Dignity in Removal Proceedings
About the Author: Sofia Gurrola received her BA in Political Science from California State University, Long Beach and participated in Justice in View in the West Los Angeles immigration court. She is interested in the study of law and has plans to attend law school in the near future.
Abstract: A judge’s simple choice to keep a family together in court shows how dignity can still be protected in small but powerful ways.
Keywords: Los Angeles; dignity, judicial discretion
Citation
Gurrola, Sofia. 2026. “Dignity in Removal Proceedings.” Semi-Structured (Washington, D.C.), On Ethnographic Witnessing: Student Encounters with Immigration Court, vol. 1 (3). https://doi.org/10.57912/34113345
Access link: www.publicethnography.com/semi-structured-all-issues/issue-3
As a Mexican American woman from South Central Los Angeles, I entered immigration court expecting it to confirm the fears I associate with detention: feelings of isolation, surveillance, and the reduction of people’s lives to case numbers. What I encountered was more complicated.
People with pending removal proceedings arrive at court visibly anxious, navigating an unfamiliar institution whose procedures often seemed designed to distance them from the process shaping their futures. The government does not provide an attorney for removal proceedings, and families are left to represent themselves if they cannot afford one. The statutes and legal procedures are constantly shifting. People timidly asked security guards where to go and relied on family members to accompany them, translate, and offer reassurance. Even those represented by an attorney frequently appeared alone, as many immigration attorneys appeared remotely via WebEx.
During my first observations, I was surprised by the number of people in one courtroom. Almost every seat in the row of benches was filled, only leaving a few spots in the back. At first, I could not imagine how so many cases could be heard in a single master calendar hearing! But I quickly realized that many of the people present were there to support family members. I understood this, as I would not want my own family going through this process alone.
People and their family members sat in the gallery waiting for their case to be heard. The benches were sectioned off by a small gate that separated them from the judge’s bench and tables reserved for counsel. When their A-number, the identification number assigned to a person in the immigration system, was called, they crossed this gate and took a seat at a large, wooden table before the judge. At times, people were confused over where to sit. Spanish interpreters relayed most of the information to people in the courtroom. Translations occurred smoothly when interpreters sat beside the clerk in person. However, most interpreters appeared virtually through the courtroom’s monitors. Technical difficulties frequently delayed hearings.
During my time at the West LA courthouse, I never observed a non-Spanish interpreter – and not because every person before the judge spoke Spanish. For those who spoke neither English nor Spanish, clerks relied on hand signals and body language to indicate that their case was next. Some cases were rescheduled to a later date until the court could provide an interpreter in people’s first language. Many appeared confused during their hearing, as hand signals and body language alone could not replace linguistic interpretation. For those cases, a lack of interpreters limited people’s ability to actively participate in their own hearing. Family members often stepped in to translate or clarify on behalf of the clerk. Sometimes, the responsibility of translation fell upon children who struggled with relaying legal terms back to their parents.
Yet, some judges recognized these barriers and used small acts of discretion to lessen them. I observed a judge physically walk over to a calendar hanging off the wall. He flipped the calendar pages down a few months and pointed to the new hearing date, using the visual cue to make the scheduling information easier to understand. In another case, the clerk instructed a person to sit before the judge. As she rose from her seat on the benches, her children rose to walk alongside her. The clerk put her hand out to stop the children, saying, “You’re fine right there,” referring to the observation benches.
The proceeding continued until the judge asked, through the interpreter, whether anyone was joining her in court that day. The woman turned to point at her children sitting quietly on the benches. The judge let out a surprised “Oh!” and motioned with her hands for the children to sit beside their mother at the counsel’s table. As the children made their way through the gate, the judge leaned over to quietly instruct the clerk to allow all family members to sit together. She stated, “Don’t separate them; it’s a part of their support system.”
Judges sometimes paused to explain procedures, addressed people directly, or invited them to clarify their circumstances, creating small but powerful opportunities for people to understand and participate in their proceedings. Others did not. In other cases, judges—and interpreters—quickly recited respondents’ rights. This gave little time for people to fully comprehend or question the judge on the details of their next hearing.
Overall, the efforts of some judges revealed that judicial discretion can mitigate some of the anxieties people bring into the courtroom. Within a bureaucratic setting that can feel dehumanizing, judicial discretion—even in decisions as simple as allowing families to remain together—can preserve some measure of agency and dignity. Before and after entering the courtroom, those in removal proceedings are human beings—not an A-number in the system. In the instance above, the judge made the removal proceeding feel just a little less intimidating. A mother did not have to stand before the judge alone. Judges can—and must—use their discretion to preserve dignity and create moments of recognition and support within removal proceedings.
About this issue
This article is part of On Ethnographic Witnessing: Student Encounters with Immigration Court, a special issue of Semi-Structured. This collection features the work of 22 student ethnographers, who offer insights, analysis, and experiences based on hundreds of hours in immigration courtrooms across the country over the last few years. Through their work in observation projects under the direction of scholar-activists Lauren Heidbrink, Amelia Frank-Vitale, and Rebecca Galemba, students gained critical training in ethnographic practice and a crash course in immigration law, especially in the disjunctures between law on the books and law in practice. Understanding that wider audiences would benefit from hearing and learning directly from their students, Heidbrink, Frank-Vitale, and Galemba approached Semi-Structured to steward this thoughtful, ambitious collection. We are honored to run this issue and invite readers to consider what student observers witnessed, felt, and learned in court and why ethnographic observations are important to broader publics.
Semi-Structured is the open-access journal from the Public Ethnography Lab. The journal is dedicated to showcasing ethnography as it unfolds in the world. This journal exists because we believe ethnographic work matters beyond the academy—that the insights generated through sustained engagement with communities, organizations, and institutions can and should inform decisions, shape practices, and drive meaningful change.