- An NPR investigation found that hearings from Maryland's Hyattsville and Baltimore courts, along with Virginia's Sterling court, have been reassigned to a Washington, D.C. building leased to FEMA and an unmarked Falls Church, Virginia office — neither is a working immigration courtroom.
- Notice has run from a few days down to none at all: NPR identified at least two cases where immigrants received no mailed notice of their new hearing whatsoever.
- Missing a hearing, even one you never knew about, can trigger an automatic in-absentia deportation order — and in Baltimore, that risk for immigrants without a lawyer climbed from 54% in January to 73% in June.
- Neither the agency that runs the courts nor the one that manages federal leases has publicly explained why either building is now hosting hearings.
Across suburban Maryland and Virginia, according to a new NPR investigation, immigration hearings that were supposed to unfold in familiar courtrooms have quietly been rerouted to two federal buildings that were never announced as courts at all. One sits inside a Washington, D.C. tower leased to the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the other occupies office space in Falls Church, Virginia, better known for hosting appellate paperwork than in-person hearings. Immigration attorneys who have tracked the switch say some clients got only days of notice. Others got none.
Two Buildings, Neither Built for This
Maryland's Hyattsville and Baltimore courts, plus Virginia's Sterling immigration court, are the ones losing cases to this shuffle, NPR's reporting shows, with dockets quietly funneled toward the two new addresses over the past several weeks. The Falls Church site began holding hearings on Aug. 24; the D.C. building, Federal Center Plaza on C Street SW, is scheduled to start on Sept. 9. Neither address carries a listed Justice Department affiliation, and neither has functioned before as a walk-in immigration courtroom. Under normal procedure, a new court location is announced publicly before cases move, and hearings default to whichever courthouse sits nearest an immigrant's address on file. Neither step happened this time.
"The Most Unusual Thing I've Ever Seen"
Kel White, an officer with the Washington chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, sat in on a Falls Church hearing on Sept. 2. The immigrant showed up in person; the judge and the Homeland Security attorney appeared only by video feed from elsewhere. After more than 15 years practicing immigration law, White called it flatly: "The most unusual thing I've ever seen." She points to Justice Department guidance that she reads as requiring roughly ten days' notice before a hearing changes, a bar that several of the cases she and fellow attorneys reviewed didn't clear.
A Warning That Never Came by Mail
One immigrant, who asked not to be identified out of concern for how it might affect their case, never got a mailed notice that their Sterling court date in December had been moved up to early September and relocated to Falls Church. The only reason they found out was a case-tracking app, MigraConnect, which flagged the switch roughly two weeks ahead of time. "I was nervous, and scared," they said of the scramble that followed.
Attorneys Racing to Catch the System's Blind Spots
Immigration lawyer Lucelia Justiniano ran into a nearly identical problem with a client whose Hyattsville hearing had been quietly reassigned to Falls Church and pushed up by more than a month, again with no notice by mail. "This has to be a mistake," she remembers telling the court clerk, before learning the building had only opened to cases on Aug. 24. When her client showed up, the assigned judge wasn't even in the room; he appeared on a screen, still sitting in his usual Hyattsville courtroom, with no explanation offered for the switch. A separate client of attorney James Reyes saw a hearing bounce between locations multiple times before landing in Falls Church with eight days' notice; after Reyes formally entered the case, it was reassigned back to the Sterling court, this time with no new date set at all.
Part of a Broader Push to Speed Up Deportations
The relocations line up with a wider administration effort to shrink an immigration court backlog that sits near 3.5 million cases by moving faster on removals. Federal procurement records show the government's leasing agency is running an active push to secure additional immigration-court space by December, with one solicitation identifying eighteen candidate sites and a stated need for at least ten more courtrooms, though no formal announcement has covered the D.C. or Falls Church buildings themselves. Meanwhile, so-called mega master calendars, where a single judge can move through more than one hundred cases in one sitting, have spread to courts including Miami's. Legal-data platform bklg.org puts nationwide in-absentia removal orders at roughly 54,500 for July, essentially flat against a record 56,500 the month before; both figures sit close to sixty percent above levels recorded earlier this year. In Miami specifically, in-absentia orders jumped from 1,383 in May to 2,886 in July, more than doubling. "It's a very unfair, but a very effective tactic," said David Wilson, vice chair of the same lawyers' group's immigration court committee, describing how cramming so many cases onto one docket leaves courts scrambling to get notices out and immigrants scrambling to find lawyers in time.
No Public Explanation From Either Agency
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the court system, said only that it will keep making scheduling adjustments and opening new hearing sites as its judge count grows; it did not address why these two particular buildings were chosen or whether they now count as official courts. The General Services Administration, which manages federal leases, did not respond to requests for comment.
For immigrants without a lawyer, who make up most of the people cycling through these courts, the combination of relocated hearings and compressed calendars leaves almost no margin for error. Miss a hearing you never knew existed, and the system can still order your removal.
How to Check Whether Your Hearing Has Moved
- Look up your case directly through EOIR's automated phone or online system using your alien registration number rather than relying on mail alone.
- Cross-check any notice against a case-tracking app such as MigraConnect, which flags courthouse and date changes as they are filed.
- Call the clerk of your originally assigned court to confirm the current address before you travel.
