Your Notice to Appear Has No Date or Time. Here Is What That Actually Means.

Your Notice to Appear does not have a date or a time written on it. That gap is real, and courts have argued about it all the way to the Supreme Court, but it does not mean your case is dismissed, and it does not mean you can skip a hearing once one is actually scheduled. What it can do is affect one specific calculation behind cancellation of removal, and it can give you an objection to raise with the immigration judge, an objection that is only preserved if you raise it before the close of pleadings, though whether to raise it at all is itself a strategic decision that can cut either way on that same calculation. The rest of this explains what that document is supposed to contain, what the missing date does and does not change, and how much of this area of law has shifted in just the past year.

What a Notice to Appear Is Supposed to Contain

Congress spelled out exactly what has to be on a Notice to Appear in 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a). Among the required items: "the time and place at which the proceedings will be held," along with a warning about the consequences of failing to appear except under exceptional circumstances. If that date or place later changes, the law separately requires the government to serve a new written notice specifying the new time or place and the same warning about the consequences of not attending, delivered in person when practical or otherwise by mail. In practice, some people are served with an initial Notice to Appear that leaves the hearing date blank, sometimes literally marked "to be set," with the actual date and time supplied later in a second document.

The Stop-Time Rule: Why the Missing Date Matters for Cancellation of Removal

Certain kinds of relief from removal, cancellation of removal chief among them, require you to show a set number of years of continuous physical presence in the United States. The "stop-time rule" in 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(d)(1)(A) governs when that clock freezes: continuous presence is deemed to end when the government serves a notice to appear "under section 1229(a)." In 2018, the Supreme Court decided in Pereira v. Sessions that a document labeled "notice to appear" which fails to specify the time or place of the hearing does not qualify as a notice to appear under that section, and so does not stop the clock. The Court called the answer "as obvious as it seems": a notice that does not tell you when and where to appear is not a notice to appear under the statute and does not trigger the stop-time rule.

Three years later, the government tried a workaround: serve an incomplete notice first, then follow up later with a second document supplying the missing date and time, and argue the two together satisfied the law. In Niz-Chavez v. Garland (2021), the Supreme Court rejected that approach 6 to 3, holding that the statute requires "a single document containing all the information," not, in the Court's words, "a mishmash of pieces with some assembly required." Two documents served at different times do not add up to one compliant notice for stop-time purposes.

Both decisions are narrower than they are sometimes described. Pereira and Niz-Chavez resolved only the stop-time-rule question. Neither one decided whether a missing date or time affects the case for any other purpose, something the Supreme Court itself pointed out later when it described Pereira's discussion of separate notice-of-hearing questions as "mere dicta."

A Missing Date Does Not Erase Your Case

That last point matters, because a missing date or time is not, by itself, a reason the case goes away. The Board of Immigration Appeals held in Matter of Fernandes (2022), as the Board itself later described that decision in 2025's Matter of Lopez-Ticas, that the time-and-place requirement "is a claim-processing rule, not a jurisdictional rule." The Board went further in Lopez-Ticas itself, holding that the lack of time and place information on a notice to appear "does not render untrue or incorrect a respondent's admission to the factual allegations or invalidate the charges of removability in the notice to appear," and is therefore not a proper basis for withdrawing pleadings already made. The Board also held that service of the notice was proper "regardless of whether it contained the time and place information," and that a missing date does not make service of the document deficient.

The Third and Sixth Circuits have agreed. The Third Circuit held in Chavez-Chilel v. Attorney General (2021) that the absence of the time and place information does not affect the immigration judge's authority to act, because Pereira "governs only a specific aspect of cancellation of removal relief, the stop-time rule," and nothing more. The Sixth Circuit reached the same conclusion in Ramos Rafael v. Garland (2021), and again in Vargas-Rodriguez v. Bondi (2025), which quoted the circuit's own earlier, unpublished decision in Singh v. Garland for the point that "circuit courts (including our own) have uniformly rejected these post-Pereira 'jurisdictional' arguments." As the Board put it in Lopez-Ticas, quoting Fernandes: "A noncompliant notice to appear is not equivalent to a lack of a notice to appear altogether."

Timing Is Everything: Object Before the Close of Pleadings

None of this means the defect is irrelevant, only that whether and when you raise it, rather than the defect standing alone, is what determines the consequences. The Board has said that if you do not object to a defective notice to appear in a timely manner, before the close of pleadings in front of the immigration judge, the objection is waived or forfeited. If you do object in time, the government may be permitted to fix the notice, but the defect does not, on its own, entitle you to have the case thrown out.

The stakes of that choice are direct enough that the Board spelled them out in Lopez-Ticas, quoting its earlier decision in Matter of Aguilar-Hernandez: "it is a strategic decision by a respondent to raise (or not raise) an objection to a defective notice to appear lacking the date and time of the initial hearing before the Immigration Judge. By electing not to raise the objection, the respondent's notice to appear remains defective and the respondent will continue to accrue continuous physical presence in the United States for the purposes of cancellation of removal. Conversely, if after the respondent raises a timely objection, DHS remedies the defective notice to appear, then the 'stop-time' rule prevents the respondent from accruing additional physical presence for purposes of cancellation of removal." The Board has also said that Niz-Chavez does not, by itself, count as a change in law that warrants terminating proceedings, and that the timely-objection rule from Fernandes reaches back to cases that were already pending when Fernandes was decided.

The Trap: A Later, Valid Notice and an In Absentia Order

There is a hard limit to what Pereira and Niz-Chavez protect against, and it shows up exactly where the stakes are highest: after someone has already missed a hearing. If an immigration judge orders someone removed for not showing up, that is an in absentia order. The law allows that kind of order to be rescinded, meaning undone, if the person shows they "did not receive notice in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2)" of the statute, referring respectively to the original notice to appear and to any later notice of a new or changed hearing.

In Campos-Chaves v. Garland (2024), the Supreme Court resolved what happens when the first notice was defective but a second, proper notice of hearing followed. The Court held that to rescind an in absentia order on a lack-of-notice theory, you have to show you did not receive notice under whichever paragraph, (1) or (2), governs the specific hearing you missed and were ordered removed at. If DHS served a compliant paragraph (2) notice of hearing and that is the hearing you missed, the fact that the very first notice to appear lacked a date and time does not undo the resulting order. The Sixth Circuit put the same idea plainly a year later in Guzman-Torralva v. Bondi (2025): "A proper paragraph (2) notice... supersedes a deficient NTA."

The Board of Immigration Appeals reached the same result administratively, first in 2022's Matter of Laparra, then again, after a detour, in Matter of Laparra-Deleon, 29 I&N Dec. 389 (BIA 2026), decided December 17, 2025. The First Circuit had initially disagreed with the Board's 2022 ruling, holding that a later notice of hearing could not cure an originally dateless notice to appear for in absentia purposes. Once the Supreme Court decided Campos-Chaves the opposite way, the Board concluded the First Circuit's contrary ruling "has been effectively overruled," and reinstated its original decision. The Attorney General designated Matter of Laparra-Deleon as precedent in all proceedings involving the same issue on January 9, 2026, meaning it now applies in any circuit that has not ruled the other way.

The practical warning could not be more direct: whatever your original Notice to Appear did or did not say, treat every later document from the immigration court or DHS that has a date and time on it as something you must respond to. According to a December 2024 Government Accountability Office report examining fiscal years 2016 through 2023, roughly 34 percent of non-detained removal cases nationwide ended in an in absentia order. That figure describes overall in-absentia rates generally, not cases involving a defective original notice specifically, but it shows how much can ride on not missing a hearing once a valid notice for it exists.

An Unsettled Question: Voluntary Departure

One more piece of this is still unresolved, and it is worth knowing if voluntary departure, rather than cancellation of removal, is what is at stake in your case. Voluntary departure also has a continuous-physical-presence requirement, under 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(b)(1)(A), and some have argued that Niz-Chavez's single-document stop-time rule should extend to that requirement too. In October 2025, the Sixth Circuit considered that argument in Pastor-Hernandez v. Bondi and explicitly declined to decide it, resolving the case on narrower grounds instead, leaving the question unresolved in that circuit. If voluntary departure eligibility is part of your case, confirm with your attorney whether any circuit has since ruled on the question, and do not assume the cancellation-of-removal rule automatically carries over.

This Area of Law Keeps Moving

Several of the authorities described above were decided, or reaffirmed against a real challenge, within about a year of this writing. The Sixth Circuit decided Guzman-Torralva and Vargas-Rodriguez two days apart in September 2025 and Pastor-Hernandez the following month. The Board decided Lopez-Ticas in May 2025 and Laparra-Deleon in December 2025, and the Attorney General designated the latter as binding precedent in January 2026. That pace is exactly why a specific outcome should never be treated as settled just because it appears in an article like this one. If you have a Notice to Appear without a date or time, or you already missed a hearing after receiving one, the facts of your specific notices and your specific hearing history are what actually control, and those are best reviewed with a lawyer rather than diagnosed from general information.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a Notice to Appear with no date or time mean my case will be dismissed? No. The Board of Immigration Appeals has said this defect is a claim-processing rule, not a jurisdictional one, and courts that have actually ruled on the question, including the Third and Sixth Circuits, have held that the missing information does not take away the immigration court's authority to hear the case. The Board has also said a defective notice to appear "is not equivalent to a lack of a notice to appear altogether." Whether and when you raise that defect is a strategic decision with different consequences for your case, not simply a matter of the defect mattering only if raised.

Where and how do I raise an objection to a missing date or time on my Notice to Appear? An objection to a noncompliant Notice to Appear is raised with the immigration judge inside the removal case itself, before the close of pleadings. The exact filing posture of your own case, including any deadlines already running, is best confirmed with your attorney.

Does the missing date and time help my cancellation of removal case? It can affect one specific part of that analysis: how your continuous physical presence is counted. Under Pereira v. Sessions and Niz-Chavez v. Garland, a notice that does not specify the time and place of your hearing does not, by itself, trigger the stop-time rule that would otherwise freeze your physical-presence clock. But the Board of Immigration Appeals has also said that if you timely object and the government then fixes the notice, the stop-time rule takes effect from that point forward. Whether and when to raise that objection is a decision best made with a lawyer who has reviewed your specific hearing history.

I got a first notice with no date, then a second notice with a real hearing date, and I missed that hearing. Can I undo the removal order I received for not showing up? Generally not on the basis of the first notice's missing date and time alone. The Supreme Court held in Campos-Chaves v. Garland (2024) that when you receive a properly completed notice for the hearing you actually missed, you cannot undo the resulting in absentia removal order by pointing to a defect in an earlier notice. The Board of Immigration Appeals reached the same conclusion in Matter of Laparra-Deleon, which the Attorney General designated as precedent in January 2026.

Do I have to object to the missing date and time, or can I stay quiet? According to the Board of Immigration Appeals, if you do not raise an objection to a defective notice before the close of pleadings in front of the immigration judge, the objection is waived or forfeited. Whether and when you raise it also affects the stop-time rule outcome described above. This is exactly the kind of timing-sensitive decision that benefits from a lawyer's review of your specific notices and hearing record before you appear in court.

Does any of this apply to voluntary departure instead of cancellation of removal? The Sixth Circuit left that question unresolved in October 2025, when it considered extending this same stop-time reasoning to voluntary departure's physical-presence requirement and explicitly declined to decide it, resolving the case on other grounds instead. If voluntary departure is part of your case, confirm with your attorney whether another circuit has since ruled on the question.

What We Do From Here

The documents in this sequence, the original Notice to Appear and any later Notice of Hearing, need to be reviewed together against the authorities described above. Because this area of law has moved substantially within the past year, the authority that applies to a given sequence of notices needs to be checked against how current it still is before anyone relies on it.

If you or someone in your family has a Notice to Appear without a date or time, or has already missed a hearing, call us at (212) 219-3244. Bring every notice you have received, in the order you received it, so we can see the full picture from the start.