The Department of Justice shuttered a major San Francisco immigration court last week, a decision attorneys say could exacerbate the Bay Area’s immigration case backlog.

Early in the year, news reports emerged of the closure of the courthouse on 100 Montgomery Street slated for January 2027. Over the last year, the Department of Justice had fired 20 of the court’s 22 judges (the Trump administration has been accused of culling certain immigration judges, in favor of those more amenable to its ongoing mass deportation agenda).

The justice department’s executive office for immigration review (EOIR) described the court’s closure as “cost effective” in a statement last week. A smaller court in San Francisco remains open, but the majority of court operations will move to an immigration court 35 miles (56km) away in the East Bay city of Concord.

The Concord court opened in 2024 amid a Biden-era push to trim the ballooning immigration case backlog. As of September 2025, nationwide there are 3.75m pending immigration cases, according to data from the EOIR. In San Francisco, there are 120,000, per the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac), a research center at Syracuse University.

Some legal experts doubt the Concord court, where six judges were recently removed, has the capacity to inherit the closed San Francisco court’s caseload. A justice department spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

“With so few judges at the Concord court, we’re going to see a lot of people waiting years and years and years to have their cases heard,” said Milli Atkinson, director of the San Francisco Bar Association’s immigrant legal defense program.

“These delays deeply affect people. They affect people’s ability to have resolution … to have an answer and closure, whether a positive one that they’d hoped for or a negative one,” said Shira Levine, a former judge at the San Francisco immigration court, who is now legal director for the Immigrant Institute of the Bay Area.

The passage of time could also weaken the presentation of a case.

At asylum hearings, people are “presenting a lot of oral testimony from themselves and from witnesses. Over years, testimonial memories can fade,” Levine said. “Even if you submit the written evidence, years later, someone may not be available to testify in support of that evidence.”

The San Francisco court’s closure coupled with the exodus of judges has sown “a lot of chaos”, Atkinson said. There are court dates being pushed back and others being pushed up as a result of recent changes.

Atkinson expects that there several individuals will fall through the cracks of the court system.

“A lot of migrants have unstable addresses or don’t receive their mail,” she said, also adding that notices in English may not be heeded by those who don’t speak or read it.

People could then be placed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s radar if they miss their hearings, Atkinson said.

“If someone gets the wrong date, gets the wrong time, gets the wrong place, doesn’t file something exactly correct … the consequences are in some cases – where they really do have a serious fear of return – life-threatening.”

Last chosen, first signed.

New Denver Broncos linebacker Red Murdock agreed to terms on a four-year rookie contract on Tuesday. The news was first reported by 850 KOA’s Benjamin Albright. Murdock’s contract is worth $4.503 million with a $122,000 signing bonus.

Murdock was the 257th and final player selected in the 2026 NFL draft, earning the title of “Mr. Irrelevant.” Murdock (6-1, 232 pounds) was a force to be reckoned with for Buffalo in the MAC during his four-year college career. Murdock set a new FBS record with 17 forced fumbles, breaking the record of former Bulls all-star Khalil Mack.

Murdock is the first of Denver’s seven drafted rookies to sign his first pro contract, ahead of reporting to Broncos rookie minicamp later this week. It is anticipated that the other rookies will follow in short order, making them officially members of the team.

Denver began the offseason program on Monday, with organized team activities scheduled to begin in June. After that, fans will get to sell all the club’s rookies, including Murdock, at training camp later this summer.

Social: Follow Broncos Wire on Facebook and Twitter/X! Did you know: These 25 celebrities are Broncos fans.

Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson is facing fierce blowback on social media after a 77-year-old man was seen on video being beaten by two individuals in a crime that was captured by closed-circuit television cameras, a tool that Wilson has denounced in the past as something that makes the community feel unsafe and “vulnerable.”

The elderly man was walking down the street in downtown Seattle last month when two men walking by him stopped, without any provocation, shoved him to the ground and beat him, KOMO News reported.

Ahmed Abdullahi Osman, 29, was later arrested and charged with second-degree assault, and police are looking for the second suspect. Osman was reportedly booked into jail the night of the assault and then released back onto the streets before a bail hearing.

“Turning on more cameras won’t magically make our neighborhoods safer, but it will certainly make our neighborhoods more vulnerable,” Wilson said in 2025 after Seattle City Council’s approval of expanding the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) CCTV pilot program, the program used to capture the video of this specific crime, according to KOMO News.

Conservatives on social media quickly pointed to Wilson’s policies, which have been much maligned as “soft on crime,” as a contributing factor, as well as her previous comments on CCTV.

“They elected a SOCIALIST,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez posted on X. “What did they think would happen?”

“Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson remains clueless on the job,” journalist Jonathan Choe posted on X. “So she’s allowing far-left activists to make public safety decisions for the city.”

“Go ahead and explain the ‘sOCiONoMic rOoT cAusES’ of this heinous crime,” Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael A. Mangual posted on X.

“Ahmed Abdullah Osman beat a 77-year-old in Seattle,” conservative influencer account End Wokeness posted on X in a clip that has been viewed over a million times. “Police ID’d him thanks to street video cameras. Mayor Wilson: ‘CCTV puts refugees at risk.’”

Wilson has amplified concerns from local activist groups that CCTV cameras will pose a threat to illegal immigrant communities.

“We are deeply concerned that the expansion of these tools will create an infrastructure where federal agencies can more readily target vulnerable communities, including immigrants and refugees,” the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Washington and the Church Council of Greater Seattle said in a letter last year.

The victim in the incident spent a week in a hospital after suffering a broken arm, knee and facial injuries, KOMO News reported.

Wilson’s office directed Fox News Digital to a March press release in which she outlined her position on the cameras, saying she is leaving the current cameras on but “pausing expansion of the pilot” program until “we have completed a privacy and data governance audit, and taken significant steps to strengthen our policies.”

Wilson acknowledged there’s “no doubt that these cameras make it easier to solve some crimes” that include “serious ones like homicides, but also, cameras are not the one key to making our neighborhoods safe.”

“I want to acknowledge that this is a controversial issue,” Wilson added. “For some people, seeing CCTV cameras in the neighborhood where they live or work or attend school makes them feel safer. For others, those same cameras make them feel less safe.”

“Those feelings are important, because our quality of life is partly about our feelings of safety or lack thereof, and our sense that our city is a welcoming place that is designed with consideration for our well-being and our humanity.”

Wilson continued, “But precisely because different people and different communities experience the cameras differently, it’s important to base a decision on more than feelings. It’s important to ground our actions in a thorough understanding of how the cameras are being used, of the public benefits they are providing, and of any harm they are causing or could cause.”

In a Tuesday press release, the Redmond, Washington Police Department announced the second suspect, Jes’Sean Tyrell Elion, was arrested with the help of Seattle police officers.

However, Osman is on the run and “currently wanted on a $200,000 warrant” and “officers are actively searching for him,” the press release said.

Last month, Fox News Digital reported on city advocates who say they are struggling to find solutions as homelessness and open-air drug use spread across Seattle’s streets, amid growing concerns about the direction of Wilson’s new administration.

“You can just see the foil is like blowing down the sidewalks like autumn leaves,” Andrea Suarez, founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told Fox News Digital in an interview.

“Very common to see property damage of our parks and shared spaces. You can see Narcan is used to reverse an overdose, so you’ll see cartridges. But at least we’re remodeling the bathroom to be gender-neutral. I’m not [kidding] you, that’s where our priorities are.”