Politics & Government

The Trump administration's newly launched "mega master" court system has quickly devolved into mass chaos that leaves defendants, guards, lawyers and judges "terrified," according to a new report.

"Attorneys and former judges say mega master hearings serve as the latest tool for the Trump administration to deport large numbers of people," the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday. "This time by causing chaos and confusion in the courts."

Courtroom 11 at Chicago's immigration court barely seats 25 people — but one July morning saw 60 people, mostly unrepresented asylum seekers, crammed in wall-to-wall by 9:10 a.m., the Sun-Times reported.

This is a "mega master" calendar hearing, a new procedural format instituted by the Trump administration at the end of May that packs between 100 and 185 people into a single judge's morning docket — up from an average of just 30 before the change.

Chicago's courthouse at 55 E. Monroe has logged more of these mass hearings than any other immigration court in the country, according to immigration scholar Austin Kocher.

The scale has created conditions former immigration judges call dangerous.

On days when multiple mega hearings are scheduled simultaneously, hundreds of people — including families with strollers — spill into hallways narrower than an adult's arm span, waiting for hours to be called.

On one recent Thursday, roughly 200 people queued in the heat outside courtrooms designed to hold a fraction of that number.

"This is not good," one guard was overheard saying. Former judges have raised concerns that the overcrowded hallways amount to a fire hazard.

Attorneys and former judges argue the hearings serve to discourage immigrants from showing up at all, then fast-tracking deportations for those who don't.

In June, for the first time since 2019, more immigrants missed their Chicago court dates than attended — 58 percent of the 10,370 people summoned nationwide in June were marked absent, according to data from the nonprofit Mobile Pathways. Missing court can trigger an automatic in absentia deportation order.

Compounding the pressure, notice periods have collapsed. Median lead time for a Chicago hearing fell to just 34 days in June, down from 229 days in May.

The Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, says the expanded scheduling is meant to clear long-standing backlogs.

But former judge Elizabeth Treacy, who resigned in June after presiding over three mega hearings with up to 150 people each, said the volume makes errors — and injustice — nearly inevitable.

She noted that indigenous asylum seekers with limited Spanish fluency are especially unlikely to speak up when they don't understand proceedings in a crowded, intimidating room.

“It’s not a coincidence, but another tactic to facilitate deportations,” said Stephanie Spiro, an attorney with the National immigration Justice Center.

“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.”

That fear caused Carolina, an immigrant from Venezuela who just gave birth, to question whether she should show up for her hearing.

She and her husband eventually decided to risk deportation and bring their three children to court.

“I was terrified," she said.