{"id":81836,"date":"2026-06-19T23:59:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T06:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=81836"},"modified":"2026-06-19T23:59:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T06:59:49","slug":"mega-hearings-short-notices-fuel-fear-and-uncertainty-at-bay-area-immigration-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=81836","title":{"rendered":"Mega Hearings, Short Notices Fuel Fear and Uncertainty at Bay Area Immigration Court"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Christopher Alam<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sergio Jaime Lopez, the community defense coordinator for the non-profit Safe Center in Contra Costa County. (Credit: Peter Schurmann)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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CONCORD, Calif. \u2014 On a hot June afternoon, Sergio Jaime Lopez, the community defense coordinator for the non-profit Safe Center in Contra Costa County, arrives at the Concord Immigration Court.<\/p>\n

A hearing is about to begin, and he does his rounds. He gives an update in Spanish to three women related to an asylum seeker waiting in the hallway. Then he delivers instructions to two volunteers on what resources to give people leaving the hearing. He shares hushed words with one man while handing a picture book to a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just want to be kids. And there\u2019s not anything that they can play with so we just provide books. That way they can be a little bit distracted,\u201d he says. For the parents, he hands out packets. They contain listings of organizations across California that provide free or low-cost legal consultation, and contacts for California Bar Association attorneys.<\/p>\n

He finally steps inside the courtroom, where about 30 people await the judge on crowded benches.<\/p>\n

This is a snapshot of an immigration process under siege from large asylum backlogs, too few immigration judges and mass hearings designed to speed up deportations.<\/p>\n

Transferred cases and heavy caseloads<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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The Concord Immigration Court has now become the sole court serving the Bay Area after the closure of the court in San Francisco in May. (Credit: Peter Schurmann)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since the closing of the San Francisco Immigration Court by the Trump administration in May, roughly 100,000 cases have been transferred to a new court in the city of Concord, about 30 miles east.<\/p>\n

The move compounded a backlog that already exceeds 58,000 cases. California\u2019s statewide immigration case backlog now stands at 340,000. San Francisco carried\u00a0116,800<\/a>\u00a0of those cases before a bulk of them were absorbed by the Concord docket.<\/p>\n

At the same time, there has been a sharp reduction of immigration judges. Of the 21 immigration judges who staffed the two downtown San Francisco immigration courthouses at the start of the year, only two remain. Concord, meanwhile,\u00a0has just eight immigration judges<\/a>\u00a0to absorb the surge. With far fewer judges handling far more cases, asylum seekers in the Bay Area face a dismal situation. Their cases will either not get the attention they deserve or be left in legal limbo for years, some rescheduled as far out as 2029.<\/p>\n

To manage the volume, a new process is drastically accelerating the amount of cases a judge hears at once. Immigrants are being scheduled for massive master calendar hearings called \u201cmega masters,\u201d where 100 people or more are included in the courtroom at once. In the past usually up to 20 people were heard at a time. Some had their appointments suddenly rescheduled to these mega master hearings on short notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a big change. There\u2019s a lot of people coming and most of them had a previous hearing in 2027, 2028, 2029. And they suddenly received a notice a week ago to show in person in Concord for this hearing,\u201d says Jaime Lopez.<\/p>\n

The short notice has a chilling effect. \u201cWe are starting to see the numbers of people showing up decrease. Like, I can tell you on the second day, there were about 100 people requested to show for their court hearing. But around 40 people showed up,\u201d says Lopez.<\/p>\n

Designed for deportations<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Chloe Czabaranek is the Immigration Legal Director at the La Raza Community Resource Center in San Francisco. It\u2019s a position she\u2019s held since April.<\/p>\n

She says the past year has been very up in the air for clients. She reports prepping clients for every scenario, lining up witnesses, gathering family and community, only to find out at the last minute that the hearing is rescheduled, sometimes without getting a new hearing notice. That leaves her and her attorneys just as much in the dark as their clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s a little frustrating, just to put it lightly,\u201d Czabaranek says. \u201cWe just keep checking every week. We check their number and it says there are no upcoming hearings\u2026 and we have to sit there with them and just empathize because at the end of the day we don\u2019t know, right? We\u2019re just doing our best to keep them informed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>It is very disheartening,\u201d Czabaranek adds, describing how preparing asylum seekers for their cases is not easy as it often brings up trauma during evaluations that they have to process only to let them know that the hearing has been postponed.<\/p>\n

Czabaranek and other legal advocates say the Justice Department\u2019s goal of accelerating and grouping up hearings is to issue more deportation orders. Many immigrants do not show up for the mega masters either because of the short notice or the worry that they will be detained or deported. Those who fail to appear are receiving removal orders. Attorneys say the mega masters largely target those without legal representation. The process has restricted due-process rights for immigrants even further.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s terrible because they fired many judges in San Francisco that historically have a really high rate of approval for asylum,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Lopez notes.<\/p>\n

Fired for doing our job<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Jeremiah Johnson, former immigration judge in San Francisco and Vice President of the National Association of Immigration Judges, discusses his removal and how the ongoing removal of immigration judges is causing immigrants to lose their legal status.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of those judges is Jeremiah Johnson, fired last year as the San Francisco immigration court was being dismantled. Johnson, now executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges \u2013 a former labor union decertified by the first Trump administration \u2013 says it was a challenging work environment from the start, but a vibrant one where the judges collaborated and mentored each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work was meaningful. We were challenged, but yet we felt that we were doing the right thing,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201c<\/em>I think a lot of us were fired, myself included, for doing our job. What we see here is an administration that does not want to hold hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson saw his caseload increase during his time in San Francisco, from a quota of two cases a day in his first year to six cases a day by the time he was fired in November. Even before mega master hearings, he was setting hearing dates as far out as December 2028..<\/p>\n

Johnson described the effect bluntly; more time in legal limbo, and more time spent in uncertainty on whether or not one can remain in the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to take people here in the Bay Area much longer to have their day in court \u2026 and that affects whether you buy a house or not, what school you\u2019re gonna send your kid to. Should I get married or not? Should I have a kid? \u2026 You have uncertainty just in today\u2019s climate of fear. Will I make it home from work to see my kid? And a lot of these people are mixed [status] as families, US citizen children, US citizen spouses. Should I go to my kid\u2019s softball game? Should I go to a medical appointment? I\u2019m scared that I might be arrested and never see my family again. That type of uncertainty is what is being exacerbated by these closures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said that he began seeing people opt to self-deport often just to escape or avoid detention.<\/p>\n

\u201cConditions in detention are such that people cannot stand another day,\u201d he said. \u201cI took the bench once and there was a woman who had a valid claim, who had entered the United States lawfully. She didn\u2019t have an attorney, and the first thing she said was she wanted out, that she could not take one more day in detention. So she gave up her case that day and went back to her own country. There was no hearing that day. This is a legal strategy to keep people from having their day in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paying it forward<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Born in Nicaragua, Lopez journeyed north to the U.S. border in 2019 and applied for asylum in San Diego. He wasn\u2019t able to find an attorney, and after a few hearings, he was unexpectedly detained for six months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t understand why I was detained or in jail for so long. It was terrible for me, because it\u2019s like you\u2019re living in limbo. So you don\u2019t know what to do. You don\u2019t know what the future will be. Especially because I have a family.\u201d<\/p>\n

While detained, he began teaching himself the basics of the U.S. immigration system in the detention center\u2019s library. He wrote letters to legal aid organizations and eventually got his case picked up. He made his way to the Bay Area, where his wife and children eventually followed.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a big reason why Sergio Jaime Lopez is at the court every day helping immigrants decipher what has become a kafkaesque immigration court system. He sees it as a way to utilize the knowledge he gained while in immigration jail \u2013 to pay it forward to others.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came here to the Bay, a big community supported me, and there\u2019s still a big, big amount of people, community, and interfaith organizations that care for immigrant communities, immigrant families, and they share many, many of the values that I also have right now. And we are really strong together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here as a result of community, because if people didn\u2019t support me in the past, I wouldn\u2019t be here. My situation would be different, probably. I\u2019m a result of my community that supports me and stands beside me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Alam is a\u00a0California Local News Fellow<\/a>\u00a0with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. This story was produced as part of \u201cAqu\u00ed Estamos\/Here We Stand<\/a>,\u201d a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and community news outlets statewide.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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