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SAN FRANCISCO — The speedy shuttering of the main immigration courthouse in San Francisco affects over 100,000 pending immigration cases, slowing down their consideration and leaving more immigrants in limbo and at risk of deportation.
But it also deals a symbolic blow to a region that has long stood at the vanguard of immigration advocacy.
For decades, the San Francisco immigration court was where immigrants living between California's Central Valley and central Oregon could make the case for why they shouldn't be deported. The broad jurisdiction made it one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, hearing thousands of cases a year.
It was also one of the courts most likely to grant an immigrants' asylum application to stay in the U.S. Its closing comes as the Trump administration seeks to limit pathways for many foreigners to enter or stay in the country.
"It's part of the message that the Trump administration is sending, that they're not open to asylum seekers. And one way of doing that is closing the court that has been very generous to asylum seekers," said Bill Hing, a law and migration studies professor at the University of San Francisco. "It's sending a message that the progressive cases that have come out of San Francisco are going to end."
Earlier this year, the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, announced it would not be renewing the lease on the building at 100 Montgomery St. — the main courthouse in San Francisco, with 21 courtrooms. The move followed the termination and resignation of nearly all the judges who worked out of that location. The closure, which was supposed to happen at the end of the year but has been accelerated, sends 100,000 cases to the Concord Immigration Court, about an hour away across the San Francisco Bay.
About 17,000 cases will stay at 630 Sansome St. in San Francisco, another, smaller location with just two operating courtrooms.
The DOJ cited cost saving as the reason for the closure. It didn't respond to a request for comment about concerns that the closure is related to the court's track record of asylum approvals.
"Reducing the immigration court backlog remains a priority for the agency. Any immigration judge can hear any case at any time throughout the country to assist with caseloads," Kathryn Mattingly, spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, said in a statement. That branch of the DOJ makes up immigration courts.
"As EOIR 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."
The San Francisco court, on average, denied asylum about 30% of the time in fiscal year 2025, which is half the national average. Since 2004, more than half of respondents who got a decision were approved for asylum, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Immigration attorneys worry that the Trump administration's strategy is not to add more immigration judges to the existing system to fairly decide cases.
Rather, "it's to make the barriers to having your case heard so high that it becomes almost virtually impossible," Ghassan Shamieh, an immigration attorney with cases in the closing court, said, speculating about the administration's reasons. "Changing locations of the physical court is a step to further that agenda."
San Francisco's progressive immigration history may have made it a target
Hing, the law professor, remembers practicing in the San Francisco immigration court after he graduated from law school in the 1970s. He said the court was significant to the region due to San Francisco's own deep history with immigration, from those entering at Angel Island to the Chinese Exclusion Act.
"Chinese exclusion set the groundwork for much of the litigation [in San Francisco] when it came to challenging deportation," Hing said, adding that for decades downtown firms provided pro bono assistance to asylum seekers and other immigrants. That included firms that specialized in immigration law during peak moments of migration, like the rise in Central American migrants in the 1980s.
"Then you add to that the evolution of nonprofit organizations in the city. And it's very, very collaborative," he said.
That strong legal presence resulted in several precedent-setting immigration cases reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of the case law predates the modern-day immigration court system, such as immigration decisions regarding protection from deportation for union leader Harry Bridges, admission of visitors to the U.S. who identify as gay, and battles that laid the groundwork for relief from deportation for Filipino World War II veterans.
More recent cases set some of the legal standards for asylum.
Over time, as the San Francisco immigration court was formally stood up, it gained a reputation for granting more relief from deportation than the national average. Immigration attorneys attribute the high success rate to San Francisco having the second-highest representation rate in the country — meaning more immigrants with cases in the court, about 69%, had lawyers representing them, according to the American Immigration Council. Concord ranks third.
In response to questions about the impact on asylum rates, EOIR spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said the closure was due to the expiration of the lease of the building and that relocating the court's work would be "more cost effective." She did not address criticism about the impact of the closure on immigrants' access to lawyers, or on their asylum cases.
San Francisco and Concord face the brunt of layoffs, less resources
The Concord Immigration Court, which now must absorb the bulk of cases from the closure, has never been fully staffed.
At the start of the year, the immigration court system nationally had a quarter fewer immigration judges compared to the start of 2025, even as the backlog in cases is 3.5 million.
The shrinking ranks particularly affected the Bay Area in California. San Francisco went from 21 judges to now just two, at a second location in the city; Concord was meant to have 21 judges but now has 4, not counting the supervisor.
The cases are coming to Concord as immigration judges continue to be terminated in that location, as recently as May. The Trump administration has terminated over 130 immigration judges nationally; many others have resigned or retired.
Although the Justice Department has boasted of hiring the most immigration judges in one year, including a record-setting class of more than 80 people in May, only one of those new judges is currently assigned to Concord.
Cases at Concord are currently being scheduled for nameless "visiting judges" — without clarity on if it would be a new judge, one not yet hired, or a judge in another part of the country appearing via video conference.
The lack of an assigned judge means that case could be moved on the schedule again, and attorneys said it can add challenges to fully preparing a case.
In response to questions about staffing, Mattingly said any immigration judge can be assigned to adjudicate cases in any court in the nation, as needed.
"Cases will be timely adjudicated either at the Concord Immigration Court or remotely," she said. "Reducing the immigration court backlog remains a priority for the agency."
Jane Lee is an immigration attorney who volunteers as an "attorney of the day," providing day-of legal assistance to immigrants who come to their hearings without a lawyer.
"The area that this court is going to cover is really large and there's like thousands of cases and we don't have the judges," she said of the court in Concord.
The cases currently scheduled for San Francisco are expected to be heard at Concord starting in December.
Delays mean immigrants in both courts wait longer to know if they can stay
Across the Bay, Shamieh, the immigration attorney, said he has hundreds of cases still pending in the Montgomery San Francisco court, which currently has no judges and no hearings scheduled ahead of its December closure.
"This uncertainty is incredibly scary," Shamieh said. "Judges had cases going till 2027, 2028."
Elin, who entered the U.S. from Nicaragua in 2020 and is seeking asylum, has been hit hard by multiple delays.
He has been waiting for his final hearing for several years out of San Francisco. It's been rescheduled multiple times; one delay came after the judge who was supposed to hear his case was fired.
It's now slated for 2029, in San Francisco at the closed Montgomery location and with a judge that no longer works there. His case is poised to be among those moved to Concord — a commute of more than an hour; he does not have a car.
"There isn't a set date and this situation is very stressful – sometimes I am afraid to go outside," he said in an interview with NPR. He provided only his first name to NPR for fear of reprisals for his pending case. "My brother's asylum was approved and he just got his green card. So for me, I think this wait time is harmful because I am still in limbo."
Elin said he has been in the U.S. since late 2020. He has a work permit, pays taxes and believes he could have a good case to stay.
"It is a balance because I do want my case decided and finished — and at the same time, I also want to wait to see if a change in president [by 2029] could be better," he said.
The volatile schedules are also affecting attorneys. Jordan Weiner, interim executive director of La Raza Centro Legal, said her nonprofit firm has stopped taking new cases because of the unpredictability of the current paused caseload while the transfer to Concord moves forward.
"Even though it's sort of like a lull, that doesn't mean we can sign more clients because tomorrow we could get hearing notices for every single client for next week," Weiner said. "And so we're not able to take new clients until we know what's going to be happening with these cases."
Resources coalesce around Concord, again unifying legal efforts
There's also signs that San Francisco's storied immigration defense bar is starting to adjust to the new realities.
When the Concord Immigration Court opened in 2024, advocates foresaw challenges. The building is not very close to public transportation. The courtrooms are located on the top floors of a building that has other offices, and there's minimal signage and waiting areas.
Nonprofit legal and community organizations quickly jumped in to support the new court — including creating packets with lawyers' contact information, volunteers to greet people in the lobby and a fund to help cover immigrants' asylum application fees. Now, there is a coalition of about 100 volunteers who wear bright blue vests and hand out the packets and coordinate with volunteer attorneys.
Legal organizations in San Francisco are seeing the development of those resources in Concord as an opportunity to create a unified legal aid system once more.
Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Bar Association of San Francisco, manages her own 100 volunteer "attorneys of the day" who provide legal aid to those in immigration court without a lawyer.
Her biggest concern is immigrants, particularly those without lawyers, not knowing they are now supposed to go to a different city. She said this was also an issue in the 2024 transition.
Back then, "if you were confused about when your court [hearing] was or where your court was, there was a little bit of grace given to respondents. A judge would understand if you missed a hearing because you just got a new notice and you were going to all your old hearings and you just didn't show up to this one," Atkinson said. Now, she worries that grace won't be extended this time as the administration looks for ways to issue more orders of deportation for those who miss their hearing.
Mattingly, the EOIR spokesperson, said the agency is issuing new hearing notices to all parties whose cases are reassigned to a new location.
The legal organizations in both cities are beginning to share resources. The San Francisco attorneys of the day are already training in the Concord court and preparing to serve the clients that are moved over, while juggling the two remaining courtrooms at the smaller location in San Francisco.
Still, the closure of the city's larger courthouse is bittersweet for attorneys like Atkinson who have practiced there for decades.
"Like Ellis Island, like Angel Island, there's a history of tragic injustice," Atkinson said. "But there is also a history of moments of people's lives being changed and people having, for the first time maybe ever, the sense that they're they're going to be safe and that there's a future and hope for them and their family."
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