San Francisco immigration court closing early, cases shifted to Concord

A hearing room at 100 Montgomery Street is disappearing just as San Francisco’s immigration system is at its thinnest point in years. One of the city’s two immigration courts shut down at the close of business on May 1, sending most of its cases to Concord and forcing asylum seekers, families and attorneys into a longer commute through an already overloaded system.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review said on April 8 that the Montgomery Street location would stop holding hearings and that certain cases would be reassigned to 630 Sansome Street, with filings for those cases beginning there on May 4. The change comes much sooner than many expected. Mission Local reported the closure was moving ahead eight months earlier than previously reported.

The practical impact is sharp. Earlier in 2025, San Francisco’s immigration court had 21 judges. By March, it was down to two. KQED reported that the court carries a backlog of more than 120,000 cases and handles asylum and deportation proceedings stretching from Bakersfield to the Oregon border. That means the closure is not just a building change. It is a rerouting of a court system that already determines whether people can keep living, working and fighting their cases in the Bay Area.

The shift also pushes pressure onto Concord, where the immigration court opened last year with a promise to hire 21 judges but had only seven and about 60,000 cases on its docket, according to KQED. Its address is 1855 Gateway Boulevard, Suite 850, in Concord. Moving Montgomery Street cases there may not relieve the burden so much as spread San Francisco’s backlog across another crowded courtroom.

Local reporting has already flagged the human consequences. Final hearings in San Francisco were being scheduled as far out as 2029, and the Bay Area court had become one of the state’s most delayed. For immigrants who rely on public transit, legal aid and childcare, every added transfer to Concord means more missed work, more transportation costs and more chances for a hearing to go wrong.

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier has already pressed the U.S. Department of Justice for answers, warning about the closure’s effect on the Concord court. EOIR’s own San Francisco court page still listed both Montgomery Street and Sansome Street as open in December 2025, underscoring how quickly the court’s footprint has been cut back. In a city that has long seen itself as a sanctuary, the loss of one of only two immigration courts leaves fewer places to fight for due process.