The benches in courtroom 11 at Chicago’s immigration court, the one judges lament as so tiny, barely seat 25.So how could 143 people called for hearings on a single morning ever fit?By 9:10 a.m., roughly 60 of them — mostly asylum seekers without lawyers — had crammed in wall-to-wall. Judge Pe ter Kim’s clerk squeezes through the waiting crowd this July morning to collect names and mark late arrivals present. The stakes are high: failing to show up to court could mean an automatic deportation order.But the hearing itself is dense and complex, the judge’s litany of immigration jargon punctuated by crying children who are hungry and hot.“You are here because the government believes that you should be removed,” Kim says through Creole and Spanish interpreters.When he asks immigrants how many need more time to find an attorney, nearly every hand flies up.Welcome to a “mega master” calendar hearing, a massive preliminary procedural hearing instituted by the Trump administration at the end of May that now crams between 100 and 185 people into a single judge’s morning’s call — as many as 70 into the same hearing if they don’t have lawyers. Not everyone shows up, but before May these hearings averaged 30 people. It’s not clear how the judges are chosen for these assignments.Chicago, a large court with a large backlog, stands out with the most mega hearings in June in its courthouse at 55 E. Monroe, as well as the most scheduled at the same time, according to immigration scholar Austin Kocher. He pinpointed three mornings in June with mega hearings scheduled simultaneously before four judges — in addition to normal court business.Anecdotally, July shows no signs of letting off the gas.Attorneys and former judges say mega master hearings serve as the latest tool for the Trump administration to deport large numbers of people, this time by causing chaos and confusion in the courts. It’s a subtler tactic than last year’s headline-grabbing Operation Midway Blitz that hurt and killed immigrants and citizens. A spate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests inside courthouses already frightened immigrants from appearing.Advocates say key purposes of mega hearings include discouraging immigrants from coming to court, smoothing the way toward deportation, and curtailing time to find an affordable attorney. When people miss court, judges can order them removed in absentia or in their absence.In June, for the first time since 2019, more people were found to have missed court in Chicago than showed up, according to data released by the Executive Office of Immigration Review — immigration court’s formal name. Of the 10,370 people assigned to hearings in June, 58% were ruled absent, according to EOIR data analyzed by Mobile Pathways, a nonprofit advocating for fair access and transparency in immigration proceedings.Several other cities such as Dallas and Charlotte have already seen a greater number of in absentia rulings than immigrants present. Nationally, about 60% of immigrants called to court in June still showed up, down from 78% last October.The amount of notice given to immigrants to come to court also has plummeted nationwide, but particularly in Chicago. Median lead time in June fell to just 34 days in Chicago, down from 229 days in May, according to data analyzed by BKLG, another non-profit that examines federal immigration data.The U.S. Justice Department oversees immigration court, and officials there say that the amped-up scheduling is meant to clear backlogs that has left immigrants on dockets for years awaiting a decision on whether they made a case to stay or not.Asked for an interview, an EOIR spokesperson shared a prepared statement that said it “prioritizes the timely completion of all cases, including those of unaccompanied alien children, and makes scheduling adjustments as needed to ensure cases do not languish,” the statement reads. “As it continues to add new immigration judges, EOIR will continue to make scheduling adjustments to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner.” Immigration attorney Stephanie Spiro, with the National Immigrant Justice Center, calls the spike in deportations ordered after immigrants fail to show up for hearings another “tactic to facilitate deportations.”Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times But Stephanie Spiro, an attorney with the National immigration Justice Center, calls the recent surge of in absentia removal orders “unprecedented.”“It’s not a coincidence, but another tactic to facilitate deportations,” she says.The mega hearings aren’t about speeding up cases but about eliminating them for people who don’t show up, Spiro says: “It's much more efficient for the government to deport people without even having to read any briefs, without having to have a full hearing, without having to schedule hundreds of people, and actually listen to their claims, and afford them due process.”The court counts “on the fact that they're not going to get notice, and even if they do … they're not going to go, because they're afraid of being deported and separated from their families and children.”That fear had Carolina, an immigrant from Venezuela who just gave birth here, debating whether to go to her hearing on Thursday.The Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ are not using her full name because she’s afraid it could jeopardize her asylum application.Without a lawyer, she worries her family could be ordered arrested and deported during their court appointment. She fears one of her kids could get deported to Peru, where she was born.“And I don't have family in Peru,” she says. “I don't want to get separated from my family, or get separated from my newborn. At least this month he will get his passport."In the end, Carolina and her husband brought the children to court. In a lucky break, they were given more time for their case. But she had prepared for the worst, saying, “I was terrified.” Carolina, a Venezuelan immigrant, debated all month whether to keep her immigration court date in Chicago on Thursday. She feared getting deported and being separated from her infant son, her other children and husband.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times The dangers of hearing many cases in a short period of timeOn most weekdays when the mega hearings are scheduled, immigrants stream into a Loop skyscraper dressed in their Sunday best only to be funneled into a claustrophobic hallway that is narrower than an adult’s armspan. Families often dress up for their packed hearing dates at Chicago’s immigration court building, including this pair on Wednesday. Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Most courtrooms have eight benches, but some rooms only have five, each seating four to five people. Three waiting areas offer seats for about 80 people.Lines outside courtrooms clog the halls, despite the guards’ best efforts to corral the waiting people — strollers included — against the wall.“This is not good,” a guard is overheard saying Thursday, when some 200 people queued up in hot hallways.This is where Darwin Ramirez, a tube manufacturing factory worker from Nicaragua, says he got "desperate waiting" for his first hearing where 175 people were on the 8:30 a.m. schedule. He wasn’t called in until 11:15 a.m.Former immigration judges express concern that the hallways of the immigration court pose a fire hazard on days with multiple mega master hearings.Court room size aside, immigrants must understand these high stakes proceedings. But with an overwhelming number of cases, zero leniency for mistakes and language barriers can break down the system.Immigration courts have long relied on these hearings to lay out immigrants’ rights and responsibilities after the government says they’re deportable. Later on, the court considers evidence of whether each person fulfills requirements for asylum or other legal paths to stay — and whether the government’s case is accurate. Chicago immigration court is housed in a Loop high-rise. Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file The hearings observed this month required the court to make a slew of clerical fixes: Home address changes not updated in time. Incorrect languages coded in the immigrants’ files. One child’s asylum case misfiled, erroneously turning him into an unaccompanied minor with a different court date than his relatives.And Homeland Security identified 13-year-old Kevin for removal but not his parents, who appeared with him, so the judge asks for clarification, telling the government lawyer, “If there’s no case against the parents, I’m going to terminate. Makes no sense because the kid is 13.”When confused asylum seekers ask for advice, Judge Kim explains his limitations: “I am the net in a tennis match. I can’t give you advice, just verify.”For some judges forced to oversee such an unwieldy process, it's simply too much. Former immigration judge Elizabeth Treacy resigned June 22 after presiding over three mega master hearings that each listed between 130 and 150 people. She had no new job lined up.“Whenever you have a high volume of anything in any field, it leaves a possibility for error because of fatigue [and] because of the repetitive nature of what you're reviewing,” says Treacy. “I never wanted to make a mistake in those kinds of circumstances.”Treacy says at these large hearings, indigenous applicants — who are from Ecuador and Guatemala and aren’t fully fluent in Spanish — are less likely to report critical language barriers.“It's an intimidating atmosphere for somebody to raise their hand and say, ‘I'm sorry, I don't fully understand what you're saying,’” Treacy says.She and other former judges also noted that in absentia deportation orders require a meticulous, review of government records and hearing notices that can’t be rushed. Was the individual properly notified?Once a federal prosecutor and an ICE lawyer, Treacy says she aimed to become an immigration judge because she admired their mission of upholding the law.“It shouldn't be debatable as to whether or not people deserve due process rights,” she says. “You know that's something that we're all guaranteed, regardless of our immigration status here in the United States. And due process is a reflection of how we value the dignity of each individual.” Parents regularly bring along children to immigration court in the Loop when they have a hearing date.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Immigration court is not like other courts Immigration court differs from other federal courts in substantial ways, and those distinctions opened the door to the mega master hearings and other swift changes.Federal district and criminal judges, once confirmed by the U.S. Senate, “have life tenure,” says former immigration judge Samuel Cole. “What it means is they can't be fired just because the president doesn't like what they're doing.”By contrast, immigration judges can be fired because they work for the U.S. Department of Justice, under the attorney general. The current acting AG is Todd Blanche, President Trump’s personal lawyer. Former immigration judge Samuel Cole decided to leave his job last summer because he says he felt like he could no longer be independent on the bench.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Cole says in federal court, “there are laws and rules that are very well established about procedures, about substantive rules, about what the criminal code says.”But immigration judges are subject to the attorney general so “the procedures are constantly changing,” says Cole, who stepped down last summer, saying he lost his ability to be independent. He now works for the ACLU of Illinois.It’s not the AG’s power that’s new; what stands out now is how forcefully Trump’s DOJ is using that power to advance his anti-immigration agenda.Cole’s onetime colleague, Carla Espinoza, watched this happen in policy emails before she was fired from her post as an immigration judge last July.“This particular email said that a judge did not need to give a party time to respond; that a judge could rule immediately,” says Espinoza, who has sued the Justice Department, alleging discrimination in firings. The email said then the Department of Homeland Security would “be detaining them right outside of their court hearing.”She took that as a “signal that we didn't really have to follow the rules that were in place for immigration courts.”That policy has since been rescinded, she says, “but it had a huge effect at the time.” Former immigration judge Carla Espinoza worries about the eroding of due process at immigration court. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times file Due process, the former judges say, is supposed to be central to immigration court.But immigration proceedings are civil and not criminal, even though they do allow for detention, so people don’t have a right to have an attorney provided if they can’t afford one. In criminal court, the right to an appointed lawyer is absolute.This applies to children, too, who can be called before a judge without a lawyer — or even without a guardian.Now, with the pressure of the mega master hearings, free and low cost legal help has long waiting lists.And without an attorney, even something as simple as changing an address can present a hurdle.None of the 70-plus immigrants sharing a single mega master hearing before Judge Marc Stahl in courtroom 7 have a lawyer.Stahl fills every seat, including the chairs in front of his bench normally reserved for lawyers, telling the remaining people to spread out along the walls flanking him so he can see each face.He stresses how a particular form must be filled out and either mailed in or handed to court clerks in person, within five days of a move.Through the Spanish interpreter — whom Stahl asks to speak up — the judge says that notifying ICE isn’t enough.“Do you understand these rights?” he asks. “Raise your hand and keep it raised.”Stahl flags another particularity of immigration court: The burden of proof in pleading a case to stay in the U.S. is on the immigrant, not the government.“Please listen carefully,” Stahl tells them, spelling out the new realities of immigration court under the Trump administration.   “If you fail to appear at a court date,” he says, “you will be ordered removed in absentia.”Contributing: Keenan Chen Carolina, an immigrant from Venezuela, leaves her West Side apartment building with her family for her immigration court hearing on Thursday. Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Related Mexico seeks accountability in Chicago-area ICE death and 16 others. Can it force the U.S. to act? A dissident family fled Russia after their home was set on fire. Trump’s administration wants to deport them. ICE arrests have increased in Chicago, but tactics less publicized than last fall, legal groups say Across continents, Illinois families remain separated by Trump’s immigrant visa halt ...read more read less