Judges, lawyers say video justice is just adding to the mess within U.S. immigration courts

In Fort Worth, a judge in a black robe sits in a small courtroom with nowhere for the public to watch the proceedings.

Thirty miles to the east in a Dallas courtroom, a government attorney sits before a judge's empty bench.

At a federal lockup hundreds of miles away in Big Spring, detainees in prison garb line up in front of a camera.

In all three places, their images are beamed back-and-forth to one another so that asylum seekers and other immigrants can learn their fate on big flat-screen TVs. This is immigration court, where some attorneys and judges say a rapid expansion in the use of video conferencing — including in numerous new tent courtrooms along the border — is exacerbating difficult conditions in a system plagued by a backlog of more than 1 million cases.

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2019/09/28/judges-lawyers-say-video-justice-is-just-adding-to-the-mess-within-u-s-immigration-courts/