On Sept. 4, San Francisco will have no immigration court of its own. The city's last two courtrooms, at 630 Sansome St., become a "hearing location" administered from Concord — an hour and a half away by BART — landing on the same asylum seekers who, since May 29, can now have their applications auto-rejected for missing a $102 annual fee.

Two federal changes are closing on San Francisco's asylum seekers at once, and neither is a courtroom-line mix-up. The physical one: the Executive Office for Immigration Review is demoting 630 Sansome to a satellite of the Concord Immigration Court, the last step in a purge that gutted the local bench and buried it in cases. The financial one: under H.R.1, USCIS can now reject a pending asylum application if a new, non-waivable annual fee goes 30 days unpaid. Together they turn ordinary administrative slips into deportation risks.

By Sept. 4, San Francisco will control none of its own immigration courtrooms. The federal government signaled the change on May 1 (external source, opens in a new tab), placing the two courtrooms still running at 630 Sansome St. under the Concord Immigration Court on the far side of the bay. It caps a fast unraveling: the city's older venue at 100 Montgomery St. had already shut its doors in early May (external source, opens in a new tab).

How far the court has fallen is the point. A bench that seated 22 judges in 2025 is down to two — a collapse that drove pending cases toward 120,000, per figures compiled by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (external source, opens in a new tab) (TRAC). Most local files are being rerouted to Concord, which was already juggling 60,000 of its own.

For anyone without a lawyer, the transfer's plumbing is where the danger hides. Moving a case across the bay once required a formal "change of venue" motion. Not anymore: Mission Local found (external source, opens in a new tab) the reassignment can now happen through a simple edit to the online hearing calendar — easy to overlook, and where one accidental no-show can trigger an automatic removal order. The two judges left in San Francisco now report up to Concord's chief assistant immigration judge, Julie Nelson; TRAC data cited by Mission Local shows she turned down close to seven in ten asylum claims she heard from 2020 through late 2025.

Dana Marks, a retired immigration judge, told Mission Local the arrangement is "very unfair to the public" and faulted the government for what she described as callousness toward immigrant families now facing a far longer trek by transit. The Concord courthouse is roughly 90 minutes from the city on BART.

Moving a case across the bay once required a formal "change of venue" motion.

Immigration attorney Julia Pilkington-Alexander called the demotion "the final nail in the coffin" for a court once ranked second in prestige only to Manhattan's — an institution, she told Mission Local, that "just combusted" under the administration's pressure.

Bill Ong Hing, who has taught immigration law at the University of San Francisco and appeared in the city's court for more than five decades, told The San Francisco Standard (external source, opens in a new tab) the shutdown is largely "symbolic," since in his view the real harm was done earlier, when the judges were purged.

The second squeeze is financial, and its clock started even more recently. H.R.1, the tax-and-immigration package signed July 4, 2025, added an Annual Asylum Fee owed for every year a case stays open. A USCIS interim final rule (external source, opens in a new tab) that took hold May 29, 2026 lets the agency discard a pending application once the fee sits unpaid for 30 days after notice. The charge is set at $102, and no hardship waiver applies. Federal officials have said it reaches cases that had been pending a year or more as of July 4, 2025.

Put the two together, and the fall of 2026 asks a San Francisco asylum seeker to watch an online docket that can quietly relocate a hearing 28 miles east, while paying a recurring fee that can't be forgiven — with deportation or rejection waiting behind either misstep. The legal fights are not over. Ong Hing told The Standard the closure was largely symbolic, but he struck a more defiant note with Mission Local, which reported (external source, opens in a new tab) at least two class-action lawsuits are pending against the Department of Homeland Security from Bay Area attorneys — including one over 630 Sansome's holding cells, which an earlier suit alleged were kept "bitterly cold" and "filthy" until a federal judge ordered ICE to improve conditions. "I have faith that we will prevail on many important matters," Ong Hing said.