Assessing the Impact of Video Teleconferencing Technology in United States Immigration Courts Open Access
Thurman, Devon (Summer 2026)
Abstract
This dissertation examines the use of video teleconferencing (VTC) in United States immigration courts. VTC technology allows court proceedings to be conducted remotely, and its use has grown dramatically in recent years. Today, the majority of detained immigration court removal proceedings in the United States are conducted via VTC, often without the consent of the respondent. Across three papers, I argue that VTC does not merely change the logistics of court proceedings—it fundamentally alters the conditions under which consequential decisions about removal are made, with systematic consequences for respondents who appear over video.
In the first paper, I examine how exposure to disrupted VTC procedures shapes public perceptions of procedural fairness. Using a survey experiment that relies on original artistic renderings of immigration asylum hearings, I find that individuals exposed to VTC connectivity failures are less likely to perceive immigration courts as procedurally fair, and that this effect does not depend on whether respondents are also exposed to the legitimating symbols of law typically present in a courtroom.
In the second paper, I investigate the causal effect of VTC on immigration court outcomes and the mechanisms through which that effect operates. Drawing on an updated dataset of EOIR administrative records, I document systematic changes in the data over time and conduct the first direct empirical test of the mediation pathway proposed in prior scholarship—that VTC worsens outcomes by reducing access to legal representation. I find that this pathway operates in the opposite direction: VTC actually increases the likelihood that respondents obtain an attorney. The existence of a significant direct effect of VTC on removal outcomes, net of attorney access, points to pathways through which the technology shapes judicial decision making itself.
In the third paper, I investigate those pathways through fieldwork conducted at Stewart Immigration Court in Lumpkin, Georgia, where I observed 176 hearings across a one-month period. I consider three possible mechanisms: reduced judicial empathy, impaired credibility assessments, and degraded information quality. I find strong evidence for the information quality mechanism—technological failures were pervasive, interpretation services were severely strained, and the structural conditions of VTC hearings systematically limited the information available to judges. I also find that attorneys appearing via VTC faced persistent difficulties advocating for their clients, suggesting that VTC may undermine the quality of legal representation rather than access to it.
Taken together, these three papers offer a comprehensive account of how VTC shapes immigration adjudication—from how the public perceives VTC proceedings, to how the technology affects individual case outcomes, to the mechanisms underlying those outcomes. The dissertation advances a mixed-methods approach to the study of VTC in immigration court, bringing together experimental, quantitative, and qualitative evidence to build a comprehensive picture of the technology's effects.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Video Teleconferencing in U.S. Immigration Courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 An Overview of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Video Disruptions and Perceptions of Procedural Fairness in U.S. Immi-
gration Courts 9
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Why do people accept the decisions of courts? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 Procedural Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.2 Judicial Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.3 Putting the traditions together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.4 The Role of Unmet Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 United States Immigration Courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3.1 Video Teleconferencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.2 Empirical Implications in the Context of Immigration Courts . . . . . 19
2.4 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4.1 Survey Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4.2 Outcome and Other Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4.3 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4.4 Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.4.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.4.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3 Judicial Decision Making by Video Teleconference: A Study of Detained
Immigration Removal Proceedings 37
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2 Previous Scholarship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.1 Empirical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.3.2 Testable Implications in this Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.4 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.4.1 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.4.2 Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.4.3 Effect of Video on Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4.4 Sensitivity Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.4.5 Causal Mediation Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4 How Video Teleconferencing Shapes Judicial Decision Making: Evidence
from Stewart Immigration Court 70
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.2 What do we know about VTC’s effects? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.2.1 Direct Effects of VTC on Case Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.2.2 Empirical Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.3 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.4 Case Background: Stewart Immigration Court and Stewart Detention Center 80
4.5 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.5.1 In-person and VTC hearings at Stewart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.5.2 Observations from Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.5.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
A Appendix to Chapter 2 105
A.1 Survey Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
A.2 Sample Balance for Race and Education (All Levels) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
B Appendix to Chapter 3 110
B.1 Data Cleaning Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Bibliography 113
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