The Dynamics of State and Local Contexts and Immigration Asylum Hearing Decisions

Chand, Daniel E.; Schreckhise, William D.; Bowers, Marianne L.

doi:10.1093/jopart/muw043

Cited by 21 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Although we cannot say with an absolute degree of certainty the ALJs’ explicit exemption from performance evaluations is the root cause of this, there is little doubt the evidence suggests IJs and ALJs reach their decisions differently with respect to the concepts studied here. These findings corroborate the work of Chand et al (2017), who found the substantial variation in IJs’ decisions were linked to the local political and social environments, and Taratoot and Howard (2011), who found that ALJs did not appear to take into account the political party of their agency head or the president.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…The only specific evidence rule that binds the IJ is when the DHS seeks admission of an applicant’s prior criminal conviction. 35 The criminal conviction evidence rule, however, does not set a high bar for admission allowing any evidence that “reasonably indicates the existence of a criminal conviction.” By contrast, under the APA, ALJs are required to exclude “irrelevant, immaterial, or unduly repetitious evidence,” although no standardized rules of evidence exist across agencies, as they do for U.S. district courts (Chand, Schreckhise, & Bowers, 2017; Schreckhise, 2015). 36 Instead, each agency is free to establish its own rule for evidence.…”

Section: Ijs and Non-alj Adjudicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is unclear as to whether prior immigration enforcement experience influences IJ decisions. At least one study found judges with such experience were less likely to grant asylum (Ramj-Nogales et al, 2009), whereas another found no significant effect (Chand et al, 2017). The majority of respondents (68.8%) had no prior government experience working with their issue.…”

Section: Decision-making Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Independence in Administrative Adjudications: When and Why Agency Judges Are Subject to Deference and Influence

Chand

Schreckhise

2018

Administration & Society

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Are administrative adjudicators subject to external influence and pressures? We present the results from a nationwide survey of agency adjudicators, focusing on immigration judges (IJs) and administrative law judges (ALJs) in the Social Security Administration (SSA). ALJs follow decisional procedures spelled out in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and are given substantial legal protections from agency pressures. IJs do not follow APA procedures, nor do they receive its protections. We find IJs give significantly greater deference to the positions of the public, their agency, Congress, and the president, and report more favorable attitudes toward interest groups in adjudications.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Ijs and Non-alj Adjudicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Decision-making Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Independence in Administrative Adjudications: When and Why Agency Judges Are Subject to Deference and Influence

Chand

Schreckhise

2018

Administration & Society

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“…Individuals going before an administrative court have the right to hire legal counsel, but, unlike defendants facing criminal prosecution, they are not provided one if they cannot afford an attorney. Thus, many citizens challenging agencies in administrative adjudications lack legal representation, even in immigration court (Chand et al, 2017;Ramji-Nogales et al, 2009). On the survey, judges provided estimates of the percentage of cases they hear in which the private party was represented by an attorney.…”

Section: Measures and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting Agency Judges in an Age of Politicization: Evaluating Judicial Independence and Decisional Confidence in Administrative Adjudications

Chand

2019

The American Review of Public Administration

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Administrative judges, who serve in state and federal agencies, as opposed to a separate branch of government, are an understudied, and occasionally controversial, type of public administrator. Many who find themselves in administrative courts protest the agency judge’s lack of independence. According to critics, because agency judges are members of—and often evaluated by—the very agency with a vested interest in the case, they are subject to political influence and cannot possibly be an impartial arbitrator. In the United States, various approaches to addressing this concern have been employed. At the federal level, Congress grants some administrative judges statutory protections from agency evaluation. Most states have utilized an organizational independence approach by placing administrative judges in separate agencies dedicated to administrative adjudications. Via a national survey returned by 250 agency judges, this study compares perceptions of judicial independence and decisional confidence. It finds that administrative judges serving in independent agencies (known as central panels) report higher levels of judicial independence and more confidence their rulings will not be overturned. The theoretical implications are significant for public administration and administrative law scholars, especially those concerned about the politicization of administrative duties.

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“…Although the IHP has been described as one of “most significant activities” of federal immigration courts (H. of Rep. 2001: 16), very little is known about the program's origin, growth, or use. Scholars have conducted valuable empirical research on U.S. immigration courts (Ramji‐Nogales et al 2007; Legomsky 2010; Benson and Wheeler 2012; Das 2013; Koh 2013; Eagly and Shafer 2015; Miller et al 2015a, 2015b; Chand et al 2017; Ryo and Peacock 2018; Ryo 2019; Kim and Semet 2020), but this work has generally focused on deficits in the court and asylum process, access to counsel in immigration proceedings, and the significance of bond hearings. Similarly, although immigrant detention has grown in recent years as a topic of scholarly inquiry (Hernández 2007, 2013; Bosworth 2014; Hiemstra 2019; Evans and Koulish 2020; Ryo and Peacock 2020), less common is research that addresses how carceral sites that hold people as prisoners while serving criminal sentence are also sites of immigration control (García Hernández 2017; Kaufman 2019; Brouwer 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Institutional Hearing Program: A Study of Prison-Based Immigration Courts in the United States

Eagly¹,

Shafer²

2020

Law Soc Rev

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This article presents the findings of the first research study of the Institutional Hearing Program (IHP), a prison‐based immigration court system run by the U.S. Department of Justice. Although the IHP has existed for four decades, little is publicly known about the program's origin, development, or significance. Based on original analysis of archival records, this study makes three central contributions. First, it traces the origin and growth of the IHP within federal, state, and municipal correctional facilities. Notably, although the IHP began in 1980 as a program to deport Cuban asylum seekers held in civil detention in an Atlanta prison, it now operates to deport noncitizens serving prison sentences in twenty‐three federal prisons, nineteen state prison systems, and a few municipal jails. Second, this article uncovers the crucial role that prison‐based immigration courts have played in shaping the design of carceral institutions around the priorities of an immigration system that primarily targets Latinos for deportation. Third, this article shows how immigration courts embedded in carceral spaces have served as influential, yet overlooked, incubators of changes to immigration law and practice that today apply to all immigration courts, not just the IHP. These findings have important implications for contemporary understandings of the relationship between immigration detention, racialized control of migration, and penal punishment.

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The Dynamics of State and Local Contexts and Immigration Asylum Hearing Decisions

Cited by 21 publications

References 37 publications

Independence in Administrative Adjudications: When and Why Agency Judges Are Subject to Deference and Influence

Independence in Administrative Adjudications: When and Why Agency Judges Are Subject to Deference and Influence

Protecting Agency Judges in an Age of Politicization: Evaluating Judicial Independence and Decisional Confidence in Administrative Adjudications

The Institutional Hearing Program: A Study of Prison-Based Immigration Courts in the United States

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