About 100 immigrant children, some as young as 4 years old, were placed on the docket of the Chicago Immigration Court over two days, Thursday, October 29 and Friday, October 30, 2026, in hearings their lawyers say were scheduled faster than they have ever seen. In a packed Chicago courtroom on Thursday, Texas-based Immigration Judge Susanna Martinez presided virtually by WebEx, and the Children's Legal Center — the Chicago organisation representing many of the children — had 45 cases listed for Thursday and another 45 for Friday.
Source: NBC Chicago (NBC 5 Investigates)
In one case heard Thursday, Judge Martinez told a 15-year-old boy, whose name is withheld because he is a minor, “I'm going to have to send you back to Mexico,” and also gave him the option of leaving voluntarily, known as voluntary departure. His attorney, Laura Smith, executive director of the Children's Legal Center, said she plans to appeal. “There's this pressure upon these children to take a voluntary departure, but it's almost like coercion because they don't fully understand the legal system,” Smith said. The lawyers say they believe the federal government is trying to fast-track deportations; that is the attorneys' characterisation of the scheduling, and the government agencies involved did not answer questions about it before publication.
A pace the lawyers say is new for children
Immigration attorneys call hearings of this kind “mega master” hearings: very large dockets in which many people appear before a single judge at once, a format previously associated with adult cases. Smith and Brigitte Kocheny, a supervising attorney with the Children's Legal Center, said they have never seen large-scale hearings involving children. “I've never had cases move this quickly in immigration court,” Kocheny said. The cases were put on the calendar about a week earlier, giving the legal team eight days to prepare 90 cases. Counsel for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security also appeared virtually.
The court did not get through Thursday's full docket, so some cases were pushed to other days. In one case, a child missed her hearing because attorneys could not reach her in time, and the judge rescheduled it for next week. In another, the attorneys said the Department of Homeland Security had mailed the notice to appear to the child's previous address even though they said the address had been updated — an account the department has not publicly addressed.
The protection at the centre of these cases
According to the Children's Legal Center, all of its clients in these hearings qualify for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), a protection Congress created in 1990 for children who came to the United States alone and were abused, abandoned or neglected. The children in this week's docket now live in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. Until June 2026, even a pending SIJS application meant removal proceedings were terminated; Smith has said that position changed this summer, which is why children with pending protections are now being ordered removed while their status is unresolved. An appeal and a voluntary-departure offer are not the same thing: an appeal keeps the case alive before a higher body, while voluntary departure ends it with the child leaving the country.
How Chicago got here
This week's dockets follow a summer of escalating alarm at the same courthouse, documented independently by the National Immigrant Justice Center and CBS News Chicago. In August 2026, an immigration judge presiding by video ordered six children deported at one set of hearings — children aged 12 to 17 whom state courts had found abused, abandoned or neglected, and who had SIJS applications pending — prompting Senator Dick Durbin, Representative Mike Quigley and Illinois lawmakers to publicly raise due-process concerns alongside the Children's Legal Center and the National Immigrant Justice Center. On July 31, 2026, the administration ended the federal contracts that for years had funded legal representation for unaccompanied children, and both Chicago legal organisations lost that federal funding. Hundreds of children nationally have since been scheduled for expedited hearings and interviews, advocates say.
Source: National Immigrant Justice Center
NBC 5 Investigates said it contacted the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection with questions about the attorneys' concerns and the timing of the hearings, and did not hear back before publication.
What happens next
Friday's docket was expected to continue the same pattern, with the balance of the 90 Children's Legal Center cases called before the court and the cases left unfinished on Thursday pushed into the coming days. The rescheduled hearing for the child who could not be reached is set for next week. For the 15-year-old told he would be sent back to Mexico, Smith says the next step is an appeal, which must be filed within the immigration system's strict deadlines. For immigrant families across Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana — including the large diaspora communities around Chicago who follow immigration court closely — the practical questions are the same in every case: whether the child has a lawyer, whether the notice reached the right address, and whether a protection Congress created for abused and abandoned children is decided before a removal order is carried out. None of the children in this report is named, in line with the protection owed to minors.