EOIR codes

What these are called on the paperwork from the court. A master calendar hearing is a short procedural appearance where the judge sets dates, checks documents and takes the parties' positions. An individual hearing — also called a merits hearing — is the one where the application itself is heard, and the one where counsel usually matters most. The wording comes from EOIR's lookup, which has 36 entries covering every hearing type.

EOIR publishes no lookup for this field, so the letter is shown as it is. P and H are the common entries in the column; V, C, A and T are rarer, and the remaining letters are one-offs. What the data does show: the share of code P collapsed threefold in the spring of 2020, when courts moved to remote hearings, while code H rose ninefold at the same moment; by 2023 P was back to its former level. It looks as though P means appearing in person — but that is an observation, not a decoding, and we will not label your hearing with it.

EOIR publishes no lookup for this field, unlike most of the others. G and D are decoded on two grounds: every other decision lookup in the same release uses those letters for “grant” and “deny”, and the behaviour of the cases agrees. It is clearest on motions to reopen: after a decision coded G a new proceeding almost always appears on the case, after D only in about a third of instances. The remaining codes are left as they are — M and O are the common ones, J is rare: labelling them by guesswork is not something we will do.

Watch the letter A. EOIR's lookup calls it “Attorney / Alien”, meaning the respondent's side — you or your representative — and not “filed by an attorney”. If you filed the motion yourself, without a representative, there is a separate code R. Note also that appeals to the BIA use a column of the same name backed by a different lookup, where the letters mean other things.

Appeals to the BIA have their own EOIR lookup, not the one used for motions, even though the column has the same name. Here A is the respondent, I is the government, and P and T are parties that motions never have. The letters cannot be compared across the two tables.

Three values: never detained, detained, released. The wording comes from EOIR's own lookup table. The underlying information, however, comes from DHS rather than from EOIR — the release says so itself. If the record disagrees with what actually happened, DHS is who to ask.

The release contains no representative names — only a record of whose side a lawyer was on. “The government's side (DHS)” appears in the raw data as INS: that was the agency's name until 2003 and the code was never changed. A row about the government's side does not mean you had no lawyer of your own: a DHS attorney appears in every case.

Where the representative entered the case: at the immigration court, or at the Board of Immigration Appeals. Counsel is often hired only for the appeal, and then only the second record exists.

EOIR ships no lookup for this field: the schema lists the column, but the Lookup folder has nothing for it. The column holds four letters — S, O, N and W, most often S — and they are shown as they are: we will not make meanings up for them. What the status of your charge actually means is a question for the court or a lawyer; the code is worth quoting when you ask.