When I heard this discussion I realized that people can lawyer up and force the hearing that O’reily is calling out.
However an act of Congress could result in people who have a good chance of being judged as “good” in Trump’s plan waiving the hearing, submitting their paperwork, and showing up at a border site to have their residency determined. In other words, they would actively seek to have their status reviewed and this would not take all that long. This is a way around the hearing and judge situation based on the immigrants request. Not all that hard to imagine, and people who have been here a while should be able to prove that they have not been on welfare, not been in the criminal justice system, made normal progress in school, and have a job. This could eliminate hearings for the majority of the illegals. The ones that fail the above could have hearings and end up deported. (At a much lower rate, but still an improvement over ignoring the issue.
Anyone can waive the hearing. In fact if a person is clearly here illegally then most lawyers tell them to waive the hearing and let them ship you home to avoid having a order of deportation on them in the system. But people who believe they are here legally are opposed by a government agency who believes they are not. It's not one-sided. They're entitled to due process before an immigration court judge with legal representation to present a defense against the government's case.
In other words, they would actively seek to have their status reviewed and this would not take all that long.
The problem that nobody talks about is that there are about 200 immigration court judges and over 11 million estimated illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America alone. Do the math. They probably need ten times as many judges, twenty times as many. And courtrooms and lawyers and staff to keep it all working. That isn't cheap, and nobody wants to come up with the money.