Worth Reading Lawyers Prefer Immigration Court to Video Hearings The Associated Press/Cincinnati Enquirer November 16, 2005 By Joe Danborn The Associated Press A new immigration court in Ohio next year will eliminate most videoconference hearings in which the judge, the lawyers and the person whose residency is at stake are in four places. Attorneys in deportation cases pushed to end the videoconference hearings because they couldn't talk privately with clients and evidence sometimes couldn't be seen clearly on a TV screen. "It's not a very good way to decide cases that are going to affect people's lives," said David Leopold of Cleveland, a national officer with the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The Department of Justice plans to open a court by next summer in an undetermined city to tackle Ohio's roughly 3,000 pending immigration cases. Judges at the immigration court in Arlington, Va., have handled Ohio's deportation docket by videoconference since 2003. Before then, judges from other states visited courts in Cleveland and Cincinnati once or twice a month to hear Ohio cases. TOP