FOR VERONICA B. GRANILLO, senior staff attorney at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, defending her clients in their immigration cases has become harder ever since the second Trump administration took office.
She says the atmosphere has shifted greatly as judges focus more on technicalities than the merits of a case.
“If you’re late for a hearing, even by 5 minutes, a judge can order you to be deported,” Granillo said. “Since California has pretty liberal judges, they have usually been pretty lenient, but with the new administration, [being a few minutes late] feels like just another reason to get a person out.”
Making matters even more challenging for Bay Area immigration attorneys, the Trump administration shut down the San Francisco Immigration Court this week, earlier than expected, according to various news reports. Employees said most of the court’s cases that were not resolved before the closure will be transferred to the Concord Immigration Court.
The Brennan Center for Justice defines immigration courts as administrative courts within the U.S. Department of Justice. They hear the cases of noncitizens who are being tried for deportation. There are currently over 3.5 million cases waiting to be tried in immigration courts, the center reports.
With this already enormous caseload, it’s unclear how the closure of the San Francisco Immigration Court will affect the wait times of the Concord Immigration Court.
Hundreds of thousands of pending cases
Under President Donald Trump, 2025 was a record year for immigration court cases all around the nation.
California courts have over 200,000 pending cases. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse from Syracuse University, in 2025, over 120,000 cases were in the hands of the San Francisco judges, according to Mission Local.
In 2025, in attempts to reshape the immigration system of the United States, the Trump administration fired well over 100 judges, and the numbers keep growing, causing the whole system to have less than a quarter of the staffing that it had in the past, according to NPR.
Early on, the Trump administration fired dozens of staff. There had been a record high of 21 judges staffed at the San Francisco court to help with the heavy caseload, NPR reported. The federal government quickly cut that from 21 to four, to the surprise of many. With there being only six judges at the Concord location, managing cases will likely become an even bigger struggle.
According to the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review of the San Francisco Immigration Court, the EOIR has diminished the backlog of the immigration court by over 360,000 cases and will continue to adjust the cases fairly. All of the pending cases currently assigned to the San Francisco Montgomery location will be moved to the Concord Immigration Court location, but if needed, some will need to be allocated to remote locations.
The sudden movement of cases from one court to another often results in court dates getting delayed for months or years. With this much time, witnesses for the hearings start to fade, and life circumstances change.
Lower approval rates
At the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, these changes have caused problems for many clients.
Granillo said the judges who have been let go had exceptionally high case approval rates, with San Francisco being the home of judges with the highest approval rates in the United States. Since the administration’s changes, the average approval rate has gone from 80%-90% to 40%-60%
For the immigrant communities struggling, many organizations in the East Bay offer support and services to help. Along with the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area provides “high-quality, affordable immigration legal services, education, and civic engagement opportunities.”
Other organizations, including Good Start Immigration Services and Pacific Immigration, are other alternatives.
Despite the long backlogs and apparent hostility from the Trump administration, Granillo nonetheless encourages her clients to pursue their cases.
“You have two choices: to leave or to fight,” she said. “Even though it’s terrible right now, you might as well just fight and try to give it your all.”
Jennifer Alas is a 10th grader at Northgate High School in Walnut Creek and a CCYJ reporter. This story originally appeared in CCSpin.