The Brief

On a recent sunny afternoon in Lancaster, Cassandra Hughes looked for a place to cool down. She set up a lawn chair in the shade at the edge of a park and spent the afternoon with a coloring book, listening to hip-hop music.

Reaching a high of 97 degrees, this August day was pleasant by Lancaster standards — a breeze offered temporary relief. But just the week before, during a brutal heat wave, the high hit 109. For Hughes, the Mojave Desert city has been a dramatic change from the mild weather in El Segundo, the coastal city where she lived before moving in April.

Hughes, a retired nurse, is among the Californians who are moving inland in search of affordable housing and more space. But it comes at a price: dangerous heat driven by climate change, accompanied by sky-high electric bills.

A CalMatters analysis shows that many California cities with the biggest recent population booms are the same places that will experience the most high heat days — a potentially deadly confluence. The combination of a growing population and rising extreme heat will put more people at risk of illnesses and pose a challenge for unprepared local officials.

As greenhouse gasses warm the planet, more people around the globe are experiencing intensifying heat waves and higher temperatures. An international panel of climate scientists recently reported that it is “virtually certain” that “there has been increases in the intensity and duration of heatwaves and in the number of heatwave days at the global scale.”

CalMatters identified the California communities most at risk — the top 1% of the state’s more than 8,000 census tracts that have grown by more than 500 people in recent years and are expected to experience the most intensifying heat under climate change projections.

The results: Lancaster and Palmdale in Los Angeles County; Apple Valley, Victorville and Hesperia in San Bernardino County; Lake Elsinore and Murrieta in Riverside County; and the Central Valley cities of Visalia, Fresno, Clovis and Tulare.

By 2050, neighborhoods in those 11 inland cities are expected to experience 25 or more high heat days every year, according to data from researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Colorado Boulder and UC Berkeley. A high heat day is when an area’s maximum temperature exceeds the top 2% of its historic high — in other words, temperatures that soar above some of the highest levels ever recorded there this century. (The projections were based on an intermediate scenario for future planet-warming emissions.)

Many of these places facing this dangerous combination of worsening heat waves and growing populations are low-income, Latino communities.

“We are seeing much more rapid warming of inland areas that were already hotter to begin with,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.

“There’s an extreme contrast between the people who live within 5 to 10 miles of the beach and people who live as little as 20 miles inland,” he said. “It’s these inland areas where we see people who…are killed by this extreme heat or whose lives are at least made miserable.”

Look up your neighborhood

While temperatures are projected to rise across the state, neighborhoods along the coast will remain much more temperate.

San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Long Beach, for instance, are not projected to experience significantly more high heat days.

San Francisco will average six days a year in the 2050s exceeding 87 degrees, compared to four days in the 2020s. In contrast, Visalia will jump from 17 days exceeding 103 degrees to 32 — more than a full month.

Unlike the growing inland populations, the cooler coastal counties, — where more than two-thirds of Californians now live — are expected to lose about 1.3 million residents by 2050, according to the California Department of Finance.

High temperatures can be deadly, triggering heat strokes and heart attacks, and exacerbating asthma, diabetes, kidney failure and other illnesses, even some infectious diseases.

Cassandra Hughes sits in the shade in Lancaster on Aug. 15, 2024. The temperature that day reached 97 degrees — cooler than recent heat waves. She strategically cools her home to keep electric bills low. “I have air conditioning, a swamp cooler and two fans,” she said.

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In California, extreme heat contributed to more than 5,000 hospitalizations and almost 10,600 emergency department visits over the past decade — and the health effects “fall disproportionately on already overburdened” Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, according to a recent state report.

City and county officials must grapple with how to protect residents who already are struggling to stay cool and pay their electric bills. Despite the warnings, many local governments have failed to respond.

A 2015 state law required municipalities to update their general plans, safety plans or hazard mitigation plans to include steps countering the effects of climate change, such as cooling roofs and pavement or urban greening projects.

But only about half of California’s 540 cities and counties had complied with new plans as of last year, according to the environmental nonprofit Climate Resolve.

The California dream or a hellish reality?

An exodus from California’s coastal regions is a decades-long trend, said Eric McGhee, a policy director who researches California demographic changes at the Public Policy Institute of California. People are moving away from the coasts, especially the Los Angeles region and Bay Area, to elsewhere in California and other states.

About 104,000 people moved from the Bay Area to the Sacramento area, the Inland Empire and the San Joaquin Valley in 2021 and 2022, and about 95,000 moved from Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange County to those same inland regions, according to data collected from the Census.

McGhee said most people moving inland are low-income and middle-income Californians looking to expand their families, find cheaper housing and live comfortably — and they’re willing to sacrifice other privileges, like cool weather.

California is “becoming more expensive, more exclusive in the places that are least likely to experience extreme heat,” Swain said. As a result, he said, “the people who are most at risk of extreme heat” — those with limited financial resources — “are precisely the people experiencing extreme heat.”

Explore high heat days

The San Bernardino County city of Victorville — which is 55% Hispanic and has median incomes far below the state average — is among California’s fastest growing areas, adding more than 12,500 new residents between 2018 and 2022. Nearby Apple Valley and Hesperia grew by about 3,000 and 6,000 people, respectively, while Lancaster, Palmdale and Visalia added between about 10,000 and 12,000.  

In Victorville on an August day that reached 97 degrees, Eduardo Ceja wiped sweat from his forehead as he worked at Superior Grocers store, retrieving shopping carts.

The work is often grueling in this Mojave Desert town. He sometimes drinks five bottles of water to stay hydrated as he works, with the concrete parking lot radiating the heat back onto his skin. When he’s done pushing carts, he recovers in the air conditioned store.

The extreme heat “is noticeable. I don’t think there was a day under 100 in July.”Scott Nassif, apple valley mayorCeja, 20, moved to nearby Apple Valley about a year ago, around the same time the new grocery store opened. He used to sleep on his parents’ couch in the San Gabriel Valley town of Covina, east of Los Angeles, which is often more than 10 degrees cooler than Apple Valley on summer days. But he wanted a place to himself at a low cost, so now he pays $400 a month for a bedroom in his brother’s home.

Since he moved here, he’s observed many businesses, including his own employer, expand or open in Apple Valley.

“I notice a lot of people from L.A. are coming here,” he said. It makes sense to him. “Out here, the apartments have more space.”

Apple Valley Mayor Scott Nassif, who has lived there since 1959, said days over 100 degrees used to be rare. Now week-long heat waves above 110 degrees are commonplace.

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Apple Valley Mayor Scott Nassif has seen his desert town grow and get hotter over his lifetime. When he moved to the area in 1959, only a few thousand people lived there. Now it’s home to more than 75,000 people.

Nassif remembers only a few days that would reach above 100 degrees and multiple snowstorms in the winter. Now, snowstorms are rare, and week-long heat waves above 110 degrees are commonplace.

The extreme heat “is noticeable,” he said. “I don’t think there was a day under 100 in July.”

Nassif attributes the town’s growing population to its good schools, a semi-rural lifestyle and affordable housing for families.

In the high desert town of Hesperia, growth is evident. Banners advertising “New homes!” are posted throughout the town, luring potential buyers to tract home communities. Residents are cautiously eyeing a new development, called the Silverwood Community, that has recently broken ground.

The massive, 9,000-plus acre development is authorized for more than 15,000 new homes, according to its website. A video on its website coaxes potential buyers: “True believers know the California dream is within reach.”

An aerial view of the Silverwood Community, a housing development under construction in Hesperia, on Aug. 16, 2024. The development could include as many as 15,000 new homes to the desert city, which currently is home to about 100,000 people.

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Ted Soqui for CalMatters

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Hesperia, which is almost two-thirds Hispanic and also has median incomes far below the state average, is anticipating continued growth as housing costs soar in other parts of California. Its planning includes rezoning some areas to allow for higher-density housing, which could bring more affordable housing, said Ryan Leonard, Hesperia’s principal planner.

“If people are willing to make a commute to San Bernardino, Riverside or Ontario — a 45-minute to an hour commute — they can afford to buy a home here when they might not be able to afford that same home down the hill,” Leonard said.

Summer electric bills soar to $500 or more

In the California towns at most risk of intensifying heat, people already are saddled with big power bills because of their reliance on air conditioning.

For instance, households in Lancaster, Palmdale and Apple Valley pay on average $200 to $259 a month for electricity, compared to a $177 average in Southern California Edison’s service area, according to California Public Utilities Commission data as of May, 2023.

In summer months, average power use in these communities nearly triples compared to spring months, so some people’s bills can climb above $500.

And their bills are likely to grow as climate change intensifies heat waves and utility rates rise: Californians are paying about twice as much for electricity than a decade ago. The state’s rates are among the highest in the nation.

Diane Carlson moved to Palmdale, north of Los Angeles, 30 years ago. The housing was much cheaper and she wanted to move where her children could attend school near where they live.

Over the years, she’s felt the temperatures in Palmdale rise.

Carlson said her electric bill during the summers used to average about $500, a significant chunk of her household budget. About four years ago, though, she had solar panels installed on their home, which cut her bill in half.

“You can’t not run the air conditioner all day, even if you run it low,” she said. “You wouldn’t survive otherwise. The heat is too oppressive.”

With multiple days in the summer reaching at least 115 degrees, Carlson is conscious that there may be a future where Palmdale isn’t livable for her anymore.

“Will it get as hot as Death Valley?” she wondered.

Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth, reached record temperatures in July, averaging 108.5 degrees; the high was 121.9, tying a 1917 record. In comparison, Palmdale by 2050 is projected to have 25 days where the maximum temperature exceeds 105, up from nine days in the 2010s.

Carlson said she’d consider moving to the East Coast, where she’s originally from. But she’d face hurricanes rather than the heat. It all comes down to making a decision: “Which negatives are you willing to deal with?”

Hughes, who lives in subsidized housing in Lancaster, said surviving the heat means constantly checking the weather forecast and strategically cooling her home to keep electricity costs low. “I have air conditioning, a swamp cooler and two fans,” she said.

On a day when the temperature doesn’t reach triple digits, the air conditioner might stay off; she opens the windows and turns on the fans instead.

Local leaders say they know more must be done to protect their residents.

Lancaster opens cooling centers in libraries for residents who need respite from the heat. During heat waves, residents ride buses for free, and city programs provide water and other resources to homeless people.

“Is it adequate? Of course it’s not adequate,” said Mayor R. Rex Parris. “If you’ve got people who don’t read or don’t get a newspaper sitting in a sweltering apartment, the information is not getting to them and we know it.”

Parris said air conditioning is necessary for families to stay cool in the hot desert summers, but with utility costs so high, it’s becoming a luxury.

With that in mind, he said the city is prioritizing hydrogen energy, which could lower electric bills in the long-term. A new housing tract will be powered by solar panels and batteries that store power, backed up by hydrogen fuel cells, which will be cheaper than if the homes drew energy entirely from the grid, said Jason Caudl, head of Lancaster Energy.

Nassif, the Apple Valley mayor, said his town helps residents finance costly rooftop solar panels that can cut their power bills.

“Educating our public on how to save on their electric bills is a big thing, because you can’t live up here without air conditioning,” Nassif said.

Cooling centers aren’t enough to protect people

On a Saturday morning in Visalia, as temperatures climbed to 99 degrees, Maribel Jimenez brought her 2-year-old son to an indoor playground to beat the heat. She sat at a kid-sized table with her son, Mateo, as he played with toy screws and blocks.

Jimenez, 33, has lived in Visalia her whole life. She grew up on a dairy farm and remembers playing outdoors for hours in the summers. But things have changed. She can’t imagine letting her son play outdoors under the scorching sun. She worries he’s not getting the outdoor playtime he should be getting.

“It’s definitely gotten much hotter,” Jimenez said. “You can’t even have your kids outside. We want to take him out to the playground but it’s too hot. By the time it cools down in the evening, it’s his bedtime.”

Other times, she and her family go to the mall for walks, or anywhere where there’s air conditioning.

“As long as he’s out, he’s happy,” she said. “We try our best to protect him.”

The effects of extreme heat on the body can happen quickly and can affect people of all ages and health conditions. Once symptoms of heat stroke begin — increased heart rate and a change in mental status — cooling off within 30 minutes is crucial to survival, said Tomás Aragón, director of the California Department of Public Health

Many municipalities react to extreme heat by following state or county rules, which often involve opening cooling centers in public places when temperatures rise above a certain level for multiple days in a row.

“You want people to be in a space where your body can control its core temperature,” Aragón said. “It’s safer to be in an air conditioned place (that) cools your body down. That’s what cooling centers are for. I tell people, go to the supermarket, go to the library, go to a cooling center, go and just let your body cool down.”

But community advocates say cooling centers are ineffective because they’re underused. Many people are unaware of them, and others have no transportation to reach them.

“I think everyone is used to that being the answer for what we do when it gets extremely hot,” said Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of Climate Resolve. “We need to expand our imagination to figure out other ways of taking care of people.”

Victorville has complied with the 2015 state law requiring plans to handle climate change, and Hesperia is in the process of updating its plans.

But Los Angeles County is an example of a local government that has gone above and beyond to comply, Parfrey said.

The county has updated its emergency preparedness plans and is in the early phases of developing a heat-specific plan for unincorporated areas, which will include urban greening and changes to the built environment to make neighborhoods cooler, said Ali Frazzini, policy director at the county’s Chief Sustainability office.

“It’s not just about preventing deaths and other terrible outcomes of heat waves, although that’s extremely important,” Frazzini said. “It’s really about having livable communities where kids can play outside and street vendors can run their businesses without risk of overexposure.”

Parfrey said the state plays a role, but “they’re not in charge of the roads or building codes or where you put a water fountain or how you build a local park. All of that has to be done at a local level.”

In 2022, the Newsom administration issued an Extreme Heat Action Plan outlining state steps to make California more resilient to extreme heat. That includes funding new community resilience centers where people can cool down as well as find resources or shelter during other emergencies, such as wildfires. It’s a model that some community advocates prefer over traditional cooling centers that are underutilized.

The state has granted almost $98 million for 24 projects so far, said Anna Jane Jones, who leads development of the centers for the state’s Strategic Growth Council.  

In Visalia, Jimenez said her family doesn’t have many options for cool spaces where her young son can be entertained.

At home, the family uses the air conditioner sparingly and keeps the blinds closed. During a heat wave, their power bill can climb to $250. If the bills were lower, she’d use the air conditioner all the time “We have to do what we have to do,” she said.

Jimenez and her husband have thought twice about expanding their family and have floated the idea of moving somewhere else, but many of the affordable options, like Texas or Arizona, are even hotter than Visalia.

“Global warming is a thing, and the heat isn’t getting any better anytime soon,” she said. “Everybody’s paying the price.”

Find a SoCal cooling center

In L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties, call 3-1-1 or call for a list of cooling centers. In the city of Los Angeles, you can also find a list of recreation centers, senior centers and libraries — all good choices for cooling off — online.

• Tip: Call the center in advance to make sure seating is available.
• Tip: If the center you want is at capacity, or non-operational, head to a local, air-conditioned library and cool off with a book about ice fishing in Antarctica.

You can get more details of cooling centers in Southern California:

• L.A. County
• City of L.A. (includes hydration centers)
• Orange County
• Riverside County
• San Bernardino County

Three candidates for Long Beach City Council have joined forces in their bid to unseat the incumbents they’re challenging in the primary election this June.

Deb Kahookele, running for District 1; Tara Riggi, running for District 5; and Sequoia Neff, running for District 9, announced their combined ticket in a video published on social media earlier this month.

At a joint campaign event in front of around 100 people in Bixby Knolls on Wednesday, they reiterated their goal of “breaking up the 9-0 votes” they say are all too common on the mostly closely aligned Long Beach City Council, where it’s rare to see a narrowly-split vote.

All three are political newcomers, coming from careers in real estate.

They’ve claimed the grassroots lane this election, winning backing from resident groups like the Long Beach Reform Coalition that views itself as a check on City Hall power, occasionally suing — and winning — on tax issues.

Kahookele, Riggi and Neff say they feel disenfranchised from the current city government, something they emphasize in their slogan: people over politics.

They’re taking on three well-established incumbents: Mary Zendejas in the downtown area’s District 1, Joni Ricks-Oddie in North Long Beach’s District 9 and Megan Kerr in District 5 that extends east and west from Long Beach Airport. The three have already raised tens of thousands of dollars each for their reelection races and won endorsements from the mayor, other local politicians, labor and business groups.

Tara Riggi, center, and Sequoia Neff, left, talk with voters before a campaign event in Long Beach on March 19, 2026. Riggi is running for the District 5 seat.

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Long Beach Post

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Riggi said she decided to run for office after moving to the Cal Heights neighborhood and becoming president of the neighborhood association.

“My allegiance is to my community,” Riggi said at the event. “We are a truly grassroots campaign.”

Kahookele, who moved around a lot at an early age because her father was in the Army, said she found Long Beach home after moving to the city in 2010 and has since risen to prominent roles in several local organizations, including the Promenade Area Residents Association, Long Beach Pride and Long Beach Rotary.

“My votes aren’t going to be bought,” she said.

Deb Kahookele speaks with voters at a campaign event in Long Beach on Wednesday, March 19, 2026. She is running for the District 1 City Council seat.

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Long Beach Post

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Neff, a Poly High School grad and mother of six who founded a local youth basketball league and track club, owns a brokerage firm that operates in multiple states. Early this year, she held a walk to raise awareness about human trafficking in her district.

“North Long Beach has been unheard and overlooked for too long,” Neff said. “And it’s time we’re a part of the conversation, and I just want to step up and do that.”

At Wednesday’s campaign event, they repeatedly hit on the theme that current representatives aren’t doing enough to represent their constituents, and they vowed to dig into the city’s spending to remedy a looming $80 million deficit. They pledged to vote against the possibility of any new tax measures.

Sequoia Neff speaks with voters before a campaign event in Long Beach on Wednesday, March 19, 2026. Neff is a candidate for the District 9 seat.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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North Long Beach resident James Murray said he showed up Wednesday to hear more from Neff after she attended a recent Starr King Neighborhood Association meeting, and he came away convinced.

“I think it’s time for a change,” he said.

Dan Pressburg, a longtime neighborhood organizer in the DeForest Park neighborhood, said the three candidates joining together was the right move: He wants people outside the current political structure to have a chance to rise to power.

You can see a full list of candidates who will appear on the June ballot here. The Long Beach Post will have continuing coverage, including a full voter guide to be published in the coming months.

The Trump administration has reshaped a lesser-known corner of the Justice Department to set immigration policy and escalate mass detentions and deportations.

An administrative court known as the Board of Immigration Appeals has published a body of immigration case law that significantly narrows the due process and relief from deportation available for immigrants, an NPR analysis of its decisions shows.

The White House has done that by shrinking the size of the board by nearly half — and stacking the remaining slate of 15 judges with President Donald Trump's appointees.

Last year, their decisions backed Department of Homeland Security lawyers in 97% of publicly posted cases; that's at least 30 percentage points higher than the average from the last 16 years.

The board has made it harder for immigration courts to offer immigrants bond in lieu of detention. It's made it easier to deport migrants to countries other than their own. And a new proposed regulation would make it harder for people to appeal their immigration decisions at all.

The board did this last year while quickly pumping out 70 published decisions, a record number of precedent-setting cases.

"The board has an impact on immigration law that is much, much bigger than the number of people that are on it," said Andrea Sáenz, a former board judge appointed by former President Joe Biden and terminated by Trump last year. "That's because they have this ability to set immigration precedents and rules for the whole country."

Immigration courts are housed within the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, at the Justice Department and are not a part of the independent judiciary.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys appear before these courts to make their arguments about why someone should be removed from the country. Immigrants, meanwhile, appear before these courts to make their case about why they should be allowed to stay in the U.S.

The point of the Board of Immigration Appeals, former members and immigration attorneys said, is to catch mistakes made by immigration judges. After an immigration judge issues a decision, both the immigrant and ICE have a right to appeal that decision.

"The stakes are so incredibly high in the immigration proceedings and the law is so complicated and convoluted and difficult," said Victoria Neilson, supervising attorney at the National Immigration Project at the National Lawyers Guild. "Even assuming that [immigration judges] are acting in good faith, they're going to get things wrong sometimes because the laws are changing all the time."

Former BIA judge Katharine Clark had been at the DOJ for over 15 years and joined the Board in 2023.

She worked there until she received her reduction in force notice last year.

She said she reviewed thousands of cases in her role. These reviews were meant to catch overlooked details in an immigrant's case or testimony that could make the difference between approving or denying a deportation order.

"We lose an absolutely crucial method of catching errors by immigration judges who are absolutely flooded with cases," Clark said about the administration's gutting of the board. "In this situation, mistakes are essentially inevitable."

A DOJ spokesperson, who provided a statement sourced to the agency, said EOIR is "restoring integrity to the immigration adjudication system, and Board of Immigration Appeals decisions reflect straightforward interpretations of clear statutory language."

"President Trump and the Department of Justice will continue to enforce the law as it is written to defend and protect the safety and security of the American people," the spokesperson said.

"Under the leadership of Chief Appellate Immigration Judge Garry Malphrus, the BIA is now recommitted to following the law and fulfilling its core adjudicatory mission."

Trump changed the makeup of the board

Within a month of taking office, leadership in the new Trump administration moved forward with a reduction in force, cutting the number of appellate judge slots on the board from 28 to 15. The first to be dismissed were the most recent hires: those appointed by Biden.

Those had been there longer were also a part of the reduction in force or resigned soon after.

The changes in the workforce mirror a pattern seen across the federal government, especially immigration courts, where in the last year at least 100 judges were fired, and more resigned or retired. An NPR analysis last month found there are now a quarter fewer immigration judges than there were at the start of 2025.

Justice Department leaders have sent several memos and directives signaling to judges and appellate members that they want streamlined asylum and bond denials.

EOIR did not respond to a request for comment on the reduction in force. In the federal register notice announcing the reduction, the agency says a larger board wasn't more productive at reviewing more cases.

"Although many factors may have contributed to this outcome—including organizational and administrative challenges—the data demonstrate that increasing the Board's size has not brought about the hoped-for increases in productivity envisioned by prior expansions," the notice states.

Making rapid policy changes

BIA's public decisions set the precedent and tone for what immigration judges nationwide should do and how the general public should interpret immigration law and policy.

The number of such decisions has skyrocketed under Trump — as the board seeks to cement a particular interpretation of the law. An NPR analysis looked at BIA decisions over the past four administrations, going back to 2009.

It found that in 2025, the agency published 70 decisions. That is nearly as many as all of the decisions posted publicly under Biden and the single highest yearly total since 2009.

Judges that make up BIA panels reviewing appeals could consider tens of thousands of cases a year, but the vast majority are never made public.

"There are thousands and thousands of unpublished decisions that come out of the board every year that are your ordinary cases. And then normally, you'd maybe have two or three dozen precedents that are intended to explain a part of the law in more detail," said Sáenz, now with Co-Counsel NYC, a nonprofit immigration law organization. "And they're intended to be binding on the whole country and all immigration judges and [U.S. Citizenship and immigration Services] to say, this is how you actually follow this piece of the law."

ICE attorneys generally receive favorable orders in most cases against immigrants before the board, according to the data included in NPR's analysis; 2015 was the only exception, where immigrants won more cases than the administration did.

But in 2025 the government won 97% of the public cases brought before the board — a new high. In one of two cases in which the board did not side with DHS, DHS attorneys failed to appear at the initial hearing.

Already in 2026, NPR has tracked 21 decisions with DHS winning all but one of them, according to an NPR analysis of published decisions. The one case where the board ruled in favor of an immigrant involved the person withdrawing their appeal for asylum; they had already been granted another protection from deportation.

"Tangible effect on the lives of millions"

The administration "came in this time knowing we don't necessarily need to have immigration judges in place, we need to have the policy in place," said former BIA judge Homero Lopez, who was appointed by Biden and let go last year. "And the policy gets made by the board, not by the immigration judges."

Neilson, the attorney at the National Immigration Project, said recent decisions "have formed the backbone for how immigration judges" are allowed to consider asylum and bond cases.

"They've issued several decisions that make it impossible or nearly impossible for those who can seek bond from the immigration judge to even get bond," she said.

The BIA has made at least three decisions that limit whether an immigrant can be granted bond to be out of detention while their case plays out in the courts.

In one case, Matter of Yajure Hurtado, the board ruled that immigration judges have to deny bond and detain noncitizens who entered the country illegally. Several district court judges have rebuked the Trump administration's mandatory detention policy. Still, EOIR leaders in January instructed immigration judges to defer to Hurtado's case as precedent and to deny bond.

Federal appellate courts are now weighing in on the matter.

"The decisions that the board has made to take away the option of getting immigration bonds for various large groups of people has been by far the most impactful thing that has happened there since I left," said Clark, the former BIA judge. "It really has had a tangible effect on the lives of millions of people."

Other BIA decisions have paved the way for the government to more easily deport people to third countries — those countries other than their home country.

Proposed rule meant to curtail further appeals

At the start of 2026, the administration started phasing in more changes. A newly proposed rule would have shortened the window for immigrants' appeals to the board from 30 days to 10, and made it easier for appeals to the BIA to be dismissed before being heard.

The rule was aimed at reducing the BIA's pending backlog, which topped 200,000 cases as of the end of last year, according to EOIR.

Five immigrant rights organizations sued the administration, successfully arguing the rule would limit due process by straining legal services in order to meet the shorter deadlines.

A federal district judge last week blocked most of the new rule from taking effect, calling it unlawful and unenforceable.

Judge Randolph Moss on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the government offered only one reason why immigration attorneys might see a reduced workload thanks to the rule: they would "quickly lose virtually every appeal that they bring before the Board."

"Defendants' argument is like telling Habitat for Humanity that a rule limiting new home construction will help, rather than hurt, the organization because it will incur fewer costs acquiring lumber and nails," Moss wrote in his opinion.

The lawsuit is still ongoing. EOIR said it does not comment on litigation-related matters.

"If someone feels like they had their fair day in court and they just didn't meet the legal standard, people can kind of accept that," Nielson said. "But if you give up everything to follow the rules and then suddenly the rules disappear, that seems very un-American."

This story used artificial intelligence to help analyze 634 cases that were decided by the Board of Immigration Appeals from January 1, 2009 to March 18, 2026. For each case, the AI tool determined whether the panel had decided for the Department of Homeland Security or for the immigrant. NPR reporters tested and verified the accuracy of the tool's results, and an independent lawyer who manually tracked court cases for 2021 and 2015 reviewed the analysis and confirmed the results.

Copyright 2026 NPR