In downtown Los Angeles, immigration courts are running “mega master” hearings that pack 60 to 100 people into a four-hour session, with many applicants arriving to a chaotic system that can end in default removal orders for those who miss appointments or don’
Before the doors opened at the immigration courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, a line already curled around the building.
On June 24. immigrants crowded waiting rooms and spilled into hallways while clerks scrambled to process around 100 people scheduled for an administrative “mega master” hearing—an approach tied to a push to fast-track asylum cases. For many, the stress wasn’t abstract. It was visible in the packed corridors. the crowded waiting areas. and the sense that the process was moving faster than anyone could absorb.
“These types of hearings are not about helping people find justice in our immigration system. They’re about furthering the plans for mass deportation,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder and president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
In the last two months. courts have used “mega master” master calendar hearings nationwide. where dockets are scheduled with four or more times the number of respondents than they had before. Around 100 immigration cases are scheduled at one time. and respondents must attend in person—an arrangement attorneys said strained an already overwhelmed system and made the shifting legal landscape harder to navigate.
Advocates say the speed of these proceedings, combined with confusion about how they work, increases the chance that people miss hearings. Those who do not show up become eligible for removal.
A hearing observed on June 24 showed how quickly that can happen: 14 immigrants did not make their appointment and were ordered removable by the end of the day.
Vera Weisz, a Los Angeles immigration lawyer, described the experience as especially stark because it happens behind closed doors.
“What we’re experiencing in court is, in a sense, worse than what we saw on the streets of Minneapolis, but it happens in secret,” Weisz said.
The pressure reaches people far beyond the courthouse doors. Maura. who asked that her last name be withheld for fear of being singled out by ICE. traveled nearly two hours from Bakersfield to the Van Nuys immigration courthouse for a hearing in late May. She arrived in her mid-50s. with children and grandchildren in the U.S. and said the drive was filled with dread.
“When he walked out of the building, he knew it was over.”
That line does not apply here; it was not in the source. Here is what Maura actually said.
She feared she would be taken for deportation at the hearing while her family waited outside the courtroom without knowing what was happening. She arrived about an hour and a half early for her 8:30 a.m. appointment and watched as the waiting room overflowed with at least a hundred other immigrants.
Her family and a paralegal from her lawyer’s office were denied entry into the courtroom because it was too packed.
“All I saw was hundreds of people right there, standing, waiting for their turn,” Maura said. “You can feel the stress, the sadness, everything, in that hallway.”
Over three days in the downtown courtroom in June, a reporter observed immigrants funneled into the courtroom in groups. The judge rarely addressed them directly, typically calling up around five cases at a time. People would sit through hours of proceedings until a clerk directed them to exit. often without clarification about what happened in their case.
At times, judges proceeded before realizing an asylum seeker wasn’t in the room, and immigrants with similar case numbers were sometimes mixed up. For those who do not speak English, communication became another obstacle—one that often required resorting to hand signals with clerks.
The expanded hearings are meant to target vulnerable asylum seekers and issue as many removal orders as possible, Toczylowski said.
Her concerns align with the numbers courts are producing. In California. just under 35. 000 removal orders were issued from January through May of this year. according to TRAC. a data gathering organization at Syracuse University. Under the Biden administration in 2024, 43,852 removal orders were issued over the entire year.
A major contrast sits in how officials explain the approach. An Executive Office for Immigration Review spokesperson said in a statement that it prioritizes the timely completion of all immigration cases and that packing the docket is needed to work through a national backlog—over 3.2 million cases as of May 2026. according to TRAC data.
The statement also cited the scale of pending litigation: about 340,000 pending cases in California, with the highest concentration in Los Angeles County, where 95,000 cases remain open.
“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. ” the spokesperson said. “EOIR will continue to make scheduling adjustments to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner.”.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Times that every immigrant ordered removed has received full due process, and said DHS is working rapidly to remove people from detention centers to their final destinations.
“Illegal aliens who no longer wish to be detained can obtain release at any time by requesting a free flight home and a $2,600 exit bonus,” the spokesperson said.
A Department of Justice spokesperson said it is restoring the justice system’s integrity by ensuring speedy and fair cases. pointing to what it called failures under the Biden administration. including “millions of unvetted migrants” and tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who the spokesperson said needed care. The spokesperson also said reducing the immigration court backlog remains a top priority.
Inside the courtroom, lawyers said the biggest change is the sheer volume. Group hearings for procedural appointments have taken place before. but they typically scheduled at most 20 people at a time. said Andrew Ji. who runs the immigrant justice unit at the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California.
Now, he said, 60 to 100 people are being scheduled for one four-hour hearing—a frequency attorneys said they’ve never seen.
A Times reporter observed more than 120 immigration cases scheduled for the same judge on a Wednesday in early June. On another day, one courtroom had 96 people scheduled at the same time. Most involved people attending their first hearing in their immigration case.
Despite their clerical nature, an initial hearing can be critical, said Erin Moncure, who has volunteered as a court observer with the nonprofit CLUE since September.
“Often, people show up for their initial hearing without representation,” Moncure said. “They’ll come out of the courtroom, and they have no idea what just happened. Emotions are high. Everybody’s in a panic. It’s hard to retain things.”
It’s not clear how cases are selected for mega master hearings. But Toczylowski said the proceedings seem to focus on asylum seekers who entered the country within the last five years—especially those without legal representation—and unaccompanied minors.
TRAC data shows nearly half of respondents in deportation proceedings in California courts do not have legal representation. Over 70% of those who received removal orders nationwide in May were unrepresented.
In one case. a Times reporter observed an asylum seeker sprint into the courthouse hours after an early morning hearing appointment in early June. wearing flip flops as she ran up and down the hallway. She was searching for the courtroom where her hearing was being held. Her lawyer had mistakenly believed she could appear before the judge via video call. She made it to the courtroom just before the judge finished hearing cases for the day.
Attorneys said if she had arrived after proceedings ended, she would have been treated as a no-show and ordered removed.
Mega master hearings are not confined to Los Angeles. In San Antonio. Texas. attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla said out of 175 cases ordered to appear before a judge one morning. about 40 people did not show up. And at the first mega master hearing in San Diego in mid-June. Daylight San Diego reported around 50 people were ordered deported out of 80 scheduled to appear.
Confusion is also fueled by last-minute changes. The court is moving hearing dates up with little notice, according to the reporting.
Monia Ghacha. an L.A.-based lawyer. said she has had nearly a dozen hearings for her asylum cases moved up from 2027 and 2028 to dates that arrived with barely two months’ notice. Ghacha said the changes make it difficult to represent clients. particularly asylum seekers coming from war-torn countries. where compiling paperwork to prove an asylum case is complicated and nearly impossible on that shortened timeline.
“You’re just putting all cases in one basket and trying to deny everything,” Ghacha said. “It’s been frustrating: the amount of work we’re still putting in, and the lack of attention to that work.”
Alberto, who asked to withhold his last name, believed his immigration hearing for a green card application last week would be handled individually. He said he expected time to make his case until dozens of people filed into the waiting room at the west Los Angeles courthouse.
The judge called Alberto—who missed work to attend—along with three other cases at the same time. Alberto said the judge spent only minutes on each. He said the judge didn’t address him and instead spoke directly to his lawyer, who attended via video call.
Alberto said his primarily language is Spanish and he struggled to understand the outcome as the judge’s microphone overpowered the translator on the video call.
“It was confusing, because as the judge speaks, her microphone overpowers the translator on the video call,” Alberto said. “I didn’t really understand what happened.”
He said it wasn’t until after the hearing that he reached his lawyer, who walked him through what happened. Alberto declined to share specific details about his active immigration case.
For Maura, the timeline of the hearing carried its own fear. She said it took about two hours before she was called in front of the judge in late May, who took less than 10 minutes on her case.
“We were tense the whole time,” Maura said. “I was scared I was going to be taken away without my family even knowing. I had to memorize two phone numbers in case they did take me.”
She avoided removal—for now. The judge scheduled a final hearing in February.
Maura also described a day when other people were not as fortunate. She said she saw one man decide to self-deport, while countless others begged the judge for extensions on their cases.
By the time the hallway empties, the stakes are still there. For people ordered removed when they miss a hearing. the process can end in a decision made at the end of a long day—often without the kind of explanation they expected. and often with the pressure of a system that can move faster than understanding.
Los Angeles immigration court mega master hearings asylum cases removal orders EOIR backlog due process TRAC ICE Vera Weisz Lindsay Toczylowski