4 weeks ago
The Department of Justice shuttered a awesome San Francisco migration tribunal past week, a determination attorneys opportunity could exacerbate nan Bay Area’s migration lawsuit backlog.
Early successful nan year, news reports emerged of nan closure of nan courthouse connected 100 Montgomery Street slated for January 2027. Over nan past year, nan Department of Justice had fired 20 of nan court’s 22 judges (the Trump management has been accused of culling definite migration judges, successful favour of those much amenable to its ongoing wide deportation agenda).
The justness department’s executive agency for migration reappraisal (EOIR) described nan court’s closure arsenic “cost effective” successful a statement past week. A smaller tribunal successful San Francisco remains open, but nan mostly of tribunal operations will move to an migration tribunal 35 miles (56km) distant successful nan East Bay metropolis of Concord.
The Concord tribunal opened successful 2024 amid a Biden-era push to trim nan ballooning migration lawsuit backlog. As of September 2025, nationwide location are 3.75m pending migration cases, according to data from nan EOIR. In San Francisco, location are 120,000, per nan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac), a investigation halfway astatine Syracuse University.
Some ineligible experts uncertainty nan Concord court, wherever six judges were precocious removed, has nan capacity to inherit nan closed San Francisco court’s caseload. A justness section spokesperson did not instantly reply to a petition for comment.
“With truthful fewer judges astatine nan Concord court, we’re going to spot a batch of group waiting years and years and years to person their cases heard,” said Milli Atkinson, head of nan San Francisco Bar Association’s migrant ineligible defense program.
“These delays profoundly impact people. They impact people’s expertise to person solution … to person an reply and closure, whether a affirmative 1 that they’d hoped for aliases a antagonistic one,” said Shira Levine, a erstwhile judge astatine nan San Francisco migration court, who is now ineligible head for nan Immigrant Institute of nan Bay Area.
The transition of clip could besides weaken nan position of a case.
At asylum hearings, group are “presenting a batch of oral grounds from themselves and from witnesses. Over years, testimonial memories tin fade,” Levine said. “Even if you taxable nan written evidence, years later, personification whitethorn not beryllium disposable to attest successful support of that evidence.”
The San Francisco court’s closure coupled pinch nan exodus of judges has sown “a batch of chaos”, Atkinson said. There are tribunal dates being pushed backmost and others being pushed up arsenic a consequence of caller changes.
Atkinson expects that location respective individuals will autumn done nan cracks of nan tribunal system.
“A batch of migrants person unstable addresses aliases don’t person their mail,” she said, besides adding that notices successful English whitethorn not beryllium heeded by those who don’t speak aliases publication it.
People could past beryllium placed connected Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s radar if they miss their hearings, Atkinson said.
“If personification gets nan incorrect date, gets nan incorrect time, gets nan incorrect place, doesn’t record thing precisely correct … nan consequences are successful immoderate cases – wherever they really do person a superior fearfulness of return – life-threatening.”
