'Kangaroo court': Expert alarmed as Trump administration adopts new deportation tactics

An immigration expert is sounding the alarm as the Trump administration adopts a new tactic to try to deprive people of their legal rights ahead of deportation.

This comes amid a new NPR report that Trump-appointed immigration judges are adopting a new tactic of authorizing deportations summarily if people do not show up on time for their hearings, which opens the door to deceptively scheduling hearings at the last minute to catch people at a moment when they can't show up.

"Immigrants are now being scheduled for massive master calendar hearings — or 'mega masters' — that include 100 or more people at a time. That's up from two or three dozen people at a time, which had been typical before for a first hearing. For many immigrants, this is their first appearance in court to try to make their case to be able to stay in the U.S.," said the report. "Attorneys say these new hearings largely target people without lawyers representing them. Those who show up late, or not at all, are receiving removal orders, further truncating the already-limited due process available to immigrants."

This information horrified Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council.

"Immigration court becomes even more of a kangaroo court process; mass hearings targeting people without lawyers, scheduled at the last second so that many people miss them through no fault of their own, all to increase deportation orders for failure to appear," he wrote on X.

All of this comes as the Trump administration cracks down not just on illegal immigration but legal immigration, as well as instituting a dragnet to review and revoke the green cards of people who have already been granted residency.