Embodied encounters, emerging publics in U.S. immigration courts

In this article, we investigate the potential of informal, public encounters in immigration courts in shaping pro se respondents’ case trajectories. In the absence of attorney representation, we frame these encounters as ways of “managing the meanwhile” until more robust forms of support are ensured (Berlant, 2016). To do so, we use feminist ethnographic methods attentive to the friction and unpredictability of public engagement. We investigate three distinct sites: the waiting area, legal helpdesks, and in absentia master calendar hearings. In each, we highlight how such encounters can rework institutional flows of information, make space for connection, and break the legal circuits of “due process as usual.” To support this argument we explore how various distancing practices, both particular to and extending beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, curtailed bids for legal protection by alienating pro se respondents and, in more mundane ways, by restricting opportunities for public encounter and informal support. As court norms and technologies continue to evolve, we caution against policies that diminish opportunities for person-to-person interaction and call for increased attention to the potential of publicness in court.