San Francisco immigration court, once one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, permanently closed Friday.
Now immigration attorneys and their clients tell NBC Bay Area the move could exacerbate the court’s backlog of pending cases and potentially trigger more delays and confusion for immigrants navigating an already complicated process.
The move will consolidate most of the over 115,000 pending cases under the Concord Immigration Court, which already had a backlog of nearly 59,000 cases, according to figures compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC.
The Concord court, about 30 miles away from the San Francisco court, opened in 2024 to help ease a national backlog of cases that threatened to overwhelm the immigration court system.
San Francisco’s immigration court had a nearly 71% grant rate for asylum and other relief, much higher than the 48% nationwide, according to TRAC data.
The closure comes after a dramatic reduction in San Francisco’s immigration court bench. Before President Donald Trump took office in 2025, the court employed 21 judges. Only two remained at the city’s Sansome Street location this week.
NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit found that the departures forced many cases to be reassigned or rescheduled— some years into the future.
The court’s closing was first announced in January, when court personnel were told that the Department of Justice would not renew its lease at 100 Montgomery Street and that the courthouse was expected to close in January 2027. Employees were told they could begin relocating to Concord as early as the summer.
But the justice department accelerated the timeline. The Montgomery Street location stopped holding hearings in May, although some administrative and filing operations continued during the transition.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the justice department agency that oversees the nation’s immigration courts, announced that the San Francisco court would formally close at the end of the day on Friday, Sept. 4.
The remaining courtrooms at 630 Sansome Street will become a hearing location under the administrative control of the Concord Immigration Court. EOIR said cases will be adjudicated either in Concord or remotely.
Concord’s immigration court appears to be ramping up operations. Bob Redell reports.
When NBC Bay Area visited the Sansome Street location this week, the long lines that once wrapped around the building for immigration hearings and ICE check-ins were gone.
Outside, NBC Bay Area met Daisy, a Honduran asylum seeker who said she came to the United States two years ago after fleeing violence in her country.
“There are people like us who want to work honestly and do things right,” Daisy said in Spanish. “I help care for older adults, and I’m trying to pay my taxes—and not be a burden on this country.”
The courthouse had also become a focal point of immigration enforcement after federal agents began arresting immigrants following scheduled court appearances.
EOIR said it determined that relocating operations from Montgomery Street to Concord would be more cost-effective. The agency said it would issue new notices to everyone whose case is reassigned.
But the closure has also drawn scrutiny from Congress.
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who represents the district where the Concord court is located, sent EOIR a letter seeking information about the decision-making process, the effect on the region’s case backlog and whether the Concord court has the resources to absorb the transferred cases.
“It’s just about what was the process? What was the rationale for doing it?” DeSaulnier told NBC Bay Area. “What kind of analysis did you do? Is it going to help with the backlog? All those things—and we haven’t had a response.”
As the Trump administration continues its purge of immigration judges and enacts sweeping policy changes, two former Bay Area immigration judges are giving an inside look at the upheaval and explaining why they believe the public should be paying attention. Hilda Gutierrez reports.