Border Report: Immigration Courts in Detention Centers Are Getting Busier

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains more and more people, courtrooms at Otay Mesa Detention Center have filled, leaving many family and friends hoping to see their loved ones’ hearings stuck instead in the facility lobby.

In June when I went to the detention center to watch a bond hearing for a man arrested at the downtown San Diego Immigration Court and detained at Otay Mesa, the line of members of the public trying to get into the court stretched almost to the lobby door. The guards working the front desk warned that we might not get in because of limited seating. 

I watched as a family of nine had to choose which members to send up to the courtroom. Several community members were in line behind me to see the same case I was there to watch. I was the only one of us allowed up, and the processing took so long that even though we arrived at the facility well before the afternoon hearings began, I missed most of his hearing by the time I got upstairs to the court. 

Guards escorted attorneys and members of the public to the courtrooms through a series of sliding metal doors controlled by badges. 

It wasn’t the first time that I’d seen people denied entrance to the courtrooms due to space constraints. Each courtroom has rows of three benches on each side of the door. According to the guards, people in custody are not allowed to sit next to people not in custody, unless they are attorneys. That means if there is a detained person sitting on a bench, no member of the public can sit there.

The guards also don’t allow men in custody to sit on the same bench as women in custody, or men wearing blue, indicating ICE considers them low security level, to sit next to men wearing red, those ICE considers high security. Men in orange, people ICE has labeled medium level security, are usually grouped with those in red.

In July, I sat in the packed courtroom of Immigration Judge Guy Grande at Otay Mesa Detention Center, watching as person after person asked to be deported.

More than a dozen men squeezed into the three benches to the left of the door. The men in the first row wore orange, and those in the second two rows, which had five people crammed into each of them, wore blue. On the right, a row of women wearing either blue or orange filled the front bench. I sat with a couple of family members of one of the men in the second bench, and several more detained men sat in the bench behind us, including a man in red.

The man spoke with his son, a toddler in the row I was sitting in, and a guard moved him further away from the child so they wouldn’t speak.

Grande worked his way through the cases, including a few detained men that were held in San Luis Regional Detention Center in Arizona who appeared on a television screen along with the judge, who was using Webex from his courtroom in downtown San Diego to hear the cases.

As the afternoon stretched past 4 p.m., the time that immigration courts typically close, Grande called forward a man from Mexico who asked for voluntary departure. 

The judge swore the man in and began reading through ICE’s allegations and charge. (Though immigration is considered a civil legal matter rather than a criminal one, people in immigration court do face charges that indicate why ICE thinks they are deportable.)

When the judge asked to confirm his nationality, the man said he was from Tijuana. 

Grande told the man that ICE said he had overstayed his visa, that he had entered in October 2015 with a tourist visa. 

The man corrected the judge. The last time he entered was in June 2025, less than two weeks before, he said.

“In 2025?” the judge said.

Yes, the man said.

He told the judge he’d been in the United States for about three days doing some shopping when ICE arrested him.

The judge turned to the ICE attorney in the courtroom and confirmed that normally someone can stay up to six months on that kind of tourist visa. 

The judge looked at the date on the Notice to Appear, the document containing the allegations and charge that the Department of Homeland Security files with the court to start an immigration case. It was just a few days after the man said he’d entered the United States.

The ICE attorney asked for a continuance, saying she needed time to find the man’s arrest documents.

“I know you don’t want to be detained,” Grande told the man. “I wouldn’t want to be detained either.”

“The government doesn’t have the file, and it’s late in the day,” Grande added. “You could be in status. Maybe the government can’t sustain the charge.”

The man asked, with some disbelief in his voice, if the judge was suggesting he wait more time in custody to try to sort out the issue.

After more back and forth, Grande asked the man if he wanted the judge to terminate his case. 

The man said he didn’t know what that meant. 

The judge said he didn’t think based on the information in the Notice to Appear that he could order the man removed. 

“I don’t want to be detained anymore,” the man said. “My family depends on me. I work in Tijuana to provide for my family.”

Over ICE’s objections, Grande terminated the case. When I checked for the man in ICE’s detainee database about a week later, he was no longer in custody.

Around 5:30 p.m., Grande still had several people in his courtroom waiting to ask to be deported.

“I am burned out,” Grande said. “This is beyond my pay grade.” 

He told his clerk to set the remaining cases over for the following morning. 

Thank you for reading. I’m open for tips, suggestions and feedback on Instagram and Threads @katemorrisseyjournalist and on X/Twitter and Bluesky @bgirledukate.

In Other News

Pressure to deport: I wrote for Capital & Main that ICE is pressuring people in its custody to accept deportation rather than fight their cases.

Soy Mexico: The Mexican government is running a campaign called “Soy Mexico” for U.S.-born children of Mexican citizens to get dual citizenship in Baja California from Aug. 1 through Oct. 31, according to José Ibarra with Siempre En La Noticía. 

Economic impact: A study from UC Merced found that labor participation in California declined more than 3% when ICE began conducting large-scale raids in Los Angeles in June, Gustavo Solis reported for KPBS.

School arrest: ICE arrested a parent on her way to drop off children at an elementary school in Chula Vista, Sofía Mejías-Pascoe and Andrea Figueroa Briseño reported for inewsource.

Accompanied by faith: Local faith leaders began showing up to immigration court daily this month to accompany people in response to ICE’s decision to arrest many after their hearings, Alexandra Mendoza reported for The San Diego-Union Tribune.

Veterans in court: Military veterans are similarly accompanying asylum seekers who worked with the U.S. government in Afghanistan to their court hearings in hopes that they won’t be detained, Andrew Dyer reported for KPBS.

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