Gothamist, a website about New York City news, arts and events, and food, recently published the following article. The authors, Phoebe Taylor Vuolo, Aurora Ferrer and Victoria Cheng, explain why court interpretation has become so much more difficult due to the increased use of video teleconferencing. Excel Translations does not endorse, recommend, or make representations with respect to the following content.
On the morning of May 9th, in Judge Monte Horton’s courtroom, a video screen hung on the wall, showing an empty white room. An officer appeared on the screen, a man in an orange jumpsuit hesitating behind him. “Hello? We’re having some problems,” the officer said.
The video screen that federal immigration detainees use to see the courtroom remotely was blinking and flashing. Every second the image faded to green, then black.
The technical issues persisted throughout the day. When another respondent appeared on the screen, their attorney, Sophia Gurulé, noted the effects the video glitches could have on him, given “extensive cognitive issues” and traumatic brain injury. She requested that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bring him to court for an in-person hearing.
Gurulé’s motion was denied, and the hearing continued. Fifteen miles away, in Bergen County Detention Center, her client listened to the interpreter speaking in Spanish over his attorney, and watched the flashing image of the courtroom.
Gurulé said that because they are experiencing their hearings through video, her clients often end up confused. She said she finds herself explaining important aspects of a hearing, such as whether her client was given the right to get out on bond, after the fact.
“They’ll say, ‘I don’t even know what happened,'” Gurulé said. “I’ll have to go back and explain to them, ‘Oh, you were denied your liberty. You were denied the opportunity to get out of jail.”
Video teleconferencing (VTC) has been controversial due to numerous technical problems at the Varick Street immigration court in New York City, prompting pushback from lawyers, advocates, and even some judges.
VTC may also make it harder for detainees to access language interpretation. In eight interviews with interpreters in the New York Immigration Court system, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs, each said VTC made it difficult to accurately interpret what is said during the proceedings.
“It’s different from having the respondent sitting next to you,” one interpreter said. “Everyone is looking at that respondent on VTC. People lose focus, but us, as the interpreters, we are trained to glue ourselves [to the immigrant].”
The interpreters noted that during VTC hearings, an immigrant’s gestures or facial expressions are often missed, and that VTC made motioning for a detainee to slow down or stop speaking extremely difficult. According to the interpreters, VTC can make the job even more challenging when conveying information to respondents who have limited education or are illiterate.
“There are times you see that, when you talk to them, they’re not being responsive, maybe it’s an educational problem,” the interpreter added. “But then you realize that maybe Spanish is not their native language, it’s not their primary language, and they speak K’iche, Quechua,” they added, referring to indigenous languages spoken in areas of Guatemala and Peru.
“I consider ourselves the most important players inside the courtroom besides the respondent,” the interpreter said. “We become their voices. We are trained to be unbiased—we’re neutral, but without us, the hearings, they don’t move forward.”
This year almost 92 percent of all hearings required an interpreter, according to the Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) — the agency that oversees the nation’s immigration courts. Freelance language interpreters are provided by SOS International via an $80 million contract with EOIR.
About 7 percent of all 1.2 million immigration hearings were done through VTC in 2018, increasing more than twofold since 2012.
During a hearing, questions and statements directed at the respondent are interpreted “consecutively.” This means that the judge or attorney speaks first, and after a pause, the interpreter translates.
But to help the respondent follow the general proceedings of the hearing, such as the closing arguments of an attorney or the final decision of the judge, interpreters must use “simultaneous” interpretation, translating the proceedings in real time.
Several interpreters and lawyers said that VTC makes simultaneous interpretation almost impossible.
“The interpreter normally would go lean into their ear, speaking to them quietly, instead of at the same volume,” Gurulé said. “Imagine if you’re hearing—from a jail, on a video screen, where sometimes you can’t even see anyone — Spanish and English at the same volume. That would be hard for anyone, that would be hard for an English speaker.”
Judy Jenner, a federally-certified Spanish court interpreter and spokesperson for the American Translators Association, said she would never use simultaneous interpretation with VTC. She said that unless the detainee has access to a headset with two distinct audio channels, it would be difficult to interpret in a coherent way.
“I don’t see a universe where this would work, where the interpreter and the judge are talking at exactly the same time, on the same channel. I don’t know how the defendant would be able to pick that apart,” Jenner said. “Interpretation is also about communication, and if the defendant can’t understand what you’re saying, I feel we’ve all failed.”
In February 2019, the Legal Aid Society, the Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defenders Services, along with seven detained non-citizens, filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that ICE’s use of VTC hurts detainees’ chances in court.
“Hearing and understanding the disembodied voices of judges, attorneys and experts is already a difficult task—adding an interpreter, and often an additional level of technology, into that mix regularly makes the hurdle insurmountable,” Brooke Menschel, civil rights counsel at Brooklyn Defender Services, said in an email.
“We often see attorneys and their clients forgo interpretation at all rather than for the client to struggle to hear and understand the interpretation,” she said.
John Martin, New York’s EOIR regional public information officer, said in a statement that VTC hearings provide “coverage to locations where EOIR does not have a physical presence and, in areas where EOIR does have a physical presence, creates greater flexibility in docket management by enabling non-local judges to assist with hearing cases.”
According to the EOIR, in May 2019, most VTC hearings either did not experience technical malfunctions, or proceeded despite them. Only 310 out of nearly 60,000 were adjourned due to a VTC malfunction.
But a statement from the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) called this statistic “highly unreliable,” and cited concerns that technical problems with VTC may affect the “accuracy or tone of interpretation.”
“NAIJ has not and does not assert that a VTC hearing always compromises due process,” read the statement. “However, we do strongly assert that undue reliance on VTC without easy availability of alternative means of conducting the hearing when a judge deems it appropriate is highly problematic and does implicate due process.”
While the future of VTC hearings is uncertain, interpreters seemed clear that unless significant changes are made, VTC will continue to get in the way of their jobs.
“I don’t think, as a profession, we should be against technology, I think technology is a good thing, but we have to make sure that it works,” said Jenner. “When you’re there in person, not much can go wrong. When you do it remotely, a lot of things can go wrong.”
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