On September 4, 2026, two newsrooms reported the same development from different directions.
NPR reported that immigrants scheduled for immigration court in Hyattsville and Baltimore, Maryland, and Sterling, Virginia, were being moved to two locations that had never been established as in-person immigration courts. One is the Executive Office for Immigration Review's own headquarters building in Falls Church, Virginia. The other is Federal Center Plaza at 400 C Street SW in Washington, a building NPR noted is listed as occupied by FEMA rather than the Justice Department. Attorneys have taken to calling them hidden tribunals.
The Washington Post, reporting separately and citing five agency officials and an internal email, described what is happening in that building: a conference room inside FEMA's headquarters is being converted to host immigration hearings, with officials expecting roughly 40 to 50 hearings a day. The two accounts corroborate each other from independent sources.
The notice is the legal problem. NPR spoke with five immigration attorneys who reviewed notices or observed hearings. Immigrants received word of rescheduled appointments within days, and in some cases received nothing at all. One learned of the change only through the MigraConnect app rather than by mail. The Justice Department's own policy requires at least ten days' notice. Some people were required to cross state lines to attend.
The format compounds it. Judges and prosecutors appear remotely while the immigrant is required to appear in person. Someone who never receives notice and does not appear risks an in-absentia removal order, which is a deportation ordered because the person was not in a room they were not told about.
The agency's response was narrow. EOIR said it “will continue to make scheduling adjustments...to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner,” and did not answer questions about why these locations were chosen or whether they constitute new courts. The Justice Department and DHS did not comment. On the FEMA arrangement specifically, a DHS spokesperson told the Post that “this arrangement will not impact FEMA's workforce or disrupt any of FEMA's normal operations.” A FEMA official told the Post, “it's just bad optics for us in general.”
The FEMA piece of this fits a pattern already on the record. A House investigation earlier in 2026 documented FEMA personnel and resources being diverted to immigration enforcement, which the report said measurably undermined the agency's disaster response (see Trump Administration Freezes FEMA Disaster Deployments During DHS Shutdown Despite $7 Billion in Available Funds and ICE Arrested a Man at a Manhattan Immigration Court the Day After a Federal Judge Ordered Those Arrests Paused).