Politics
Portland family travels 1,200 miles for first immigration hearing in Concord
Maria and her teenage son spent $2,500 on a round trip to appear at the Bay Area’s main immigration court, where they had to represent themselves. Concord’s court has grown to the West Coast’s largest after taking on cases from San Francisco’s closed courthouse.
CONCORD — Maria and her teenage son, Juan, left Portland at 1 a.m. in early September and traveled roughly 1,200 miles round trip to attend their first immigration court hearing since arriving from Mexico nearly a decade ago. They borrowed $2,500 from a relative to pay for a driver to take them to the courthouse in Concord, about 35 miles east of San Francisco.
Maria learned about the hearing through a WhatsApp message from her Florida-based lawyer. Her asylum application still listed a Sacramento address, where the family had lived before moving to Oregon. The lawyer offered to fly to Concord to represent them for $12,500, but Maria said she could not afford it. She had begun working at a nursery only three months earlier, so she and Juan represented themselves.
The trip left Juan worried about missing the start of school the next day and about the possibility of encountering immigration agents at the courthouse. “If you don’t show up, they’re going to look for you,” he said. He hoped to be back in class if the hearing went well.
Their experience comes as the Concord courthouse handles a much larger caseload. It became the largest immigration court on the West Coast and the fifth largest in the country after absorbing cases from San Francisco’s courthouse at 100 Montgomery St., which has closed. The scale of the court’s docket means families such as Maria and Juan may face long travel, legal costs and the challenge of navigating hearings without an attorney.