Asylum court proceedings are a dystopian loop

Margaret Handley

Oct 6, 2026

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“Likelihood” and “You need proof.” The immigration judge repeated these words over and over again. Proof of what, I thought? 

As an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco who studies how to translate evidence into practice, including how to understand risk, I was startled and frustrated. Even after watching multiple immigration court proceedings, I still had trouble understanding the evidence the judge demanded from the immigrants whose lives hung in the balance. 

Until recently, there were two Bay Area immigration courts that served as the administrative starting point in removal proceedings for asylum-seekers. In these ”master calendar hearings,” the first of several immigration court appearances in an asylum case, a judge reviews the federal government’s charges against the person seeking asylum. This past May, the Montgomery Street immigration court in San Francisco—one of the busiest in the nation—abruptly closed, leaving only the regional court, about 30 miles away in Concord. According to NBC Bay Area, this development exacerbated the court’s backlog because it consolidated over 115,000 pending cases under the Concord Immigration Court, which already had a backlog of nearly 59,000 cases. According to the report, attorneys said the move would also trigger more confusion for immigrants, who are navigating the already complicated, yearslong asylum process. 

I have attended some of these asylum hearings as a volunteer observer with programs that monitor asylum cases—though increasingly cases are shuffled online where they cannot be observed. Earlier this spring, when I visited the Concord court, immigrants attending their initial hearing had their appointments rescheduled at the last minute, and many of the hearings were moved online. This forced asylum-seekers—many without lawyers—to navigate down a strange online rabbit hole, where what goes on is not viewable by the public.

What I have seen in court proceedings is definitely necessary to witness.

Before the closure of the San Francisco immigration court, I witnessed the absurd: A Mam-speaking Indigenous Guatemalan woman said she was trafficked to the U.S. as a young teen. The immigration judge presiding over her case told her that he would deny her asylum request and send her to a third country—“pretermit” her, in legalese—if she couldn’t come up with proof that she had a 51% “likelihood” of persecution.

Third-country removals, when the government sends someone to a country that is neither their home country nor a country of which they are a citizen or national, used to be rare. Under the second Trump administration, the American Immigration Council reports, third-country removals “have become key to executing an aggressive deportation agenda—especially in targeting people who cannot legally be deported to their home countries because they have shown they are likely to be persecuted.” 

In the case of the woman from Guatemala, the judge asked for proof of persecution, not in her home country, where she was actually persecuted, but in a third country she had never visited. It was likely she’d be sent to Honduras, which is covered by an Asylum Cooperative Agreement. The U.S. government makes these agreements with countries that it deems “safe,” according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. 

It was distressing to hear the judge reject population-level evidence of risk because any evidence the Guatemalan woman could cite did not reflect her exact situation. It is well-documented that Guatemala has some of the highest rates of femicide in the world—even higher for Indigenous women. Still, the judge provided no guidance on what evidence should look like. He said that evidence of personal risk was what counted in his court, but he gave no examples. It was a bait and switch. The judge was essentially saying, “You can get asylum if, and only if, you can prove you are at risk in this new place we want to deport you to. And no, not people like you, but actually you.”

How is it possible to prove actual risk of persecution in a country you have never visited?

How is it possible to prove actual risk of persecution in a country you have never visited?

This dystopia loop is not about this particular judge. This is our federal immigration policy, and what I have witnessed playing out in immigration courts nationwide. The proof requirement includes a false premise made confusing by the misuse of numbers to legitimize the charade.

This absurdity was repeated case after case. Over the next several hours, I heard 10 cases discussing the 51% requirement. I felt nauseated. This was such a blatant misapplication of the concept of risk. When talking about risk communication—and specifically when discussing risk likelihood, estimates are based on population data. This is true even if we have granular data on subgroups or precision medicine from our genome or cells. I could not envision someone showing a 51% risk of harm to themselves, except for something extreme such as, “If I shoot myself in the foot, I will have a less than 51% likelihood of a firearm injury.” But certainly not for, “If I go to Honduras, I can tell you with 51% likelihood that I will get shot by gang members.” 

At the end of each of the 10 cases, I witnessed the judge tell asylum-seekers that they were “pretermitted,” meaning their cases were denied, and they would soon face removal proceedings to a third country based on an impossible standard for evidence. The judge was quick to add that these asylum-seekers could always “self-deport” wherever they wanted. His final words at each session’s end, spoken without irony, were “You are free to go now.” 

As I uploaded my notes into the volunteer portal, I wondered: How can such a misuse of the concept of evidence be part of our U.S. legal system? 

Asylum-seekers are people fleeing persecution, violence, and other grave threats. The U.S. government is deporting untold numbers of these immigrants to their deaths in countries they’ve never set foot in. Is this what due process now looks like under the law?

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor