Chaotic, crowded Chicago immigration mega court hearings are fueling record deportation orders

The benches in courtroom 11 at Chicago’s immigration court, the one judges lament as so tiny, barely seat 25. So how could 143 people called for hearings on a single morning ever fit? By 9:10 a.m., roughly 60 of them — mostly asylum seekers without lawyers — had crammed in wall-to-wall. Judge Peter Kim’s clerk squeezes through the waiting crowd this July morning to collect names and mark late arrivals present. The stakes are high: failing to show up to court could mean an automatic deportation…