Seattle Immigration Court starts ‘mega' hearings, ‘welfare checks' for kids
The kids came to Seattle Immigration Court with bows in their hair and colorful backpacks. Some held hands with the adults who brought them when they went to the bathroom or to get a drink of water.
Mateo and Sandra, 6 and 8, lay their heads on their uncle Eric Jaimes' lap and closed their eyes. Living in Pullman, they had gotten up at 5 a.m. to drive from Mukilteo, where they were staying because all the hotels close to Seattle were full of World Cup visitors, Jaimes said.
They're just kids," he said of his sleepy niece and nephew. "They don't understand the complexity" of what they were there to do.
So began the first so-called mega hearing at the court Tuesday for juveniles in deportation proceedings who entered the U.S. without a parent or guardian. Mega hearings are a new Trump administration tactic that have immigration courts nationwide scheduling an unusually large number of people to appear at the same time.
These large preliminary hearings started for adults and families in Seattle in late June. Tuesday's hearing kicked off what is expected to be four days of juvenile mega masters in Seattle before Judge Theresa Scala. Her first such hearing had 106 people scheduled throughout the day - up to five times as many as at a typical preliminary hearing - and revealed a new rationale for bringing some kids more frequently into court: checking on their welfare.
That's not the purpose usually associated with what are called "master calendar" hearings, in which judges ask some basic questions like whether people have applied for asylum and if they need more time to find a lawyer. If they do, a judge will often schedule another hearing. Eventually at such a hearing, an immigrant will be asked to admit or deny the government's charges of being deportable, similar to an arraignment in criminal court.
Quick and perfunctory as many master calendar hearings are, people who miss them face large consequences: They typically receive a removal order "in absentia." Some immigrant advocates believe the administration is holding mega hearings - scheduling some at short notice - in hopes many people won't show up and will get removal orders.
Scala issued 32 such removal orders at the end of Tuesday's hearing, according to Kayley Bebber, a Northwest Immigrant Rights Project attorney.
The administration has said in response to questions about mega hearings that it is trying to reduce the immigration court backlog and "ensure cases do not languish."
From the bench, Scala told the stepmother of a 15-year-old whose hearing date had been moved up a year that the court was rescheduling children's hearings "to check on their safety." The judge echoed that rationale in telling two children she wanted to see them three times a year, at one point referring to these summonses as "welfare checks."
"I haven't heard of that before," said Bebber, who heads Northwest Immigrant Rights Project's unaccompanied juveniles program. She questioned whether immigration court was the best venue for welfare checks, given what she called an "adversarial" environment of deportation proceedings.
More requirements to show up in court also mean more possibilities of no-shows and removal orders. Making court appearances can be difficult, Bebber said, because kids may have to take off school and their adult chaperones often have to take a vacation day from work. Like Mateo and Sandra, they may have to travel from across the state and stay with friends or in a hotel.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the immigration court system, did not respond to questions about why welfare checks were happening and when they started.
In another break from the past, Scala on Tuesday typically gave people a little over a month to find a lawyer for their next hearing. Previously, people often got six months or a year, according to Northwest Immigrant Rights Project lawyers. It seemed another instance of the court speeding up cases.
"Things are changing so fast, Bebber said.
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This story was originally published July 8, 2026 at 6:43 AM.