A Notice to Appear is the document that starts removal proceedings in immigration court. It is not a letter about your case. It is the charging document.
USCIS has been issuing them on applications that were denied years ago, in some cases where the person has filed nothing recently and assumed the matter was closed.
Why an old denial can surface now
A denial does not by itself end anything. If someone was out of status when their application was denied, they remained removable, and whether an NTA issued was a matter of agency policy rather than law. When that policy widens, old files come back into scope.
This is why people receive one out of nowhere. Nothing changed about their situation. What changed was the agency's practice.
The address problem
An NTA is served by mail. If USCIS and the court have an address you left in 2019, the notice goes there, and the hearing happens whether you are in the room or not.
A judge can order someone removed in absentia for missing a hearing they never knew about. Undoing that is possible in some circumstances but it is far harder than attending would have been.
Keep your address current with USCIS, and separately with the immigration court once a case is in the system. They are different records and updating one does not update the other.
What to do when one arrives
Read the date, the time and the court on it, and do not assume it is correct. Notices have been issued with placeholder hearing dates, so the real date can differ from what is printed.
Do not ignore it, and do not go to court alone. Removal proceedings are adversarial: a government lawyer will be there. Relief may well be available, including cancellation of removal, asylum, adjustment before the judge, or reopening the old decision, but relief has deadlines and most of them are short.
Call us the day it arrives. If a family member is detained, call sooner than that.