"Mega Masters" Surging

Something is fundamentally changing in America's immigration courts, and the numbers are impossible to ignore. As we've been reporting alongside the Associated Press and NPR, a single judge now presides over dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people in one half-day session. The result: with these “mega master” hearings now routine, deportation orders have climbed past 1.2 million since January 2025, sweeping up juveniles and unaccompanied minors in their wake.

The “mega master” hearing is asylum's newest chokepoint. Cases expected to wait years suddenly get a notice for next month, framed as a quick check-in where a name is called and next steps are set. Miss it, and you can be ordered removed without ever getting a hearing on the merits. As shown below, this phenomena more than doubled in size in June 2026.

Simultaneously, the typical warning time given for a court appearance has been in free fall, from around 150 days at the start of 2026 down to under 50 by mid-year. “Mega masters” show the sharpest drops in notice time: 36 days typical notice, against 64 for a regular hearing, which is roughly half the warning time people who have the least room for error.

The data related to “mega masters” appears to tell a simple story: less notice for more crowded hearings means fewer cases actually get heard on their merits. The result is twofold: deportation orders and abandoned cases are surging in equal measure (see below).

The above growth of removal orders is not surprising on its own, as 99.1% of missed hearings end in an in absentia removal order, issued for not appearing in court. What did surprise many of Mobile Pathways' partners was a second trend running alongside it: a rising number of asylum cases also being marked "abandoned."

In May and June, week by week, the pattern became unmistakable: national abandonments rose precipitously and simultaneously with the “mega master” phenomena. In fact, today more asylum cases have been abandoned under the current administration than under the previous three combined. And the timing lines up: as “mega masters” became routine, abandonments climbed right alongside them.

Kids aren't spared. In “mega masters”, 6 in 10 juveniles are ordered removed just for missing court. Unaccompanied children used to get far more leeway from immigration courts than anyone else and that's mostly gone. Continuances granted fell from about 8 in 10 requests to under half, and typical advance notice before a hearing dropped 72%.

Our data shows unaccompanied minors — the kids most likely to be facing court completely alone — now make up a majority of children in “mega master” sessions. Their notice window shrank even faster than everyone else's, dropping a full year before it did for adults or accompanied kids.

The result: since January 2025, in absentia (non-appearance) rates have more than doubled, hitting unaccompanied and accompanied children alike.