07/23/2026
More than half of all deportation orders issued in June were ordered in-absentia -- meaning because someone could not appear in court.
This is not out of laziness. It is because the government is intentionally moving up court dates without sufficient notice so that people are completely unaware that they are due to appear in court.
It's part of the new 'mega master' hearings strategy, in which sometimes over 100 people are forced to appear before one judge at once, with very little time to plead their case.
Over 53,000 people were given in-absentia deportation orders in June alone because of this tactic.
Many never receive paper notice, only learning that their hearing was moved up by constantly checking the immigration court website.
Many people must travel over a thousand miles to appear at immigration court. Families with children have had to sleep in airports just to make it to court the next day. Making it to court can cost upward of a thousand dollars.
Having enough advance notice before an immigration hearing is extremely important.
On June 1, a judge in Kansas City oversaw a master docket of 93 cases in just one day -- with an average lead time of only 15 days. Many of the people scheduled for that day had long-standing hearing slots later in the month that were moved up without proper notice. 56 of the 93 people on that day's docket were ordered deported in-absentia.
Just three days later, that same judge had a similarly sized docket of 96 people, but the average lead time for that group was 196 days. Only 9 absentia removal orders occurred that day.
An in-absentia removal order can be challenged by filing a motion to reopen a case, especially on the grounds of lack of notice or exceptional circumstances, but hiring an attorney for that process is costly and not a guarantee.
This new strategy is an affront to the integrity of our judicial system. It is leading to tens of thousands of people with legitimate asylum claims, including families with children, getting deported to the unsafe situations they were trying to escape.
It is the government's newest tactic to prevent families from accessing their right to appear before a judge.
