Contexts of reception in U.S. immigration court

Abstract

The growing backlog in the U.S. immigration court system exacerbates long-standing concerns about immigrants' access to justice in the country and delayed deportation hearings. However, scholarly work which links these concerns to broader studies of migration, space, time, and socio-legal research remains limited. I address these gaps by examining how different contexts of reception relate to immigrant defendants’ access to time, a benefit often provided to them by an attorney. By studying why and how immigration attorneys matter in these contexts, my work provides evidence that attorneys provide access not only to legal knowledge, but also to time and timeliness. It also contributes new insights to the broader field of U.S. immigration studies where previous work has focused on immigrant incorporation (Portes and Rumbaut 2006), enforcement (Armenta 2017), and detention (Ryo and Peacock 2018). I examine these contexts in three ways. First, I examine nationwide differences in case completion time, finding that cases often last much longer – sometimes years – for those out of detention and/or those with an attorney. Second, I focus on immigration courts at the regional level, interviewing 35 deportation defense attorneys working either in the Fort Snelling, MN or Omaha, NE courts. Third, in these two courts I examine the relationship between attorney representation and the timing of two final court decisions: exclusion from the U.S. which requires their exit, and inclusion which provides the ability to stay. Combined, my analyses find that immigration courts often rush proceedings through for individuals who are detained and/or lacking an attorney. Those without legal access take a shorter amount of time to a judge’s decision, which will likely result in deportation from the U.S. Based on prior analyses of administrative court data, I focus on Fort Snelling and Omaha knowing that one court has an above-average case backlog (Omaha) while another does not (Fort Snelling). Here, I investigate how different legal cultures in each court relate to attorneys’ specific strategies concerning delays and caseflow management (Steelman 1997). I interview attorneys in both areas who spoke to me about those differences, revealing their perceptions about fairness in their local court institutions, what roles and strategies they employ, and how these perceptions and roles feed into one another. These interviews further the idea that immigration lawyers not only provide their clients with access to legal knowledge; they also offer them access to time and timeliness in the court process. Putting these interviews into context, my quantitative analyses of immigration cases indicates that despite the strong likelihood of deportation, non-citizens with attorneys tend to either extend their case on “borrowed time” by avoiding or delaying deportation, or by accelerating trial to reach their desired outcome of inclusion. In closing, I discuss the implications of these findings for U.S. immigration policy, improving immigration court efficiency, and the growing literature on longitudinal court research.