Barnard students and faculty take part in novel national study of American immigration courtrooms - Incite at Columbia University

Originally published in the Spectator, Columbia University student Ashley Flores writes about Barnard's role in a new research initiative, funded by Incite's Hard Questions grant. 

Barnard will play a central role this year in a national research initiative focused on understanding the inner workings of immigration courtrooms. The project, titled “Hidden Justice: An Ethnographic Examination of U.S. Immigration Courts,” will be supported by both student-led research conducted during a spring 2026 course offered at Barnard and a $75,000 grant from the Incite Institute at Columbia.

Nara Milanich, chair of Barnard’s history department, will lead the project in collaboration with Amelia Frank-Vitale, assistant professor of anthropology at Princeton University, and Lauren Heidbrink, assistant professor of human development at California State University, Long Beach. Together, the scholars will oversee parallel cohorts of student researchers at Barnard, Princeton, and CSULB, creating a multi-institutional research model that merges pedagogy and ethnography to tap into the “black box” nature of immigration courts—a system where similar cases can produce starkly different outcomes for those seeking U.S. residence.

The study aims to explain those disparities through sustained courtroom observation, documenting how judges, attorneys, and interpreters interact in ways that rarely appear in official records. Rather than solely focusing on case outcomes, the project analyzes patterns that emerge through hours of court-watching done by students.

Continue reading at the Columbia Spectator.