Letter to Editor of Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

December 21, 2005

Your continuing articles on the response of the Seventh Circuit to the increase in appeals from immigrants seeking asylum in the United States highlight an immigration court system that needs reform. You reported Judge Posner's observation that the Seventh Circuit had reversed the Board of Immigration Appeals in a "staggering 40 percent" of the cases it considered on the merits. He concluded that administrative adjudication in these cases fell below"the minimum standards of legal justice."

In cases appealed to the Board, decisions under the new summary affirmance policy are one-line dismissals, giving no hint of how the Board reached its result. This new policy of "streamlining" appeals, which permits a single Board member to affirm the decision of an immigration judge, merely shifts the burden of first-level review from the Board to the Courts of Appeals, producing more appeals to those Courts, and more remands and outright reversals than ever before, particularly in asylum cases.

The immigration hearing process is flawed in other ways as well. For example, the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago have recently published a study of videoconferencing in immigration hearings. In such hearings, a detained immigrant facing removal is brought to a Homeland Security holding center in suburban Chicago. The immigrant sits in a small room with a television set and a t.v. camera. From there, the immigrant watches as the immigration judge, the government attorney, and his own attorney (if he has one) conduct his hearing in a downtown Chicago courtroom. The study found that the videoconferencing process did not allow detainees to communicate effectively with their counsel, and frequently led to difficulties in presenting documentary evidence. Technological malfunctions and foreign language interpretation created added difficulties.

The Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, and the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago recommend that:

1. The Board amend its streamlining policy so that, in any case where a hearing is held on the merits of an immigrant's application to remain in the U.S., the Board must review the decision of the immigration judge and issue its own written decision, making that decision sufficiently detailed to permit meaningful judicial review.
    
2. The Attorney General increase the number of Board members if that will help the Board handle the large number of appeals responsibly.
    
3. Congress provide whatever additional resources the Board needs to process appeals appropriately.
    
4. There be a moratorium on video-teleconferenced hearings for detainees facing removal until proper technical standards are developed and procedures are implemented to allow for in-person hearings if good cause is demonstrated.

Gordon Waldron
Chicago Council of Lawyers

Diana White
Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice

Lisa Palumbo
Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago