Roughly 15 people sat in the Salt Lake City Immigration Court in West Valley City. Framed photos of the Lincoln Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and the Washington Monument hung on the walls. Blue carpet covered the floor of the brightly lit, windowless room.
“This is Immigration Judge David C. Anderson conducting removal proceedings, Feb. 2, 2026,” the judge began. He paused while a Spanish interpreter on a video call translated, then continued, “at the Salt Lake City Immigration Court.”
Respondents — those with cases in immigration court — and their supporters were seated in three rows of wooden benches for master calendar hearings. These procedural hearings are typically short and often lead to the scheduling of another master calendar hearing or an individual merits hearing.
Anderson explained to them why they were there that morning. The court is separate from the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said. He spoke slowly and paused frequently to wait for translation.
When Anderson introduced a Homeland Security attorney, he gave the first clue that something had changed under President Donald Trump.
“I gave the wrong name,” he said, apologizing. “There are so many of them now.”
The Utah court has 23 government attorneys, three of whom were present, and just two immigration judges, he said. Three judges left in 2025, including at least one who was part of the Trump administration’s mass firings.
“We’re constrained by direction from above.”Homeland Security attorney Jim Glober
Another temporary judge, Matthew Andrasko, only decided asylum cases outside Utah in November and December, according to immigration court data tracker Mobile Pathways.
Other signs of change were on the walls.
A QR code linked people to instructions for alternatives to detention, which include the increasingly common ankle monitors.
Fliers in English and Spanish also encouraged respondents to self-deport. Those were not present when KUER sat in on court proceedings last March.
But leaving isn’t always easy.
The first to be called up was a 70-year-old couple. They had a pending asylum application, but had decided to return to Ecuador through voluntary departure. Immigrants can apply for the option to avoid the five-year bar on entry to the United States that comes with a removal order.
Like most immigrants in the Utah court, the couple represented themselves.
“We have a nice couple that just wants to go back to their home country,” the judge said.
Homeland Security attorney Jim Glober objected because of how the couple entered the country.
“We’re constrained by direction from above,” Glober said.
Anderson acknowledged this “unfortunately excellent point” and explained a quirk of the law to the couple. He agreed to see them again that afternoon so they could bring more evidence — an itinerary in English showing their planned trip home.
“I have over 12,000 cases. I’m very busy. I’d like to resolve your case now because I have so many others to take care of,” Anderson said.
Voluntary departures are a small fraction of outcomes in Utah’s immigration court. However, they have more than tripled in the last year, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
With the Ecuadorian couple’s case pushed to the afternoon, Anderson addressed the other respondents. He asked which language they understood best. Through the Spanish interpreter, he explained their rights to present evidence and to hire an attorney at their own expense. He offered more time for those who would like to find a lawyer. Everyone who raised their hand was rescheduled to July.
Much of immigration court is slow and administrative. Anderson emphasized deadlines. Holding up a blue form in his right hand, he stressed the importance of updating home addresses with the courts. For respondents who now live outside Utah, he transferred their cases to their home states.
In the next courtroom, Judge Christoper Greer carried out an individual hearing. These are generally longer, more private appointments where respondents make the case for why they should be allowed to stay.
Like Anderson, Greer maintained a pleasant, patient tone. He spoke with a couple fighting deportation on the grounds that it would cause extreme hardship to their children, one of whom had leukemia.
The courts are extremely busy, Greer said, and it can be hard to find an attorney. He also told the couple that “exceptional and extremely unusual” hardship is a very high bar to clear.
Since their attorney had withdrawn from the case, he scheduled them for another hearing in November to give them time to find another lawyer.
In Anderson’s courtroom, it was time for the next round of master calendar hearings. All three rows of wooden benches were full. Most of these respondents were accompanied by their attorneys.
Jonathan Bachison, an attorney based in Ogden, appeared in person for the first time in a long time. He believes hearings were changed from virtual to in-person to move things along faster.
“I have over 12,000 cases. I’m very busy.”Immigration Judge David C. Anderson
An in-person interpreter can translate in real time to a headset worn by respondents. If an attorney is attending remotely, the interpreter can only translate after someone speaks.
“So every hearing is going to take twice as long. And you have 49,000 cases. They don't have time for that,” Bachison said in an interview outside of the court at his Ogden office.
On this day in court, however, the interpreter worked remotely, and Anderson bemoaned the time it added. At the beginning of the week, he said he has an in-person interpreter maybe half of the time.
“My agency doesn’t have as much funding as we would like,” he told the courtroom.
As he worked, Anderson referenced his former colleagues. One woman wanted to combine her case with another person’s case that was scheduled for a hearing with a former judge. That hearing, Anderson said, was on a “phantom calendar” and may or may not happen. In another conversation, he asked if he could not handle former judge Douglas Nelson’s master calendar hearings on March 19.
In a situation that’s become increasingly common, the Homeland Security attorney moved to pretermit a case and remove the respondent to Ecuador or Honduras, citing the United States’ agreements with those countries. This follows an Oct. 31, 2025, decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals that has made it nearly impossible for immigrants to be granted asylum, Bachison said.
“I don't think I will win another asylum case in immigration court for the next three years,” he said.
The burden lies on the respondent to “establish by a preponderance of the evidence” that they will be persecuted due to their status in a protected class or be tortured in a country they may have never been to.
“It's a terror tactic to freak people out,” he said. “They just want people to leave.”
Later, when it was a Portuguese-speaking respondent’s turn, the judge dialed an interpretation company over the phone. Hold music played until an interpreter joined the call.
There were yet more hearings in the early afternoon. Anderson’s posted schedule in the waiting area listed 59 for the day.
Like in the morning, most respondents opted for more time to find an attorney.
In the case of one respondent set to return in July, the Homeland Security attorney said he was required to make a motion. Anderson told him he could wait till the next hearing, after the respondent had time to fulfill their due process right to counsel.
“Do I need to spell out for Homeland Security what that means, or did you also take a constitutional law class in law school?” he said.
A stifling of due process is one of the biggest changes of the past year, said West Valley City attorney Ysabel Lonazco. In one case, she said, an immigrant was transferred to a dozen different detention centers, leaving the attorneys scrambling to keep track of where she was — effectively violating her right to counsel, in Lonazco’s view.
“It's a terror tactic to freak people out. They just want people to leave.”Attorney Jonathan Bachison
Then there’s the matter of bond, which functions like bail. In July, the Trump administration changed its policy to hold people in detention while they wait for their hearings — even those who previously would have been released.
By late afternoon, Anderson’s hearings ended and the room had emptied. He checked his list of no-shows with the Homeland Security attorneys, who seemed to relax. While the judge worked on his computer, the attorneys chatted about their water bottles and the need for a nap.
About 10 people scheduled for the afternoon did not appear. Anderson ordered their removal, or deportation, in absentia.
In 2025, the number of immigration court no-shows rose nationwide. In Utah, more than 70% of cases completed in September and October ended with removal orders because the respondent did not appear in court. That’s up from an average of 30% over the previous two years, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Lonazco said that’s because people are scared of being arrested at their court appointments. Even though ICE arrests at immigration court are less common in Utah than in New York City, they see the news and lose trust, she said.
“If you're an immigrant, regardless of where you are, you see those images and you don't want to go to a court hearing anymore, and you can't afford an attorney, then what, what do you do?”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
