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The Concord, Calif., immigration court that absorbed San Francisco’s docket this year issued more than 2,000 removal orders in August, the most in its history, and granted relief to only 2.6 percent of people who came before it with an application in the first eight months of 2026, The San Francisco Standard reported Thursday. Those figures, drawn from an analysis of federal court data by a group called Immigration Court Insights and from volunteer court watchers, describe what is now the largest immigration court on the West Coast, with a backlog the Standard put at roughly 172,000 cases.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs the courts, told the paper it is deliberately speeding up schedules because “unnecessary delay hurts” people with valid claims and the public interest in promptly removing those without them. Concord shows what that approach produces when it lands on a court that took on a major city’s docket almost overnight, a pattern that matters well beyond the Bay Area as EOIR consolidates courts and replaces judges.
A suburban court inherits a city’s caseload
Concord opened in February 2024. On May 1, 2026, EOIR announced that the San Francisco Immigration Court would close permanently, citing cost, with its cases reassigned to Concord and a Sansome Street site kept as a Concord hearing location. The notice set a Sept. 4 closing date, but the courtroom at 100 Montgomery Street stopped operating on May 1, ABC7 reported.
The bench changed as fast as the docket. Of the 11 judges serving in Concord in July 2025, five were fired and two left on their own, according to court watchers cited by the Standard, and at least five of the seven or more judges EOIR appointed there between May and July had previously worked as ICE attorneys. The Immigration Court Insights figures show the grant rate for applicants who appeared falling from 30 percent in 2024 to 20 percent in 2025 and 2.6 percent this year, or 56 grants through August, compared with more than 800 in all of 2025 and more than 1,200 in 2024.
Those court-level numbers rest on one outlet’s reporting of an outside analysis that EOIR has not confirmed, so they deserve some caution. They are consistent with the national trend, though. TRAC at Syracuse University found that immigration judges granted relief in 1.9 percent of all case closures in June 2026 and that 68 percent of people ordered removed that month were not in court. Judges issued 77,234 removal orders nationally in August, TRAC reported, with 3,092,988 cases still pending at the end of that month. TRAC’s national rate counts all closures while the Concord figure counts only people who appeared with an application, so the two are not directly comparable.
Mass hearings and the price of a missed date
To move the volume, the court held what the Justice Department calls “mega master” hearings, in which dozens of people are called at once. Observers counted 75 to 87 respondents per session on average from June through September. In August, nearly 63 percent of people scheduled for those sessions did not appear, and observers said about 89 percent of the no-shows they tracked were ordered removed in absentia. By September the no-show rate was about 13 percent. The last mega master was held Oct. 2 and none were on the calendar for the rest of October, while regular master hearings rose from about 100 in September to 179 this month.
The data do not explain the August spike. One likely factor is that every reassigned case required a new hearing notice, and a notice sent to an old address or missed in the shuffle can turn into a removal order. Advocates told the Standard that fear of arrest also makes the decision to show up harder. The legal consequence is severe. An in absentia order is final unless the person persuades the court to reopen it, which generally requires a motion within 180 days showing exceptional circumstances or, at any time, proof that proper notice never arrived. For anyone whose case moved from San Francisco, checking the hearing date and location through EOIR’s automated case information system is the most important step.
The pace is unlikely to slow. Jere Ramsey, who coordinates the court-watch volunteers, estimates at least 4,500 people could be scheduled in Concord this month, up from more than 3,000 in each of the past three months. Two things to watch: whether the end of mass hearings keeps the no-show rate down, and whether EOIR releases its own court-level grant data to confirm or contradict the outside counts.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- The San Francisco Standard: ‘A target on their back’: Inside immigration court, chaos spreads and removal orders soar (Oct. 15, 2026)
- EOIR: Notice that the San Francisco Immigration Court will close (May 1, 2026)
- EOIR: Notice of the opening of the Concord Immigration Court (Jan. 22, 2024)
- ABC7 San Francisco: DOJ closes San Francisco immigration court ahead of schedule (May 2, 2026)
- TRAC, Syracuse University: Removal Orders Jump While Immigration Court Closures Top 100,000 in June 2026 (July 21, 2026; data for March to June 2026)
- TRAC, Syracuse University: Immigration Court Quick Facts (data through August 2026)
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