment is functioning properly. After
that initial exchange, the judge and the attorneys typically ignore the immigrant until the
44 According to the EOIR, its videoconferencing technology has the capability to display frames within a
frame, so that the court and the detainee can see how each appears to the other. We did not see the Chicago
court use this function.
45 It is so unusual for attorneys to appear at Broadview that when one attorney from the Legal Assistance
Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago did so, he was at first told by the ICE guard that he was not permitted
to sit with his client in front of the videoconferencing monitor.
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