Chaos, long lines engulf LA immigration courts, leading to automatic deportation laws

The line stretched inside the downtown Los Angeles immigration courthouse before the doors opened. Immigrants filled waiting rooms and spilled into hallways as clerks raced to process about 100 people scheduled for administrative hearings that morning.

In the past two months, this main calendar hearing has been joined by “mega master” hearings, as booths across the country have exploded with four or more times the number of respondents than before, which is part of the Trump administration’s latest plan to speed up the processing of asylum cases.

About 100 immigration cases are scheduled at the same time and the respondents must appear in person, a practice that has disrupted the already difficult system and made it difficult to change the law, said lawyers working in the court.

The speed of these processes, coupled with confusion about how they work, means that immigrants are more likely to miss hearings, advocates say. Those who do not appear are eligible for removal.

At a June 24 meeting seen by The Times, 14 immigrants were not selected, and were ordered to be removed by the end of the day.

“What we’re dealing with in court is, in a sense, worse than what we’ve seen on the streets of Minneapolis, but it’s happening in private,” said Vera Weisz, an immigration attorney in Los Angeles.

Maura, who did not want to reveal her last name for fear of being singled out by ICE, made the two-hour drive from Bakersfield to the immigration court in Van Nuys in late May for his hearing.

For a native of Mexico who came to the US as a child, the drive was filled with fear. When she was in her mid-50s, with children and grandchildren all in the US, she was worried that she would be deported at trial, with her family out of court and unaware.

He arrived at the courthouse about an hour and a half before his 8:30 a.m. appointment, and watched as the waiting room filled with at least 100 other immigrants. His family and a legal assistant from his lawyer’s office were denied access to the court because it was full.

“What I saw were hundreds of people right there, standing, waiting for their turn,” said Maura. “You can feel the stress, the sadness, everything, in that hallway.”

During three days in the city court in June, a Times reporter saw how many immigrants entered the courtroom in groups, and the judge rarely spoke to them directly, usually calling about five cases at a time. They stayed for many hours until the clerk ordered them to leave the court, it was not clear what happened in their case.

Sometimes the judges continued the hearing before realizing that the asylum seeker was not in the room. And immigrants with similar case numbers were often mixed up. The confusion is intensified for those who do not know English, who are used to communicating with clerks using hand signs.

The expanded hearings are intended to target the most vulnerable asylum seekers and issue more removal orders, said immigration attorney Lindsay Toczylowski, founder and president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

Just under 35,000 removal orders were issued in California from January to May of this year, according to TRAC, a Syracuse University data collection organization. Under the Biden administration in 2024, 43,852 were issued for the entire year.

“These types of hearings are not about helping people get justice in our immigration system. They’re about moving mass deportation programs forward,” Toczylowski said.

The tactic is the latest in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration after softening the debate it launched last summer amid public outcry. Asylum seekers are there to be arrested on regular immigration, and cases are fast-tracked through the system.

A spokesperson for the Office of Immigration Review said in a statement that it prioritizes the timely completion of all immigration cases and that packing the docket is necessary to work on the national backlog, which was more than 3.2 million cases as of May 2026, according to TRAC data.

There are about 340,000 pending cases in California, with the highest number in Los Angeles County, which has 95,000 open cases, TRAC data shows.

“Unnecessary delays harm both aliens with good claims and the American public who want to see aliens with bad claims removed as quickly as possible,” the spokesman said. “EOIR will continue to make changes to the system to ensure that all cases are handled in a timely and legal manner.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told The Times that every immigrant who was ordered to be removed received due process.

“DHS is working quickly and overtime to move these immigrants from detention centers to their destination — home,” the spokesperson said. “Illegal aliens who no longer wish to be detained can obtain release at any time by requesting a free return flight and a $2,600 exit bonus.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it was restoring the integrity of the justice system by ensuring speedy and fair trials.

“The Biden administration has allowed millions of unscreened immigrants into our communities and willfully ignored tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors in need of care,” said a spokesperson. “Reducing the backlog in immigration courts remains one of the top priorities of this administration.”

Group hearings for additional processing have been held in the past, but they typically hold about 20 people at a time, said Andrew Ji, director of the immigration justice division at the nonprofit Asian American Advancing Justice Southern California.

Now, 60 to 100 people are scheduled for four-hour hearings, the most cases immigration lawyers say they have ever seen.

More than 120 immigration cases were scheduled for the same judge on Wednesday in early June, a Times reporter noted. One day, another court had 96 people lined up at one time.

Many of the cases involved people who attended their first immigration hearings. Aside from their ministry, the first hearing is critical to a person’s immigration case, said Erin Moncure, who has volunteered as a court observer with the nonprofit CLUE since September.

“Usually, people come to the hearing for the first time without representation,” Moncure said. “They’re going to come out of court, and they don’t know what just happened. Emotions are high. Everyone’s nervous. It’s hard to keep things together.”

It is not clear how cases are selected for capital trials, but the trials appear to focus on asylum seekers who entered the country within the past five years, particularly those without legal representation, and unaccompanied minors, Toczylowski said.

About half of all respondents to deportation proceedings filed in California courts lack legal representation, according to TRAC data. More than 70% of removal orders received nationwide in May were unrepresented.

One asylum seeker walked into the courtyard of the courthouse, hours after his trial on a morning in early June, his flip flops barely holding together as he ran up and down the hallway.

He was looking for the court where the case was being heard, noted the Times reporter. His lawyer made the mistake of thinking he could appear before the judge via video call. He arrived at the courthouse just before the judge finished hearing the day’s cases.

If he had come after the judge finished the trial, he would have been considered a non-player, and he would have been ordered out, the lawyers said.

In one grand jury in San Antonio, Texas, of the 175 cases ordered to appear before a judge one morning, about 40 people did not show up, said attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla. At the first public hearing in San Diego in mid-June, about 50 people were dismissed, out of 80 people who were supposed to appear, according to Daylight San Diego.

People wait in line to enter an immigration court in Los Angeles on June 24.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The court also cancels trial dates with little notice. Monia Ghacha, an LA-based attorney, has had nearly a dozen hearings on her asylum cases, scheduled for 2027 and 2028, move up with two months’ notice.

The changes in the hearing date make it difficult to successfully represent his clients, especially asylum seekers from war-torn countries. Gathering the necessary documents to prove an asylum case is complicated, and almost impossible in such a short period of time, he said.

“He puts all the charges in one basket and tries to deny everything,” said Ghacha. “It was frustrating: the amount of work we were still doing, and the lack of attention to that work.”

Alberto, who asked to withhold his last name, thought his green card hearing last week would be one-on-one and that he would have time to make his case, until dozens of people filed into the waiting room of a west Los Angeles courthouse.

The judge summoned Alberto, who missed work to attend the trial, and three others at the same time, and spent only minutes on each case. The judge did not speak to him at all, instead he spoke to his lawyer, who was present via video call, he said.

Alberto, whose language is mainly Spanish, failed to understand the outcome of his case as he was led out of court, about three hours after his appointment at 8:30 am.

“It was confusing, because as the judge was talking, his microphone was overpowering the translator on the video call,” Alberto said. “I didn’t really understand what happened.”

It wasn’t until after the trial that Alberto got to his lawyer, who walked him through the trial. Alberto declined to share specific details about his immigration case.

A man faces a wall as dozens of people wait in immigration court on June 24.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

It took nearly two hours before Maura was called before a judge in late May, who took less than 10 minutes in her trial.

“We were tense all the time,” Maura said. “I was afraid that I would be taken without my family knowing, I had to memorize two phone numbers in case they took me.”

He avoided that fate for now. The judge scheduled a final hearing for February. Some people that day were not so lucky. He saw one man decide to acquit himself, and many others begged the judge to add to their charges.