STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have some news for you this morning about immigrants summoned for court hearings. They're called in for these hearings, but not at normal immigration courts. NPR's Ximena Bustillo has been covering these courts inside the Justice Department for almost two years and has some reporting on where the immigrants are being sent. Ximena, hi.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Hi.
INSKEEP: So what'd you find out?
BUSTILLO: Well, I heard a weird rumor from some of my sources. A few immigration attorneys in the Greater Washington, D.C., area - that's Maryland and Virginia - told me that they had clients or people hoping to retain them who came to them with notices to appear at immigration court.
Now, these notices themselves are normal. If someone is here without legal status, they may get one in the mail, and that starts their removal proceedings. This is also the process where immigrants get to argue why they should not be deported. But immigrants who had previously been scheduled at Maryland or Virginia courts were instead told to go somewhere else, a place their attorneys had never before seen scheduled for an in-person hearing. Here's two attorneys, Lucelia Justiniano and James Reyes.
LUCELIA JUSTINIANO: This has to be a mistake. Why is she being sent from the Hyattsville Immigration Court to Falls Church? That makes no sense.
JAMES REYES: I honestly thought it was a glitch. I was like, 15 years - there's no way. This is just a glitch in the system.
BUSTILLO: And both attorneys have been practicing in the area for over 10 years.
INSKEEP: OK. Where are immigrants being told to go if they're not being told to go to immigration court?
BUSTILLO: So one was actually the offices for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington, D.C. And the second is the headquarters for the agency that runs immigration courts in Falls Church, Virginia. But neither is a building that usually has in-person immigration court hearings.
INSKEEP: And how does the administration explain this?
BUSTILLO: The immigration court agency at the Justice Department declined to confirm if these were new hearing locations. But they did say that they will continue to make scheduling adjustments, including opening new hearing locations as needed to, quote, "ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner." NPR has since learned that FEMA employees on Friday were notified that their headquarters conference rooms would be used by the DOJ and the Homeland Security Department.
INSKEEP: OK. So random conference rooms are becoming courtrooms. But are the immigrants still seeing a judge when they get there?
BUSTILLO: Yes. So I was told - and I asked many people coming out of these buildings. And they did confirm they did see an immigration judge - though that judge happened to be appearing remotely on a TV screen, often in the original court, like Baltimore, Hyattsville, where they were supposed to appear. And now remember, these are administrative judges. So they're also a lot more like other federal employees under direction of the president.
INSKEEP: Right. They're not part of the judicial branch, but the executive. What are the concerns about having an unannounced location for your court hearing?
BUSTILLO: Well, it adds to the confusion. And the risk is that if immigrants miss their hearings, that gives the immigration judge ability to issue an automatic final order for their deportation. And groups tracking these orders say they've really increased in the last few months. And NPR identified two cases where immigrants did not receive a notice in the mail about the change of venue. And in one instance, the immigrant only knew because they used an application called MigraConnect, which sent them a notification about the new time and place.
INSKEEP: How do the added locations fit into the immigration strategy of the administration?
BUSTILLO: The administration is trying to both reduce the court backlog and increase the number of people that it can deport. And that strategy does appear to be working. The number of cases pending is falling for the first time in about a decade, according to government data. And in order to reach that goal, immigration judges are scheduled to hear hundreds of cases in a day. And they're being trained to deny immigrants' requests for more time. All of this, advocates say, further erodes the trust in these immigration courts that are under supervision of the president.
INSKEEP: NPR's Ximena Bustillo, thanks so much.
BUSTILLO: Thank you.
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