Inside San Diego's 'Mega Master' Hearings: How Rescheduled Court Dates Become Deportation Orders
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San Diego's immigration courts are now conducting what advocates call 'mega master' hearings — mass proceedings in which more than fifty individuals appear before a single judge simultaneously. In some jurisdictions nationally, the number has exceeded a hundred. The volume itself is alarming, but the more consequential issue, according to reporting by KPBS, is timeline compression: many respondents originally had hearings scheduled for 2027, 2028, or even 2029, dates that existed because of a years-long court backlog. Under the Trump administration's push to accelerate deportations, those future dates are reportedly being moved forward, sometimes by years, with advocates saying individuals received little to no advance notice.
The legal consequence of missing a rescheduled hearing is automatic. Under immigration law, failure to appear at a master calendar hearing results in an in-absentia removal order — a deportation order issued without the respondent present to contest it. The National Immigration Project has described the practice as 'designed to boost the number of deportation orders automatically,' a direct accusation that scheduling itself is being used as an enforcement tool.
Immigration attorneys in San Diego face a compounding difficulty: they cannot file appearances for every client whose date might suddenly shift, particularly when notification does not arrive through the standard Notice to Appear process. Advocates are pursuing emergency court interventions and motions to reopen cases after deportation orders are issued, but those motions carry their own procedural hurdles — and the orders stand in the meantime.
Two additional enforcement developments round out an unusually intense week for immigration news in the county. KPBS is reporting that dozens of immigrant arrests have occurred at entrances to San Diego-area military bases since President Trump returned to office in January 2025 — a practice that was reportedly rare before that date, given the distinct protocols historically governing civil immigration enforcement near federal installations. Separately, a federal judge has ordered an immigrant detention facility to allow a San Diego County health inspection, an order that implies concerns serious enough to require judicial compulsion for what would ordinarily be routine access.
Underlying all three stories is the ongoing Tijuana sewage crisis, which shapes how the U.S. and Mexico are able to coordinate on transboundary infrastructure. The collapse of the Insurgentes Collector pipe in eastern Tijuana has produced an estimated eleven million gallons per day of raw sewage flowing into the Tijuana River Valley and ultimately into the Pacific Ocean off Imperial Beach. San Diego County, all eighteen of its cities, and numerous school districts have formally declared the situation an emergency.