Immigration hearings relocated to undisclosed buildings, attorneys say

Missed hearings can trigger automatic deportation orders

Over the past few weeks, immigrants who had been scheduled to appear at the Hyattsville and Baltimore immigration courts in Maryland and at the Sterling court in Virginia in coming months have been rescheduled to two locations that are not standard immigration courtrooms: one in Washington, D.C., and one in Falls Church, Virginia, according to five immigration attorneys who reviewed notices or observed the hearings and spoke to NPR. The last-minute notifications appear to be another tactic in a broader Trump administration effort to speed up arrests and deportations by curtailing immigrants’ already limited opportunities to contest their cases.

Kel White, an officer of the D.C. chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association who has practiced immigration law for more than 15 years, attended one of the relocated hearings on Sept. 2 in Falls Church. She described the scene as “the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen” in her career. Inside a government building that houses the Executive Office for Immigration Review headquarters and the Board of Immigration Appeals, White said, immigrants appeared in person before a judge and a Homeland Security Department attorney who were participating only by video conference from elsewhere in the building. She said the judge ordered several people deported because they did not appear for their hearings.

The Falls Church building has previously been used as an adjudication center for some remote hearings, not as a regular courtroom, White and other attorneys who have practiced in the greater Washington area for more than a decade told NPR. There is one courtroom in the building used for occasional oral arguments before the Board of Immigration Appeals, but that courtroom is not used regularly in proceedings, attorney James Reyes said. The Washington location, slated to hold hearings as soon as Sept. 9, is Federal Center Plaza at 400 C Street SW — a building NPR was told is occupied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and that has no listed affiliation with the Justice Department or with EOIR.

White said the last-minute changes violate Justice Department regulations requiring at least 10 days’ notice of a new hearing date. “People need to receive at least ten days’ notice in order for there to be a response,” White said, citing a Justice Department policy manual. “My concern about these hidden tribunals is that essentially people are not getting notice of them or that the mail would not arrive in time for them to even know that they need to go to court.”

One immigrant whose hearing was rescheduled told NPR they did not receive any notice in the mail. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their case, said the MigraConnect tracking app was the only way they learned that a December hearing at Virginia’s Sterling immigration court had been moved to Sept. 2 in Falls Church. “Thank God I had that application because without it they would have put me on a path to deportation, because I never got a notice in the mail,” the person said. “I was nervous, and scared; I have never missed a court date but I didn’t know what would happen in that building.”

Attorneys said the notices appeared to be targeted at immigrants who did not have legal representation at the time of the change. Most immigrants who seek to argue their case to remain in the United States do not have a lawyer, the attorneys said. Any immigrant who does not appear for a scheduled hearing, even by mistake, can be issued a so-called “in-absentia order of removal” allowing immigration officers to detain and deport the person.

Attorney Lucelia Justiniano said one prospective client in Maryland was scheduled to appear in Falls Church instead of her original Hyattsville court, with the hearing moved up from October to Sept. 2. “So I called the court; I’m like, ‘This has to be a mistake,’” Justiniano said. A court employee told her the new hearing center had opened on Aug. 24. “It was extremely lucky that she called us a day before and that we were able to check that because she had not gotten the notice,” Justiniano said. When the client arrived, Judge John Rubenstein, who was originally assigned to the case, was appearing remotely on a monitor from his courtroom in Hyattsville. No explanation was given for why the hearing was not held in his courtroom.

Reyes, an immigration attorney of 15 years, said one client’s hearings were rescheduled several times before being moved to the Falls Church location with eight days’ notice. “I honestly thought it was a glitch. I was like, there’s no way,” Reyes said. After he entered himself as the attorney on the case, it was quickly rescheduled to the Sterling court days before the client was to appear in Falls Church. There is no new hearing date in that case.

A statement from EOIR said the office “continues to add new immigration judges” and “will continue to make scheduling adjustments, to include opening new hearing locations as needed, to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner.” EOIR did not respond to questions about why immigrants were being told to appear at the new locations or whether they were new immigration courts.

The General Services Administration, the federal agency that manages government facilities and procurement, did not respond to a request for comment on the Justice Department’s use of the space. Two sources familiar with the project told NPR there is an ongoing “surge” for GSA to acquire space for the Justice Department’s immigration court agency by December, and that one public request for lease proposals identified 18 potential locations requiring space for at least 10 courtrooms. No new building or conversion of another agency’s existing lease has been publicly announced for either location.

The relocation notices come as the Trump administration has pressed to reduce the immigration court backlog, which now numbers roughly 3.5 million cases, and amid other scheduling changes that attorneys say are speeding up removals. Immigration judges across the country are being scheduled for what have been dubbed “mega master calendar” hearings — sessions in which more than 100 immigrants, many without lawyers, are scheduled to appear and are ordered removed if they do not. Since those hearings began, in-absentia deportation orders have spiked to a record high, according to the legal technology platform bklg, while approvals for asylum in immigration court have hit a record low. In Baltimore, the rate of in-absentia removals for unrepresented immigrants rose from 54 percent in January to 73 percent in June, according to Mobile Pathways, which analyzes immigration court data.

“It’s just stockpiling things against respondents,” Justiniano said of the last-minute venue changes. “And this just shows one more example of it.”

White said the arrangement in which the judge and the prosecutor appeared only by video was unfair to immigrants who were required to show up in person and in many cases did not know about their hearings. “The fact that the judge and the prosecutor didn’t show up in person for the hearing really reflects a lopsidedness in the system and in fairness to people who are required to show up, who don’t even know about their hearings,” White said.