Department of Justice and Courts

The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review has informed staff it will shut down the San Francisco Immigration Court by the end of 2026 and transfer all personnel and roughly 120,935 pending cases to the newer Concord Immigration Court 30 miles away or to remote dockets. An internal email from Chief Immigration Judge Teresa Riley, obtained by NPR, confirms the closure, which comes after a 2025 purge in which nearly 100 immigration judges were fired nationwide and San Francisco’s bench was slashed from 21 judges to four plus one supervisor. EOIR spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly says the move is driven by cost‑effectiveness, but former and current employees describe it as part of a broader campaign to pressure judges to accelerate deportations and ‘fall in line,’ with at least two other courts in Aurora, Colo., and Oakdale, La., already left with no sitting judges. The Concord court itself has been losing judges and staff and already carries a growing backlog, raising concerns that consolidations will only deepen the national logjam while forcing immigrants, lawyers and witnesses to travel farther for hearings or shift to remote proceedings. The decision highlights how the administration is reshaping the immigration‑court system through layoffs and closures rather than adding capacity, a trend immigrant advocates and some judges say is constricting due process even as backlogs reach record highs.