Fort Snelling joins nationwide trend of holding ‘mega master’ immigration hearings, raising due process concerns

Five pages of names, identification numbers and countries of origin were stapled under Judge Kalin Ivany’s name on a bulletin board Monday at Fort Snelling immigration court. 

The volume itself wasn’t as surprising as the timing: All 73 immigrants’ cases were to be heard at one hearing that day.

The official posting of more than six dozen cases to be heard in one session marked a stunning shift in court procedure that immigration lawyers and advocates had for weeks feared would reach the Fort Snelling court after being tried in other jurisdictions. The innovation of the “mega” hearing had finally arrived in Minnesota. 

“In the time we’ve been tracking docket numbers, we’ve not seen a docket with 73 people listed for a single morning or afternoon,” said Amy Lange, head of The Advocates ...