Introduction
On May 19, 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued Matter of I-B-M-S-, et al., 29 I&N Dec. 628 (BIA 2026), Interim Decision #4193, an interlocutory decision that meaningfully tightens the standards for changing venue in removal proceedings. The case came up from the Boston Immigration Court, where the Immigration Judge had granted an oral, day-of-hearing motion to transfer the matter to Chelmsford, Massachusetts after direct examination of the lead respondent had already begun. The Board sustained the Department of Homeland Security’s interlocutory appeal, vacated the venue order, and remanded for assignment to a new Immigration Judge. In doing so, the Board reaffirmed and sharpened the framework of Matter of Rahman, 20 I&N Dec. 480 (BIA 1992), and added important guidance on three further questions: the conduct of off-the-record colloquy, the durability of the evidentiary record across a change of venue, and the appearance of judicial neutrality. The cumulative effect of the decision is to make late venue motions harder to win, easier to challenge, and substantially more expensive to bring without a properly developed record.
The Day the Hearing Stopped
The respondents in I-B-M-S- had been in removal proceedings before the Boston Immigration Court since 2022. They had appeared at two master calendar hearings without raising any concern about the venue of their case. Their individual hearing convened on December 12, 2025, by video. After preliminary matters were addressed and the direct examination of the lead respondent had begun, counsel made an oral motion to transfer the case to the Chelmsford court. The asserted ground was essentially geographic: the respondents’ zip code fell within Chelmsford’s catchment area. DHS objected, pointing out that the request was untimely, that the respondents had appeared in Boston without difficulty for years, and that disrupting an in-progress hearing would waste judicial resources.
The Immigration Judge granted the motion. He treated the zip-code argument as sufficient on its own, did not require a developed showing of prejudice, and then unmarked exhibits that had already been admitted, effectively treating the venue change as a reset of the proceedings. DHS filed an interlocutory appeal. The Board accepted review and reversed.
The Regulation and the Rahman Factors
Venue in removal proceedings is governed by 8 C.F.R. § 1003.20(b), which permits an Immigration Judge to change venue “for good cause” on a party’s motion, after the charging document has been filed and the opposing party has been given notice and an opportunity to respond. The regulation itself is brief, and its operative content has long been supplied by Matter of Rahman. For an overview of how venue fits within the broader architecture of removal proceedings, see the related discussion of master calendar and individual hearing practice on myattorneyusa.com.
Rahman directs the Immigration Judge to weigh a non-exclusive list of factors in deciding whether good cause is present: administrative convenience, the expeditious treatment of the case, the location of witnesses, the cost of transporting witnesses or evidence, the residence of the respondent, and the position of the opposing party. The factors are not assigned numerical weights; they are meant to focus the analysis on the practical realities of the particular case rather than on the convenience of any single party in isolation.
What I-B-M-S- does is not so much to change the test as to insist that it actually be applied. The Board found the Immigration Judge’s analysis deficient at almost every step. There was no meaningful consideration of administrative convenience once a merits hearing had begun. There was no discussion of how transfer would affect expeditious resolution; on the contrary, transfer would predictably delay the case. There was no identification of any witness whose testimony would be affected by venue. The respondents’ residence had not changed during the more than three years their case had been pending, which undercut any argument that residence-based factors had recently tipped the balance. And the Immigration Judge did not seriously engage with DHS’s opposition, treating it as a formality to be acknowledged rather than as a factor to be weighed. On this record, the Board held, good cause was not shown and the motion should have been denied.
The Timing Principle
The most important doctrinal contribution of I-B-M-S- is the explicit timing principle the Board articulated: the closer a venue motion is filed to an individual hearing, the less likely good cause can be shown. Absent extraordinary circumstances, venue should not be changed on the day of the individual hearing itself.
This is not an entirely new idea. The Board’s prior decisions had assumed that timing was relevant to the administrative-convenience and expeditious-treatment factors. What I-B-M-S- does is bring that assumption to the surface and convert it into a sliding scale tied to proximity to the merits hearing. Counsel filing a venue motion three months before the individual calendar faces a manageable burden. Counsel filing one the morning of the hearing faces a presumption against transfer that can be overcome only by an extraordinary showing tied to facts that could not have been raised earlier.
The Board did not define “extraordinary circumstances” in this context, and counsel should be careful to distinguish the term from its use elsewhere in immigration law, including the late-asylum-filing exception under INA § 208(a)(2)(D) and the in absentia rescission standard under INA § 240(b)(5)(C), where the same words carry different doctrinal content. In the venue context, the structure of the opinion suggests at least three categories of circumstance that may qualify: a recent and verifiable change in residence that genuinely impedes participation; a medical or family emergency that has materially altered the respondent’s ability to attend or to present the case where it is pending; and a sudden development affecting counsel’s ability to appear, such as illness or a withdrawal that requires fundamentally restructuring the defense. In each instance, the motion must be supported by documentation rather than by argument alone.
Off-the-Record Discussions
A second strand of the opinion concerns what happens away from the recorder. The Board cautioned that off-the-record discussions should be limited. When they do occur, the Immigration Judge must place a true and complete summary on the record once recording resumes, and the parties must be given the opportunity to add to or correct that summary. The point is not procedural for its own sake. Off-the-record discussions that bear on the merits, on scheduling, or on the parties’ positions can shape the outcome of a case, and a reviewing tribunal cannot evaluate them if they are not preserved.
This guidance has practical force well beyond venue practice. Any time substantive matters are taken up off the record, counsel should expect, and should affirmatively request, a complete on-the-record recapitulation. If the Immigration Judge’s summary is incomplete or inaccurate, counsel must correct it on the record at the time. After I-B-M-S-, the failure to insist on this preservation is more difficult to excuse on appeal, and the burden of demonstrating what was said and decided off the record falls squarely on the party who did not press for the summary.
The Record Survives the Venue Change
The Board also held, squarely, that a change of venue does not restart proceedings or erase the evidentiary record. The Immigration Judge in this case had unmarked previously admitted exhibits after granting the venue motion, apparently treating the transferred case as a new matter to be developed from the beginning before the receiving court. The Board rejected that approach. Admitted evidence remains admitted. Marked exhibits remain marked. The new Immigration Judge inherits the file as it exists at the moment of transfer.
This holding carries significant strategic implications in both directions. A respondent who has lost a contested evidentiary ruling, or who has been disappointed with how a witness testified, cannot use a venue change to obtain a do-over. Conversely, a respondent who has built a careful evidentiary foundation does not have to rebuild it upon transfer. The record travels with the case, and counsel should plan accordingly.
Appearance of Bias and Reassignment on Remand
Finally, the Board criticized the Immigration Judge’s handling of the case, including comments made on the record, as creating an appearance of bias. It reiterated that Immigration Judges must function as neutral arbiters with respect to both the respondent and the government. The remand was therefore directed to a new Immigration Judge rather than back to the original one.
The Board did not find actual bias, and the opinion is careful to draw that distinction. Appearance of bias is a lower threshold, concerned with how the proceedings would look to a reasonable observer, including the party that did not prevail. The lesson for the bench is that even when a particular ruling is correct on the merits, the manner of delivery, the treatment of opposing counsel, and the tone of colloquy can independently support reassignment on remand. The lesson for the bar is that a clean record of the Immigration Judge’s conduct, preserved through timely objections and requests for clarification, may matter as much on appeal as the substantive content of any ruling.1
The Decision in Doctrinal Context
I-B-M-S- should be read alongside the Board’s broader push in recent years toward docket discipline in removal proceedings. The same impulse that animated Matter of L-A-B-R-, 27 I&N Dec. 405 (A.G. 2018), regarding continuances, and that has driven the recent pretermission jurisprudence, is present here. The Attorney General and the Board have grown less tolerant of motion practice that delays the merits without producing a corresponding benefit to the quality of adjudication.2 Venue motions are now joined to that trend.
At the same time, I-B-M-S- is not an anti-respondent decision. The Board did not foreclose late venue motions; it required that they be justified. It did not abandon the Rahman framework; it insisted that the framework be honestly applied. And it reaffirmed that DHS’s position is a factor to be weighed, not a veto. The careful practitioner can still secure a change of venue where the facts warrant one. What the decision forecloses is the casual, undocumented, day-of motion built on a single residence-adjacent fact.
Practical Implications
For the immigration bar generally, several adjustments are now in order.
Venue motions should be filed as early in the proceeding as the facts permit. Where a respondent has moved, or anticipates moving, counsel should not wait for the next master calendar; the motion should follow the move, accompanied by an updated Form EOIR-33 and a declaration explaining the change. For practical guidance on Form EOIR-33 filings and address-change obligations, see the related discussion on myattorneyusa.com. Where witness availability or document access tilts toward a different court, the motion should be filed as soon as those facts become known, with a proffer identifying the witnesses and the specific obstacles to their participation in the current venue.
Where a motion must be made late, counsel should structure it as an extraordinary-circumstances motion. The pleading should explain candidly why the motion is late, what changed, and what efforts were made to raise the issue earlier. Documentation is essential: medical records for an illness, a lease or utility bill for a residence change, an itemized account of new witness or evidentiary needs. A naked assertion that the respondent now lives closer to another court will not suffice; after I-B-M-S-, the Board has said so directly.
Day-of-hearing motions should be treated as a last resort. If such a motion is unavoidable, counsel should be prepared to articulate the extraordinary circumstance with specificity, to propose a way to minimize delay (such as completing the direct examination of the witness already on the stand before any transfer takes effect), and to make a developed offer of proof on the record. Counsel should also insist that any off-the-record discussion of the motion be summarized on the record when proceedings resume, and should correct that summary on the record if it is incomplete. For respondents appearing by video, the same discipline applies; remote appearance does not relax any of these requirements, and may in some cases sharpen them, since the credibility of a venue argument premised on respondent location is undercut by the fact that the respondent is already participating successfully from that location. The growth of WebEx and video practice in the immigration courts, discussed in the related materials on myattorneyusa.com, means that “I cannot easily appear in this court” will increasingly require a specific factual basis.
For DHS practice, I-B-M-S- invites a more assertive posture. Government counsel should object on the record to late or undocumented venue motions, articulate the Rahman factors that weigh against transfer, and where appropriate seek interlocutory review. The Board’s willingness to accept and resolve such an appeal in this case signals that interlocutory venue questions are appropriate vehicles for review when the equities are clear.3
For the respondents in I-B-M-S- specifically, the path forward is now defined by the Board’s remand order. The case returns to the Boston Immigration Court, not Chelmsford, for assignment to a new Immigration Judge. The evidentiary record built before the venue change remains intact, which means the testimony already given and the exhibits previously admitted are still part of the file; the unmarking of those exhibits by the original Immigration Judge was itself error, and the new judge will inherit the record as it stood when direct examination was interrupted. The respondents will be heard on the merits of their applications by a different judge, in the same court where they have been litigating for nearly four years. Their counsel will need to prepare them for the resumption of direct examination at or near the point it was interrupted, brief the new judge through a status conference if one is offered, and consider whether to renew any procedural motions whose disposition may have been affected by the prior judge’s handling of the case. If, in the time between the day the hearing was halted and the day it resumes, genuine new facts have emerged that bear on venue, those facts can be presented in a properly documented motion. The decision does not preclude a renewed motion; it simply requires that any such motion be the product of real circumstances and a real evidentiary showing.
The broader message of I-B-M-S- is that procedural shortcuts in removal proceedings now carry a higher cost. The immigration courts are under sustained pressure to decide cases on the merits without unnecessary delay, and the Board has signaled that motions which substitute geography for analysis will not survive review. For respondents with genuine venue concerns, the decision is not an obstacle. It is a roadmap. The motion that is filed early, documented thoroughly, and tied to the Rahman factors with specificity will still be granted. The motion that is filed on the day of the hearing, supported only by a zip code, will not.
- The reassignment remedy is not a finding of misconduct, and counsel should be careful, both in briefing and in subsequent dealings with the immigration courts, not to characterize it as such. The Board’s articulated concern is appearance, not actuality, and a candid acknowledgment of that distinction tends to be received better than overstatement.
- The pending-case load before the Executive Office for Immigration Review has remained at historically elevated levels, and the agency’s published performance metrics continue to emphasize completion rates. The institutional context in which Matter of L-A-B-R- and its progeny were decided is the same context in which I-B-M-S- now sits. See Executive Office for Immigration Review, Adjudication Statistics (most recent quarterly release), available through the EOIR website.
- Interlocutory appeals to the Board remain disfavored as a general matter and are typically reserved for issues that affect the fundamental conduct of the proceedings or that present important jurisdictional or procedural questions. Matter of K-, 20 I&N Dec. 418 (BIA 1991). The Board’s willingness in I-B-M-S- to accept review of a venue ruling reinforces that the categories of “fundamental conduct” and “important procedural question” are not narrow ones.
