One judge, 143 cases: A day inside new high-stakes mass immigration hearings

Summary

• Immigration courts are conducting large-scale “mega master hearings” to reduce a 3.5 million-case backlog.
• Critics warn accelerated hearings may undermine due process protections for asylum seekers.
• Judges are being directed to move cases faster and resolve them before year-end.
• Rising numbers of immigrants are missing hearings and receiving deportation orders.

Immigration Judge Cynthia LaFuente-Gaona typically hears a few dozen cases a day in the Texas courtroom where men, women and children come to implore her to allow them to remain in the United States.

But in recent days, her caseload has swelled. On Wednesday, there were 143 names on her docket.

There was a Guatemalan woman who had learned days earlier that her hearing, originally scheduled for next year, had been moved up. Nearby sat a Venezuelan woman who believed she qualified for a crime victim’s visa but hadn’t had enough time to find an attorney. Alongside them, a Colombian asylum-seeker tried to sooth her feverish 4-year-old daughter as she waited to be called.

Many others on the list did not show up at all.

“They rushed up everything,” said the mother, who spoke on the condition that The Washington Post not identify her because she fears jeopardizing her case. She said she has been slowly saving her housekeeping wages to pay an attorney. “I’m running out of time.”

In immigration courtrooms across the U.S., judges are now being asked to conduct “mega master hearings” that the Trump administration hopes will speed up the president’s mass deportation campaign and help clear a 3.5 million-case backlog. The master calendar hearings, as they are known, mark an immigrant’s first appearance in court since entering the United States.

Immigrants who entered the country illegally but were released after claiming asylum at the border have long waited years for their cases to go through the immigration court system. Immigration restrictionists argue those delays encourage people to enter illegally because they know they will be allowed to remain for long periods while waiting for a court date. The Department of Justice, which oversees the immigration courts, has fired dozens of veteran judges and replaced them with new recruits, who are being instructed to see cases through expeditiously and grant asylum sparingly.

“Unnecessary delay hurts both aliens with meritorious claims and the American public who wish to see aliens with non-meritorious claims removed as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review said in a statement.

Immigration attorneys and advocates say they worry the new mega dockets could violate the due process rights of people who do not receive proper notice, can’t find transportation or are confused by the changes and end up missing hearings inadvertently. They also fear that dramatically increasing daily caseloads means judges will not be able to carefully examine each case, potentially dismissing people who have legitimate asylum cases and may then be deported to countries where their lives could be in danger.

“I don’t think there is any problem with trying to process cases more efficiently – it just needs to happen fairly,” said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, policy and practice counsel for American Immigration Lawyers Association. “The administration has shown they are wiling to cut corners for the sake of efficiency, which at the end of the day is not justice and not what we expect of a court in this country.”

In San Antonio, which has one of the nation’s biggest immigration case backlogs, the mass hearings were sparsely attended, which advocates and attorneys said was a result of people either not knowing they had a court date or being too afraid to appear. The consequence for many of those immigrants could be life-altering and irreversible: Most of those who do not appear at their initial appearance will be ordered deported if a judge determines that they received proper notice.

LaFuente-Gaona opened her chamber a half-hour earlier than normal to accommodate the expected mass of people. But less than two dozen of the 143 people on her docket arrived.

“That’s a lot of no-shows,” LaFuente-Goaona remarked to the bailiff.

She read those who did appear their rights and spelled out the allegations against them. Then she proceeded to reset most of the cases for August to give them time to find an attorney. One woman whose name she called out, and who did not appear, was listed as having an order of removal by the next day.

Federal data indicates the number of people missing hearings and being ordered deported has risen sharply – a contrast to previous years, when most immigrants have showed up for their hearings. Attorneys note the absenteeism grew when immigration enforcement officers began arresting people at courthouses.

The federal government notifies immigrants of their hearings by mail and through updating digital court files. Some people are contacted by phone if they are being monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But advocates say it’s common for immigrants to miss notices because families move, may not have access to the mail or encounter errors while trying to visit the website.

“We are hearing many reports of individuals not receiving timely notice or being adequately advised that virtual hearings are no longer an option,” said Priscilla Olivarez, senior policy attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “They are being set up to fail.”

San Antonio was the first major metropolitan area that tens of thousands of immigrants came to in the U.S. after crossing the border in South Texas during the Biden administration. Many chose to stay. The area is now the target of heavy immigration enforcement and has among the highest ICE arrest numbers in the country.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, whose opinions guide the nation’s 600 immigration judges, have instituted numerous precedent-setting changes during President Donald Trump‘s second term. They have narrowed asylum eligibility and removed judges’ authority to issue bonds, effectively applying mandatory detention to all. Immigrants who were once able to log into hearings virtually are now being required to come in person if they do not have an attorney.

Many immigrants are giving up their claims for humanitarian protection and opting to depart the U.S. in exponentially higher numbers.

Court observers said less than a fifth of those scheduled to appear showed up at San Antonio’s immigration court this week as the mass hearings began. Judges spoke in stark terms to those who did come about who would and would not qualify for asylum.

“If you came here only to seek a better life or are escaping general violence in your country, this court cannot help you,” said Judge Yvonne Gonzalez as a court interpreter repeated her words in Spanish to a handful of people. All but one had traveled hours from their homes in the Houston and Dallas areas to be there.

The judge told the immigrants that the court may be able to help, however, if they had experienced persecution or torture. Then Gonzalez asked the group to raise their hands if they could respond affirmatively to questions that included whether they had been in the country for 10 or more years, and whether they had a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse.

No one raised their hand.

When Border Patrol agents encountered border crossers at the Rio Grande during the height of the migration surge in 2022 and 2023, thousands received “notice to appear” forms assigned to the San Antonio immigration court. Immigrants move often and are required to report their new addresses to the court. Gonzalez, remarking on San Antonio’s “overloaded” caseload, reassigned those out-of-area cases to other courts.

In Gonzalez’s chamber, two girls, ages 8 and 5, entertained themselves playing with a beaded necklace while their mother spoke before the judge. The family was from Mexico and had traveled nearly four hours from outside Houston for the hearing. The sisters arrived in matching pigtails and western-print jackets. They giggled to each other and let out a squeal when a bailiff bulged his eyes in their direction and pressed a finger over his closed lips.

On the wall opposite the children was a sign taped to the wall: “A warning to self-deport.”

“I’m giving you all time to find an attorney,” Gonzalez told their mother and the other immigrants there. “But if they say you aren’t eligible, consider voluntary departure.”

A Venezuelan couple arrived at Judge Rifian S. Newaz’s courtroom with their daughter, also hoping to be granted more time. The parents’ hands trembled as they waited for the judge. Their 10-year-old child sat at a lectern nearby with a microphone positioned for someone taller.

The family had entered the U.S. illegally near Brownsville, Texas, in late 2023, the judge said. The father said they had applied for asylum but had done so without an immigration attorney’s help. They hadn’t been able to afford one.

The judge gave them until early September to find a lawyer – less time than has been standard in the past, several immigration attorneys said.

“We were spooked,” said the Venezuelan man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is in the country illegally and fears being targeted. He described how he and his wife had debated whether they should risk the drive from the Austin area and possibly be stopped by local police working with ICE to show up for the hearing. They were worried about all the reports of courthouse arrests and not getting a fair shot.

“We didn’t know whether to come. But we came because for her,” he said looking down at the curly-haired girl. “We want to be legal and do things right. We want her to grow up in a place where she is safe.”

The family quickly hopped into a car because the man had a scheduled check-in at an ICE office right after the hearing.

LaFuente-Gaona’s 143-person caseload was split in two, so that around 70 immigrants had their cases in the morning, and the other half in the afternoon. The judge, who previously worked as a congressional staffer and in the Texas attorney general’s office, has presided over hundreds of cases since 2017. Many are Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, and most do not have an attorney.

As the judge called out their names, she provided each person with a standard list of legal resources and patiently answered questions through a translator. LaFuente-Gaona pointed to a stack of asylum applications, urging anyone who needed it to take them.

Just five adults and four children appeared before her that afternoon. All the adults were women and some were enrolled in electronic monitoring programs in lieu of detention. All said they had received calls or text messages days earlier alerting them that their hearings had been moved up to Wednesday.

“Your cases have been marked ‘expedited,’” the judge said. “I must address your cases before the end of the year.”

Dojaquez-Torres, of the immigrant lawyers association, said she and other attorneys are concerned that the mass dockets will mean people do not get an individual analysis of their case.

“Judges are getting pressured to move quickly and rush when they are supposed to evaluate each individual case,” she said. “In some courts, they are conducting classroom-style hearings, asking the group to answer by raising their hands.”

The Colombian woman who appeared with her toddler before LaFuente-Gaona earlier that day was so shaken after the hearing that she fumbled and dropped a bottle of Tylenol she was trying to open. The judge gave her until August to find an attorney and stave off a deportation order.

She sighed deeply as she entered the courthouse elevator. She’d entered the country in mid-2024 after fleeing a volatile border region she said has been overtaken by guerrilla violence. She said she had been summoned to court five different times already, but that her hearings had been delayed or continued for different reasons.

She was relieved not to have been detained, and now said she planned to focus on cobbling together enough money to hire a lawyer.

“I just don’t want them to deport me,” she said.