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

Observed Hearings
Staff at the Legal Services Center for Immigrants at LAF trained approximately
fifteen law students and volunteers on basic immigration law, the nature of Master
Calendar hearings, and observation and data recording techniques. Center staff held a
one- to two-hour training session for observers. Once trained, each observer attended
several Master Calendar hearings conducted by videoconferencing in the “Ceremonial
Court Room” at the Chicago Immigration Court. In total, observers witnessed 110
hearings (involving 112 immigrants) over the course of the summer and fall of 2004. 47
Each hearing lasted between five and forty-five minutes, and observers usually watched
several hearings at a single sitting. Observers viewed Master Calendar hearings before
five different judges. 48 In order to minimize any “observer effect” – that is, changes in
behavior when people are aware they are being observed – we did not inform the court
that the hearings were being monitored.
We would have preferred to compare these results with observed results from a
control group of in-person detained Master Calendar hearings. Unfortunately, there was
no control group available during this study. 49 Even with the absence of a control group,
47 Some immigrants’ cases were consolidated into a single hearing and some immigrants were observed in
multiple hearings, though the observation of the same immigrant occurred randomly.
48 These five judges were the only judges that conducted detained Master Calendar hearings by
videoconferencing during the summer and autumn of 2004. One judge declined to use videoconferencing
for reasons of which we are unaware, since we were barred by EOIR from interviewing judges.
49 During the time that we conducted our court observations, very few detained Master Calendar hearings
were performed without videoconferencing. The few in-person hearings that took place were adjudicated
by the one judge who did not use videoconferencing for any hearings. We considered conducting
observations on non-videoconference detained Master Calendar hearings in the spring of 2005, when there
was a brief window of time during which detained hearings were being done in-person, but these hearings
were again before only one judge, who did not conduct any hearings by videoconferencing. It would have
been impossible when comparing videoconferencing outcomes to non-videoconferencing outcomes to
determine which differences were attributable to videoconferencing and which to a judge’s particular habits
and style. We also considered using in-person, non-detained Master Calendar hearings as a control group,
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