They suddenly began showing up regularly, on the third floor of Suffolk Superior Court in downtown Boston — person after person asking, in a spectrum of languages, where they were supposed to be for immigration proceedings.

The answer: Not there. The immigration court is a few blocks away, in the John F. Kennedy Federal Building. It’s the right floor, but the wrong building.

That’s what Melissa Doris, an assistant clerk magistrate in Suffolk Superior Court who typically works in a civil courtroom on that building’s third floor, found herself repeatedly telling people. Sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish, her first language as an immigrant herself from Panama. When that doesn’t work, she does her best to use hand signals.

“These are people who are participating in the process, w

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