This is the fourth post in a series on the phenomenon of mega master calendar hearings, a new tactic used by the Trump administration to dramatically expand the number of people ordered deported at once. I encourage you to read the previous essays to ensure you have the full context of the analysis here.
Introduction
In my previous post on the surge of mega master calendar hearings, I provided a provisional definition of what counts as a “mega master,” then showed the data on the early explosion of courtrooms and people impacted by the EOIR’s new shadow policy. In April, there were just 6 morning mega masters hearings, defined as ≥100 people scheduled at once. Starting in May, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR, the agency that runs the courts) suddenly began increasing the total number of people scheduled for these mega masters, a pattern that expanded dramatically in June. In May, there were 25 mega masters; in June, there were 153 mega masters scheduled.1 In fact, on some days in June, fully 25% of all the people in the country who were scheduled for a master calendar hearing were scheduled for a mega master.
In this post, I will:
look at how many judges and courts have run at least one mega master morning so far this year
compare average docket sizes for judges who have run one against judges who haven't, both nationally and court by court
see whether the EOIR has scheduled more than one mega master morning at the same court on the same day
begin to lay the groundwork for a larger evidence-based argument that this is a deliberate (and possibly unlawful) manipulation of the immigration court’s docketing system to manufacture removal orders
Mega Masters Spike in May and June 2026
As I said before, the phenomenon of 100+ hearings scheduled for a single morning is not entirely new. A previous spike took place in late 2019, mostly for juvenile cases, and 100+ mega masters mornings have occurred, according to the EOIR’s data, intermittently over time and across administrations.
That said, the current wave of mega masters is historically unprecedented and, crucially, shows deliberate coordination at the highest level of the EOIR to focus on particular judges and courtrooms. This is not the result of judges choosing to pack their courtrooms; judges are not in charge of their own dockets. Rather, this is the result of the EOIR packing certain judges’ courtrooms and forcing the court to deal with it.2
There are four ways to quantify the recent spike in master calendar hearings. We can count…
how many mega masters mornings have occurred
how many judges have held at least one mega masters
how many courts have had at least one mega masters
how many immigrants in removal proceedings have been affected
Understanding this distinction allows us to drill into the data on any one of these to identify patterns (and, of course, these variables are interrelated). As I showed previously, relatively few mega masters can affect literally tens of thousands of people. Across 153 mega masters mornings in June, a total of 19,361 people were scheduled to appear, an average of 127 people per hearing.
A Closer Look at the Immigration Judges and Courts Forced to Cope with Mega Master Calendar Hearings
This post focuses on the courtrooms where mega masters take place and the judges who are given this impossible task. This focus is not random; it is, itself, the result of my analysis of mega masters, which finds that the whole mega masters phenomenon really seems to come down to the EOIR’s decision to dump hearings onto specific judges in specific courts—not all judges and courts across the board.
To simplify, let’s look at all of the judges that have had at least one mega master this year through the end of June (with the caveat that the soon-to-be-released data for June is likely to increase this number).
Here are some initial observations.
A total of 100 immigration judges have heard (from January to May) or have been scheduled to hear (in June), morning mega masters hearings. Half of those have only been assigned one mega master; the rest have been assigned more than one mega master.
The 89 judges that were assigned mega masters hearings in June represents 13% of the roughly 700 immigration judges currently listed on the EOIR’s website.
The largest mega master on record reached 193 hearings in one morning for Judge Laura Figueroa in Harlingen, Texas.
The New York City immigration court is home to the most judges (21) with at least one mega master morning (who have altogether held 39 mega masters). Chicago is second with 15 judges (51 total mega masters), and Dallas is third with 8 judges (22 total mega masters).
Judges Joshua D. Luskin (Chicago), Deitrich H. Sims (Dallas), Peter A. Kim (Chicago), and Tiesha Peal (New York) have each been assigned five total mega masters mornings, with largest dockets of 185, 154, 147, and 137 respectively.
The numbers above show that the mega master phenomenon is concentrated in particular courts like New York, Chicago, and Dallas—large courts with lots of judges and large backlogs. The map below of all courts with at least one mega masters shows this visually. But this concentration in key courts is only part of the story.
A full analysis of the data tells a more complicated story. Some exceptionally large courts have no mega masters mornings. And in those courts that do have at least one judge with a mega masters on record, the majority of other judges in the same building have experienced no such massive reassignment of hearings. For example, in New York, 21 of 101 judges were assigned to a mega masters docket—but 80% did not. In Chicago, 15 of 39 judges did— 62% did not. In Dallas, 8 of 32 judges did—75% did not. So even at courts where a few judges have had several mega masters, most of their colleagues have not held one. In short, the pattern of mega masters hearings shows intentionality toward particular judges on particular mornings rather than a system-wide phenomenon that is being applied indiscriminately.
To understand this more carefully, let’s look at the historical trend of the average morning master calendar docket size. The graph below shows this based on the total number of morning master calendar dockets and the total number of hearings that were scheduled. Note that generally speaking, since COVID, there have been more master calendar hearings as the EOIR has hired more judges. The total morning master calendar hearings increased from about 2,000 to 5,000 per month, and the average size of each hearing has increased from about 10 to 20.
Due to mega masters, the hearings scheduled for June represent a sudden spike in the average size of hearings—but note that there were actually slightly fewer master calendar hearings scheduled in June. Compared to historical data, the national average size of master calendar hearings is lower than the previous high in 2019, pre-COVID.
This is why we have to disaggregate by judge to understand where this recent spike is concentrated.
To keep this simple, let’s divide immigration judges into two groups: judges that have had at least one mega master this year, and those who haven’t. This separation allows us to narrow in on how these two groups of judges differ, if at all, by their average docket size to show how the recent spike is distributed. The graph below helps us get at this question going back to the beginning of 2025.
Here are some key observations based on the graph above:
As a whole, immigration judges who have had at least one mega master in 2026 so far tend to be judges with larger than average docket sizes to begin with. Their courtrooms already run larger than the national average.
The average overall docket size for mega masters judges increased from about 25 prior to May to (at least) 50 in June—a doubling.
Even excluding the specific subset of mega masters hearings, judges with at least one mega masters this year show knock-on effects on the rest of their caseload, with average hearing size increasing from 25 to 33. Mega masters judges are seeing increases across all morning dockets.
For judges who have not had a mega master this year, their average morning hearing size increased from about 15 to 19—not nothing, but not as large.
For judges who have not had a mega master this year and are in a court with no mega masters, their average hearing size is even lower, under 16 hearings per morning even after the national increase.
I don’t have time to get into the data here, but there is no clear correlation between these “mega masters judges” and their asylum grant/denial rate or which administration hired them. These are not necessarily Trump judges or high asylum deniers/approvers.
Note: If you’re wondering how mega masters judges (judges with 100+ hearings) could have an average docket size of just 50, remember that’s the average of all their hearings—not just the mega masters hearings. The yellow line, then, represents those same judges, but with the average calculated from all other hearings to eliminate the effect of large mega masters hearings. I could have added a line for the average size of only their master calendar hearings, too, but chose not to do so.
The graph above is for the entire country, but judges work in specific courts and courts tend to show patterns influenced by the composition of the judges and of the cases they receive. So to put judges in a more local context, let’s look at how mega masters judges and non-mega masters judges converge or diverge in terms of average morning hearing sizes. I think this provides further evidence that while hearing sizes are increasing nationally, the EOIR has clearly targeted certain judges to process a massive influx of cases on a single morning. I am using the same categories as above, but now applied to individual courts.
Here are some key observations based on the graph above:
There does not appear to be any generalized pattern of the relationship between judges with some mega masters in courts with other judges that have no mega masters.3 In Chicago, the increase in average docket size for mega masters judges coincides with an average increase among non-mega masters judges. But in El Paso and Atlanta, the opposite happened: non-mega masters judges actually saw hearing sizes decline.
Generally speaking, mega masters judges see an increase in the size of their non-mega master hearings, too, except in Dallas, where those judges actually saw a decline in the size of other master calendar hearings.
Mega masters judges in Atlanta saw significant increases in the size of non-mega masters hearings, too, that made them nearly equivalent to their overall increased hearing size. To put it differently, it’s possible that, for some judges, the average size of all non-mega masters hearings may increase enough that it converges to the average size of all of their hearings. (This observation really needs more analysis.)
Note that among many courts with no mega masters, the average size of hearings has remained steady or, in cases like Miami and Orlando, actually declined. This is an absolutely wild observation because if the goal of the Trump administration was simply to increase the throughput of the immigration court system, all courts should see an uptick—especially Miami, which currently has the largest backlog of cases. But that’s not what’s happening. It’s only certain judges in certain courts who are getting cases absolutely dumped on them.
Discovering the Multiple Mega Masters Phenomenon
I have one more important finding for this post. Remember that as of the end of May, 153 mega masters hearings were scheduled out for June. On-the-ground reporting has already shown how one mega masters hearing in a court can cause chaos. Question: has the EOIR scheduled more than one mega masters on a single day? Doing so would undoubtedly amplify the chaos from a single courtroom to the entire court. The answer: yes. Yes, it has.
Several courts have had more than one mega master calendar hearing on the same morning, dramatically increasing the total number of people showing up at once. I’m calling this the multiple mega masters phenomenon and it captures the amplifying effect of piling even more hearings into a single court.
The Dallas immigration court had five days with multiple mega masters scheduled, all in June (June 3, 4, 10, 17, 18), with two judges on each day.
The New York Broadway court had two mornings—June 5 with three judges and June 12 with two.
The New York City immigration court had two mornings—March 18 and June 15, with two judges each.
The El Paso immigration court had one morning—June 9 with two judges.
The Indianapolis immigration court had one morning—June 1 with two judges.
But nothing comes close to the amount of multiple mega masters at the Chicago immigration court. Chicago has seen 13 mornings so far with multiple mega master calendar hearings scheduled at the same time. Six of the dates below reflect three mega masters scheduled at the same time (yellow). Another three dates had four mega masters scheduled for the same morning (red), with collectively up to 611 people scheduled at the same time. And that’s not even counting other non-mega masters hearings taking place on those days.
May 26. Judges Reynolds, McKenna, and Kim. 347 total people.
May 27. Judges Luskin and Venci. 265 total people.
June 1. Judges Beese, Curran, Treacy, and Kim. 503 total people.
June 3. Judges Lee, Luskin, and Quiros. 441 total people.
June 4. Judges Stahl and Diaz. 306 total people.
June 8. Judges Klosowsky, Curran, and Beese. 468 total people.
June 10. Judges Luskin, Venci, Lee, and Quiros. 611 total people.
June 11. Judges Stahl and Diaz. 302 total people.
June 15. Judges Curran and Beese. 253 total people.
June 17. Judges Luskin, Lee, Quiros, and Venci. 554 total people.
June 18. Judges Stahl, Kim, and Diaz. 410 total people.
June 24. Judges Luskin, Quiros, and Lee. 461 total people.
June 25. Judges Stahl, Diaz, and Kim. 378 total people.
Undoubtedly, both mega masters and multiple mega masters will only increase.
Evidence for Targeted Mass Hearings
The data so far point to the fact that mega masters hearings are not merely a secondary effect of simply increasing the number of people per master calendar hearing across the board—which is what one might expect if the purpose here was to increase the court’s general throughput of cases while adhering to the agency’s mission to “adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation's immigration laws.” It’s not that at all.
Instead, the EOIR appears to be deliberately scheduling huge numbers of cases on a single morning in front of a single judge, far too many to reasonably adjudicate, for no other purpose than to manufacture removal orders and create chaos in busy court mornings. This deliberate strategy is amplified by the multiple mega masters phenomenon that we can already identify, especially at the Chicago immigration court.
Today’s post dug into the judges and courts where mega masters are taking place to draw out some of these patterns that point toward intentionality. The next post will dig into this further by asking: how much notice did people have of these hearings? As the data will show, many of these mega masters hearings were scheduled with barely any notice at all, raising significant questions about the legitimacy of in absentia removal orders being issued and compounding the evidence against the EOIR’s manipulation of court proceedings to generate certain outcomes.
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It is likely that many more mega masters took place in June because the scheduling data for June was prospective, and more hearings were likely scheduled for June on June 1 or later. Note that I am focusing for now on mornings only for reasons I explain in my previous post. I may ultimately decide that prospective hearings scheduled are too unreliable to count in this analysis, but for now I’m including them since they generally reflect on-the-ground observations.
If you have additional information about the level coordination between local courts and EOIR HQ, please share. There’s a larger story here that I haven’t had time to investigate qualitatively.
I did not do a statistical correlation or significance test on this, this is a purely visual observation.
My thought is that they're making mega-master hearings the norm to burn out certain immigration judges, causing them to retire so they can be replaced by "desirable judges" (more likely to remove immigrants than not).
The EOIR "manufactures" removal orders because the illegal aliens never intended to appear for their hearings in the first place. That was the Biden Border Strategy. Open the borders, let aliens claim asylum, release them, give them employment authorization, let them drop anchor babies and work, then never deport them after they failed to appear for a hearing in which they had no cognizable claim of asylum.