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Detained Immigration Courts

View more insights in Professional - Law - Criminal Law - Immigration Law

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Ingrid Eagly discusses the modern development and institutional design of detained immigration courts—that is, the courts that tie detention to deportation.

Image courtesy of interviewee. July 31, 2024

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This video is an interview discussing detained immigration courts, featuring Ingrid, a researcher who co-authored an article on the subject. Ingrid explains that detained immigration courts are part of a system handling cases for individuals who are detained during their immigration proceedings, often throughout the entire adjudication process. Her article, published in the Virginia Law Review, aims to combine existing scholarship on immigration courts and detention, exploring fundamental fairness and due process within these systems.

Key points from their discussion include:
- Over 3.6 million people have had their cases initiated while in detention since 1983, with significant growth in the number of cases over time.
- The demographics of detainees show a disproportionate representation of Latino males, primarily from Mexico and Central America.
- A shift in the adjudication model is noted, with cases increasingly heard in rural areas and detention centers, moving away from traditional urban immigration courts.
- Institutional differences between detained and non-detained courts include geographical location, expedited case timetables, reliance on video adjudication, and limited public access.
- The judges assigned to detained courts tend to have backgrounds that may influence case outcomes, such as a greater likelihood of being male and having prior experience as prosecutors.

Ingrid emphasizes the implications of their work for both academic research and policy discussions regarding immigration detention and court reform, highlighting concerns about fairness and access to justice within the detained immigration court system.

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Here are five key points from the video regarding the article on detained immigration courts:

1. **Focus on Detained Immigration Courts**: The article by the author and co-author Steven Schafer primarily examines detained immigration courts, which handle cases of individuals who are detained during their immigration proceedings. This aspect of the immigration court system is presented as a new contribution to existing scholarship.

2. **Evolution of Detained Cases**: The article provides a historical overview of how the number of cases initiated in detention has significantly increased since 1983, highlighting that over 3.6 million cases have started while individuals were in immigration detention, with a marked increase prior to the pandemic.

3. **Demographics and Patterns**: The analysis reveals demographic information about individuals in detained courts, showing a disproportionate representation of adult males from Latin American countries, particularly Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. It also notes gender disparities, indicating that only a small percentage of cases initiated in detention involve women and girls.

4. **Different Court Models**: The study explores various models of detained immigration courts, including those located in urban areas, rural locations, and within detention facilities, emphasizing the growing prevalence of co-located courts. It suggests that this segregation may impact the judicial process and the perceived fairness of these courts.

5. **Judicial Specialization and Backgrounds**: The article investigates the backgrounds of immigration judges in detained versus non-detained courts, finding a troubling trend where judges in detained courts are more likely to come from a law enforcement or prosecutorial background, which might influence their decision-making and result in higher denial rates for asylum claims and other legal relief options.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video:

1. **Introduction of the Article**:
- "Detained Immigration Courts is actually the title of my new article that I just published with my co-author Steven Schafer in the Virginia Law Review."

2. **Defining Detained Immigration Courts**:
- "Detained immigration courts refers to immigration courts that hear the cases of people who are detained, often detained during the entire time of the adjudication of their case."

3. **Focus of the Article**:
- "Our focus on the detained immigration courts is a new contribution to the scholarship that has looked at immigration courts overall."

4. **Assessment of Fairness**:
- "We look inside what we identify as a separate adjudication system and sort of assess and ask questions about the fundamental fairness and due process issues that occur within those detained courts."

5. **Data Utilization**:
- "Utilizing immigration court data to really just ask some basic descriptive questions about where are these courts, how have they evolved over time, and who has their cases decided in these courts."

6. **Trends in Detention**:
- "Over 3.6 million people have had their cases start while they were in immigration detention... the numbers have increased over time."

7. **Regional Variations**:
- "We’re increasingly seeing detained cases and detained courts being located in rural areas and small cities outside of major urban areas."

8. **Judicial Backgrounds and Specialization**:
- "We find a real division between the judges, which allows us to then compare the backgrounds of the judges who are in the detained courts versus the non-detained courts."

9. **Gender and Nationality Discrepancies**:
- "Adult males from Latin America who are disproportionately assigned to these detained courts... three and four people who had cases initiated in detention were from the countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras."

10. **Conclusions and Implications**:
- "We would like to inject into that discussion an awareness about the courts that are linking detention to immigration courts and whether we should still have it and how it threatens fundamental fairness and due process within the immigration courts."

These quotes encapsulate the key themes and findings of the article regarding detained immigration courts, their functioning, and implications for fairness in the legal process.

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Here are some similar articles related to detained immigration courts, immigration policy, and due process issues within the immigration system:

1. **"The Perils of Detained Immigration Courts"** - This article examines the challenges faced by individuals in detained immigration proceedings, including the lack of legal representation, expedited timelines, and the impact on their ability to present a fair case in front of a judge.

2. **"Justice in a Box: The Impact of Video Adjudication in Immigration Courts"** - This article analyzes the rise of video hearings in immigration courts, discussing how this method affects the fairness of the adjudication process for detainees, including implications for due process.

3. **"Demographics and Detention: Examining the Overrepresentation of Latinos in Immigration Custody"** - A research study focusing on the demographics of detained immigrants, exploring systemic biases and factors contributing to the disproportionate number of Latino detainees in the U.S. immigration system.

4. **"Moving the Courts: The Shift from Urban to Rural Immigration Adjudications"** - This article discusses the trend of moving immigration courts to rural areas and its implications for access to legal assistance, representation, and the effectiveness of the adjudication process.

5. **"Due Process in Detention: The Importance of Fairness in Immigration Proceedings"** - This paper delves into the fundamental due process rights of individuals in immigration detention, addressing the procedural shortcomings of detained immigration courts and the necessity for reform.

6. **"The Role of Judges in Immigration Courts: Gender, Experience, and Case Outcomes"** - This article examines how the backgrounds and demographics of immigration judges can influence case outcomes in detained settings, particularly focusing on gender and prior prosecutorial experience.

7. **"Reforming Immigration Courts: Balancing Enforcement and Fairness"** - A review of proposals for reforming the immigration court system to improve fairness, transparency, and processes in the face of increasing detentions and expedited case handling.

These articles address various aspects of the detained immigration court system, such as procedural fairness, demographic issues, judicial influences, and the challenges of the current system, complementing the discussion presented in Ingrid's interview.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Detained Immigration Courts is actually the title

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of my new article that I just published

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with my co-author Steven Schafer in the Virginia Law Review.

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Um, and detained immigration courts,

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as we use the term refute, refers to immigration courts.

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Um, that here the cases of people who are detained,

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often detained during the entire time

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of the adjudication of their case.

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Um, our, our focus on the detained immigration courts,

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is a new contribution to the scholarship.

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Um, there's been a fair amount of scholarship now

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that has looked at the immigration courts overall,

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which is a set of, you know, now hundreds of,

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of federal judges who hear the cases of people who are,

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going through the immigration court system facing

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possible deportation from the United States,

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including the really important cases

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of people claiming asylum.

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Um, they're not, these judges aren't part of,

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an article one or an Article three court,

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but instead they are federal judges

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who serve within an agency called the Executive Office

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for Immigration Review.

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Um, inside the Department of Justice,

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there's also a separate body of scholarship that's sort

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of multidisciplinary and has been looking, at the, the,

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the, the companion piece.

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Then that's detention. So we have a growing system

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for detention in the United States that uses jails, prisons,

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and federal detention centers

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to house people at while they're going through,

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immigration proceedings.

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Um, so what our article does

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that is unique is it really links together these discussions

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on immigration courts on the one hand

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and detention on the other to look inside,

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what we identify as a separate adjudication system

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and sort of assess and ask questions about the fundamental

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fairness and, due process issues

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that occur within those detained courts.

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The purpose is to really bring those two, pieces

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of scholarship together.

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And in doing so, we had several aims. Um, in this article.

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I'd say the first major aim is,

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utilizing immigration court data

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to really just ask some basic descriptive questions about

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where are these courts, how have they evolved over time,

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and who has these case, their cases decided in these courts?

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The second main aim, is really sort of one to look at

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what are the different models when we say detained

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immigration courts, what falls within

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detained immigration courts

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and how have those,

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changes in court practices evolved over time?

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Um, and finally, we really want to interrogate the, sort

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of the root structures and rules,

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and procedures that apply in detained immigration courts

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by doing interviews with practitioners in these courts,

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reviewing other public records that we, obtained

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through public records requests

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and through court observations,

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at detained immigration courts, around the country

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to try to get at some of those

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Key questions, about whether this really is a separate

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and segregated immigration court system.

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We rely on a range of data to do our analysis,

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but in prevent presenting a descriptive analysis,

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we are really relying on data

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that is available from the Executive Office

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of Immigration Review

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or EOIR, which is an administrative database of all

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of the cases that have been decided

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by judges within those courts.

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Um, and those data, go back, many years

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and contained over 8.5 million individual cases,

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and we narrow that data down to, cases

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that were decided from 1983 to 2022

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with 1983 being an important year,

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because that's when the federal agency EYR was created.

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Um, and what we find just descriptively is that during

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that time period, since 1983,

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over 3.6 million people have had their cases start while

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they were in immigration detention.

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Um, and importantly, the numbers have increased over time.

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So whereas in 1983,

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fewer than a thousand people had their

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case start within detention.

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Um, this, the numbers reached an all time high by 2019 prior

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to the pandemic where nearly 200,000 people had their case,

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start within detention.

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We've also seen some variation within presidential

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administrations within the United States

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with the George W. Bush administration

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and the Obama administration,

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having particularly high numbers, in detained courts

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with, as high as two in,

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in every three people having their,

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case begin in detention.

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Another part of the answer to your question, though is also,

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using that EOIR data

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to look descriptively at other fields to describe the people

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who have their cases heard there and here.

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Um, we're able to rely on the fields for nationality,

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and more recently available fields for gender and for age.

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So using those fields, I think we're able to,

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you know, engage in some of the debates about,

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the criminalization of immigrants

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and show that it's really, you know, adult males,

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from Latin America who are disproportionately, assigned

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to these detained courts.

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In terms of nationality, we find

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during this time period from 83 to 2022, three

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and four, people

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who had cases initiated in detention were from the countries

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of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras.

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Um, and when we compare that to non detained courts,

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we see a, a greater diversity of nationalities represented.

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Um, we also see divergence in gender.

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Again, gender information was less available in earlier

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years, so we only rely on it starting in 2019,

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but we're able to see that in non detained courts.

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There's a fairly even split between women

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and girls on the one hand, and men

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and boys on the other who, who are,

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who are having cases heard in these courts.

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Um, however, in detention,

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we really see a gendered pattern emerge,

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where we have only 23% of those cases who are,

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that are initiated in detention are of women

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and girls, primarily with people

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who had their cases initiated in the,

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in the migrant protection protocols

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or MPP, the Remain in Mexico program.

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Um, and in terms of unaccompanied children,

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somewhat surprisingly, we do find children

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who have their case heard and decided in detention,

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but it was only 1% of the cases overall.

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We traditionally think of it immigration court,

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at least people who are familiar with immigration

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or immigration practitioners as being a downtown,

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urban court that is generally located in a government

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building, you know, maybe on the 13th floor.

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Um, and you go there

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and have your, your, your case heard for asylum

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or for some other claim.

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Um, and that model has existed for a long time

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and still exists.

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Um, and those courts do hear the cases

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of detained individuals.

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Um, but we've seen two major shifts

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during the time of our study.

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One is that fewer and fewer cases are heard in these

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downtown urban immigration courts.

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Um, and more, as I'll talk about, are being moved to,

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rural areas and small cities,

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and moved inside detention centers.

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Um, and additionally, the other pattern that we see is

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that major urban cities, including San Francisco,

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Los Angeles, where I'm sitting right now, Atlanta, New York,

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Chicago, these cities have actually created a separate

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court, often in a separate building

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and separate location to here detained courts, which,

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really goes to our, one of the major findings

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of this segregation between the court systems.

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So after thinking about, urban courts,

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another major model that I've already alluded

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to is the co-located courts,

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and these are courts

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that are actually housed within sites of detention.

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Um, this is something that started to emerge in the 1960s,

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when the INS,

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which is the former immigration enforcement agency, started

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to, started to prioritize the building of more

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and more, more

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and more detention centers around the country

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that were exclusively run by the federal,

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by the federal government.

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Um, and now we've seen more

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and more of these centers built,

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and especially more built, in,

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in the south, in the United States.

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So we see centers in general Louisiana, in Percel, Texas,

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and built into the, the very hardscape

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of these detention centers are immigration courts.

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Uh, just a few other models I could just quickly mention.

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Our court courts, the, the migrant protection protocols,

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courts are the remain in Mexico courts that are in tents

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or shipping containers along the border.

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Um, immigration adjudication centers, which are remote sites

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Where judges are separated from the individuals

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who case their hearing.

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Um, and oftentimes that these courts are focused on,

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on cases of detained individuals for part four of our paper,

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digs in more to institutional design elements

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of the courts.

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And we're particularly interested in

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how this separate court system

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that we identified the detained immigration courts,

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varies from its sister.

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Um, it was a court system, the non detained court system.

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So there's many aspects to this analysis.

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I don't have time to get into all of it here.

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Um, but one important distinction that we find is geography.

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So we're increasingly seeing detained cases

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and detained courts being located in rural areas

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and small cities outside of, you know, major urban areas.

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Um, and we're also seeing,

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a different hard hardscape in these courts.

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So oftentimes the detained immigration courts don't really

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resemble what we might think of as a court, you know,

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they're inside a tent or a shipping container

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or a border patrol station

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or inside a prison or inside a jail.

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Um, and, and so they don't really have the same kind

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of features as we might as,

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as we might see in a non detained court.

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There's also a different set of institutional rules

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that we identify.

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So for example, judge rules that require cases

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to be decided on a very expedited basis.

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Those rules have been as fast as the day,

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or as a week,

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but place the detained cases on a much faster timetable

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than non detained cases.

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We also see a heavier reliance on video adjudication, so

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where people aren't actually physically present in the

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courtroom, but rather are appearing from a remote location

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such as a detention center.

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Um, and importantly, we,

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although immigration courts are supposed to be public,

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we see constrained public access to sites such as these,

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prisons or detention centers that have special rules

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and can be difficult for the public family members.

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Loved ones to enter a final, thing that,

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if I just have a little bit more time I,

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that I do think is important to mention is the issue

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of specialization that we identify.

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Um, this has been something that,

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scholars have been really interested in.

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I know that Edward Chang in an important article on federal

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courts, written several years back,

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talked about the problematic issue of, of specialization.

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His focus was on the federal, court of appeals.

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Um, and he posited the question of, you know,

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what would happen if, if we just took federal, courts

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of appeals judges and, assigned all the ones

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who have a background as a prosecutor,

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to criminal criminal cases.

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Um, you know, he's, he writes in his article that, you know,

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regardless of your political leanings, this kind

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of lopsided assignment of ju judicial background, he says,

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would be almost unquestionably undesirable.

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So we were interested in sort of taking

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That insight and seeing

11:54.165 --> 11:56.285
what happens when we look at the backgrounds

11:56.425 --> 11:57.645
of immigration judges.

11:58.185 --> 12:01.685
And we were able to do this by gathering all

12:01.685 --> 12:04.285
of the biographies, judicial biographies

12:04.345 --> 12:05.965
of the judges in our study,

12:06.705 --> 12:09.285
and compare the judges who are assigned

12:09.285 --> 12:13.125
to these detained courts, to the judges who are just

12:13.645 --> 12:15.605
assigned to non detained courts.

12:15.945 --> 12:18.605
And importantly, we do find a segregation,

12:18.665 --> 12:22.845
in many cities, for example, in Boston we have,

12:22.905 --> 12:25.485
you know, almost 40 judges who've heard cases

12:25.545 --> 12:26.885
during the time period studied,

12:27.185 --> 12:30.085
but only very few, about six,

12:30.345 --> 12:32.725
he heard most all of the detained cases.

12:32.905 --> 12:37.285
So we find a, a, a real division between the judges,

12:37.285 --> 12:39.685
which allows us to then compare the backgrounds

12:39.745 --> 12:42.565
of the judges who are deta in the detained courts versus

12:42.625 --> 12:43.685
the non detained courts.

12:44.145 --> 12:46.245
And importantly, we find when we compare these judges,

12:46.555 --> 12:48.565
that the judges who are assigned

12:48.645 --> 12:51.525
to the detained courts are more likely to be male,

12:51.755 --> 12:54.245
they're more likely to have served in the military,

12:54.625 --> 12:57.085
and they're more likely to have, in their,

12:57.225 --> 12:59.445
in their background to have served previously

12:59.445 --> 13:03.085
as a criminal court prosecutor, either in federal, state

13:03.305 --> 13:04.685
or a local city court.

13:05.635 --> 13:09.295
Now, we're not making, we're including in our analysis,

13:09.435 --> 13:12.095
any conclusion that this background is associated

13:12.125 --> 13:13.415
with a lower grant rate.

13:13.675 --> 13:16.135
But we do cite to a, a pretty extensive

13:16.135 --> 13:18.615
and growing body of scholarship that has found

13:18.615 --> 13:21.255
that precisely these characteristics, such

13:21.255 --> 13:23.655
as having served as a DHS prosecutor

13:23.795 --> 13:28.495
or having, having, being male, are, is associated

13:28.565 --> 13:33.095
with A-A-A-A-A greater rate of denying cases

13:33.355 --> 13:35.295
and a greater rate in particular of,

13:35.395 --> 13:37.095
of denying asylum claims.

13:37.275 --> 13:41.215
We hope that the article will be read by other scholars,

13:41.215 --> 13:43.775
scholars who are interested for, interested, for example,

13:44.115 --> 13:46.295
in judicial decision making, scholars

13:46.295 --> 13:48.175
who are interested in immigration courts.

13:48.515 --> 13:51.495
We think that identifying the detained immigration courts

13:51.595 --> 13:55.135
as a separate area for sustained inquiry,

13:55.275 --> 13:56.615
we hope will spur other,

13:56.705 --> 13:59.495
other related research in looking at the detained

13:59.495 --> 14:00.575
immigration courts.

14:01.275 --> 14:05.455
We also think that the article has relevance, for those

14:05.455 --> 14:09.335
who are interested in policy, a policy around detention

14:09.875 --> 14:11.575
around immigration courts,

14:11.575 --> 14:15.335
there's been increasing discussion of, the need to

14:16.305 --> 14:20.415
limit, reliance on immigration detention,

14:20.475 --> 14:23.815
and the need to reform the immigration courts, which people,

14:24.035 --> 14:27.535
sort of on both sides of the aisle agree, need some,

14:27.885 --> 14:29.655
some, some kind of a reform.

14:29.675 --> 14:32.215
And there's proposals that have been made in recent years,

14:32.715 --> 14:34.895
to try to execute some of those goals.

14:35.355 --> 14:38.575
Um, and we would like to inject into that discussion,

14:38.755 --> 14:42.415
an awareness about the courts that are really linking,

14:42.415 --> 14:46.335
detention to, to, to immigration courts

14:46.335 --> 14:48.015
and of this, of this separation

14:48.155 --> 14:50.335
and whether we should still have it and whether it,

14:50.635 --> 14:53.175
and how it threatens fundamental fairness

14:53.355 --> 14:55.815
and due process within the immigration courts.

"Examining the Evolution and Impact of Detained Immigration Courts: A New Scholarly Contribution"

00:00:00 - Detained Immigration Courts is actually the title of my new article that I just published with my co-author Steven Schafer in the Virginia Law Review. and detained immigration courts, as we use the term refute, refers to immigration courts. that here the cases of people who are detained, often detained during the entire time of the adjudication of their case. our, our focus on the detained immigration courts, is a new contribution to the scholarship. there's been a fair amount of scholarship now that has looked at the immigration courts overall, which is a set of, you know, now hundreds of, of federal judges who hear the cases of people who are,
00:00:46 - possible deportation from the United States, including the really important cases of people claiming asylum. they're not, these judges aren't part of, an article one or an Article three court, but instead they are federal judges who serve within an agency called the Executive Office for Immigration Review. inside the Department of Justice, there's also a separate body of scholarship that's sort of multidisciplinary and has been looking, at the, the, the, the companion piece. Then that's detention. So we have a growing system for detention in the United States that uses jails, prisons,
00:01:26 - to house people at while they're going through, immigration proceedings. so what our article does that is unique is it really links together these discussions on immigration courts on the one hand and detention on the other to look inside, what we identify as a separate adjudication system and sort of assess and ask questions about the fundamental fairness and, due process issues that occur within those detained courts. The purpose is to really bring those two, pieces of scholarship together. And in doing so, we had several aims. in this article. I'd say the first major aim is,
00:02:07 - to really just ask some basic descriptive questions about where are these courts, how have they evolved over time, and who has these case, their cases decided in these courts? The second main aim, is really sort of one to look at what are the different models when we say detained immigration courts, what falls within detained immigration courts and how have those, changes in court practices evolved over time? and finally, we really want to interrogate the, sort of the root structures and rules, and procedures that apply in detained immigration courts by doing interviews with practitioners in these courts,
00:02:50 - through public records requests and through court observations, at detained immigration courts, around the country to try to get at some of those Key questions, about whether this really is a separate and segregated immigration court system. We rely on a range of data to do our analysis, but in prevent presenting a descriptive analysis, we are really relying on data that is available from the Executive Office of Immigration Review or EOIR, which is an administrative database of all of the cases that have been decided by judges within those courts. and those data, go back, many years
00:03:35 - and we narrow that data down to, cases that were decided from 1983 to 2022 with 1983 being an important year, because that's when the federal agency EYR was created. and what we find just descriptively is that during that time period, since 1983, over 3.6 million people have had their cases start while they were in immigration detention. and importantly, the numbers have increased over time. So whereas in 1983, fewer than a thousand people had their case start within detention. this, the numbers reached an all time high by 2019 prior

"Demographic Patterns and Geographic Trends in Detained Immigration Courts: An Analysis of Case Initiation from 1983 to 2022"

00:04:18 - start within detention. We've also seen some variation within presidential administrations within the United States with the George W. Bush administration and the Obama administration, having particularly high numbers, in detained courts with, as high as two in, in every three people having their, case begin in detention. Another part of the answer to your question, though is also, using that EOIR data to look descriptively at other fields to describe the people who have their cases heard there and here. we're able to rely on the fields for nationality,
00:05:01 - So using those fields, I think we're able to, you know, engage in some of the debates about, the criminalization of immigrants and show that it's really, you know, adult males, from Latin America who are disproportionately, assigned to these detained courts. In terms of nationality, we find during this time period from 83 to 2022, three and four, people who had cases initiated in detention were from the countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras. and when we compare that to non detained courts, we see a, a greater diversity of nationalities represented.
00:05:43 - Again, gender information was less available in earlier years, so we only rely on it starting in 2019, but we're able to see that in non detained courts. There's a fairly even split between women and girls on the one hand, and men and boys on the other who, who are, who are having cases heard in these courts. however, in detention, we really see a gendered pattern emerge, where we have only 23% of those cases who are, that are initiated in detention are of women and girls, primarily with people who had their cases initiated in the, in the migrant protection protocols or MPP, the Remain in Mexico program.
00:06:25 - somewhat surprisingly, we do find children who have their case heard and decided in detention, but it was only 1% of the cases overall. We traditionally think of it immigration court, at least people who are familiar with immigration or immigration practitioners as being a downtown, urban court that is generally located in a government building, you know, maybe on the 13th floor. and you go there and have your, your, your case heard for asylum or for some other claim. and that model has existed for a long time and still exists. and those courts do hear the cases of detained individuals.
00:07:04 - during the time of our study. One is that fewer and fewer cases are heard in these downtown urban immigration courts. and more, as I'll talk about, are being moved to, rural areas and small cities, and moved inside detention centers. and additionally, the other pattern that we see is that major urban cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, where I'm sitting right now, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, these cities have actually created a separate court, often in a separate building and separate location to here detained courts, which, really goes to our, one of the major findings of this segregation between the court systems.
00:07:49 - another major model that I've already alluded to is the co-located courts, and these are courts that are actually housed within sites of detention. this is something that started to emerge in the 1960s, when the INS, which is the former immigration enforcement agency, started to, started to prioritize the building of more and more, more and more detention centers around the country that were exclusively run by the federal, by the federal government. and now we've seen more and more of these centers built, and especially more built, in, in the south, in the United States.

"The Structure and Challenges of Detained Immigration Courts: A Study of Geography, Accessibility, and Judicial Backgrounds"

00:08:31 - and built into the, the very hardscape of these detention centers are immigration courts. just a few other models I could just quickly mention. Our court courts, the, the migrant protection protocols, courts are the remain in Mexico courts that are in tents or shipping containers along the border. immigration adjudication centers, which are remote sites Where judges are separated from the individuals who case their hearing. and oftentimes that these courts are focused on, on cases of detained individuals for part four of our paper,
00:09:12 - of the courts. And we're particularly interested in how this separate court system that we identified the detained immigration courts, varies from its sister. it was a court system, the non detained court system. So there's many aspects to this analysis. I don't have time to get into all of it here. but one important distinction that we find is geography. So we're increasingly seeing detained cases and detained courts being located in rural areas and small cities outside of, you know, major urban areas. and we're also seeing,
00:09:51 - So oftentimes the detained immigration courts don't really resemble what we might think of as a court, you know, they're inside a tent or a shipping container or a border patrol station or inside a prison or inside a jail. and, and so they don't really have the same kind of features as we might as, as we might see in a non detained court. There's also a different set of institutional rules that we identify. So for example, judge rules that require cases to be decided on a very expedited basis. Those rules have been as fast as the day, or as a week, but place the detained cases on a much faster timetable
00:10:31 - We also see a heavier reliance on video adjudication, so where people aren't actually physically present in the courtroom, but rather are appearing from a remote location such as a detention center. and importantly, we, although immigration courts are supposed to be public, we see constrained public access to sites such as these, prisons or detention centers that have special rules and can be difficult for the public family members. Loved ones to enter a final, thing that, if I just have a little bit more time I, that I do think is important to mention is the issue of specialization that we identify. this has been something that,
00:11:12 - I know that Edward Chang in an important article on federal courts, written several years back, talked about the problematic issue of, of specialization. His focus was on the federal, court of appeals. and he posited the question of, you know, what would happen if, if we just took federal, courts of appeals judges and, assigned all the ones who have a background as a prosecutor, to criminal criminal cases. you know, he's, he writes in his article that, you know, regardless of your political leanings, this kind of lopsided assignment of ju judicial background, he says, would be almost unquestionably undesirable.
00:11:52 - That insight and seeing what happens when we look at the backgrounds of immigration judges. And we were able to do this by gathering all of the biographies, judicial biographies of the judges in our study, and compare the judges who are assigned to these detained courts, to the judges who are just assigned to non detained courts. And importantly, we do find a segregation, in many cities, for example, in Boston we have, you know, almost 40 judges who've heard cases during the time period studied, but only very few, about six, he heard most all of the detained cases.

"Analyzing Judicial Profiles and Implications for Immigration Court Reform"

00:12:37 - which allows us to then compare the backgrounds of the judges who are deta in the detained courts versus the non detained courts. And importantly, we find when we compare these judges, that the judges who are assigned to the detained courts are more likely to be male, they're more likely to have served in the military, and they're more likely to have, in their, in their background to have served previously as a criminal court prosecutor, either in federal, state or a local city court. Now, we're not making, we're including in our analysis, any conclusion that this background is associated with a lower grant rate.
00:13:16 - and growing body of scholarship that has found that precisely these characteristics, such as having served as a DHS prosecutor or having, having, being male, are, is associated with A-A-A-A-A greater rate of denying cases and a greater rate in particular of, of denying asylum claims. We hope that the article will be read by other scholars, scholars who are interested for, interested, for example, in judicial decision making, scholars who are interested in immigration courts. We think that identifying the detained immigration courts as a separate area for sustained inquiry,
00:13:56 - other related research in looking at the detained immigration courts. We also think that the article has relevance, for those who are interested in policy, a policy around detention around immigration courts, there's been increasing discussion of, the need to limit, reliance on immigration detention, and the need to reform the immigration courts, which people, sort of on both sides of the aisle agree, need some, some, some kind of a reform. And there's proposals that have been made in recent years, to try to execute some of those goals.
00:14:53 - an awareness about the courts that are really linking, detention to, to, to immigration courts and of this, of this separation and whether we should still have it and whether it, and how it threatens fundamental fairness and due process within the immigration courts.

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