About 100 vulnerable immigrant children, some as young as four years old, were placed on the docket of Chicago Immigration Court over two days, Thursday and Friday, October 29 and 30, in expedited hearings their attorneys say they have never seen scheduled so quickly — and which the attorneys believe are an attempt by the federal government to fast-track deportations. The hearings began on Thursday, as children across the Chicago area were preparing for Halloween trick-or-treating, NBC 5 Investigates (NBC Chicago) reported. No child is named in this report.
In a packed Chicago courtroom on Thursday, Texas-based Immigration Judge Susanna Martinez appeared virtually via WebEx, and legal counsel for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security also appeared virtually, NBC Chicago reported. The Chicago-based Children's Legal Center had 45 cases scheduled for Thursday and another 45 scheduled for Friday — 90 cases in all. The court did not get through Thursday's entire docket, so some cases had to be pushed to other days.
The cases were put on the calendar a week ago, giving the attorneys eight days to prepare for 90 cases. That meant contacting 90 families, arranging transportation for 90 families and children to come to court, taking children out of school and parents out of work, and checking where each child's immigration relief stood and whether each child had been properly served with the proceedings, the attorneys told NBC Chicago. One child missed her hearing because attorneys could not reach her in time, and the judge rescheduled that hearing for next week.
What protection these children are seeking
The attorneys said all of the Children's Legal Center's clients in this docket qualify for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), a special protection created by Congress for children who come to the United States alone and were abused, abandoned or neglected. The children now live in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. SIJS was created by Congress in 1990 for children whom a state court has found were abused, abandoned or neglected and who cannot safely return to their home countries, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center.
Immigration attorneys call large grouped hearings of this kind 'mega master' hearings — normally hundreds of adults appearing in court at once. Laura Smith, executive director of the Children's Legal Center, and Brigitte Kocheny, a supervising attorney with the Center, told NBC Chicago they have never seen large-scale hearings involving children, and Smith said she has never had cases move this quickly in immigration court.
In one case heard Thursday, the judge told a child that he would have to be sent back to Mexico and also gave the child the option to self-deport, NBC Chicago reported. Smith, that child's attorney, said the child has another option — appeal — and that she plans to appeal. The child's name is withheld here under this newsroom's minor-safety rule.
The longer pattern behind this week's docket
This week's hearings are not the first time Chicago's children's docket has drawn national attention. On August 26, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, U.S. Representative Mike Quigley and Illinois lawmakers joined the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Children's Legal Center to raise the alarm about due process for unaccompanied children at Chicago Immigration Court, after a judge presiding by video ordered the deportation of children in the court's 'mega masters' docket whose SIJS applications were pending. 'Children are being seen in immigration court without lawyers, without parents, and facing a language barrier, and being asked to explain why they deserve to stay in this country,' Representative Quigley said at the time.
Senator Durbin said in his August statement that he would continue to work with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Children's Legal Center on the issue. Advocates said then that, until June 2026, even a pending SIJS application had meant termination of removal proceedings, and that children were instead being called back to court at intervals of weeks rather than months. The October docket — 90 Children's Legal Center cases set with eight days to prepare — is, on the attorneys' account, a larger and faster version of the same pattern.
What the government has said, and what happens next
NBC 5 Investigates 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, but did not hear back, the station reported. No government statement on this specific two-day docket had been published at the time of this report.
What happens next is already partly scheduled. Friday's hearings were set to continue the docket, the unfinished Thursday cases were being pushed to other days, the child whose family could not be reached in time has a hearing rescheduled for next week, and the Children's Legal Center says it plans to appeal in at least the one removal case described above. For Punjabi and other immigrant families in the Chicago area — and for the many immigrant children who live with sponsors in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana — the practical point is the speed itself: a case that once moved in months is now being called in days, and a missed phone call or a missed school day can decide whether a child is heard at all.