The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington says it no longer has enough staff to fight every immigration detention case filed against the government, and will instead let judges rule without a government lawyer showing up at all in many instances. The admission, which surfaced this week, means judges may consider immigration habeas petitions without a government response, but an unanswered petition is not a default judgment: a judge still must find the detention unlawful, according to U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
According to The Washington Post, the office confirmed it lacks the staffing to defend every case and will let judges rule without government opposition. The disclosure traces back to an Oct. 26 letter from Acting U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd to Chief U.S. District Judge David Estudillo, in which Floyd wrote that his office does not have the available resources, at this juncture, to continue entering AUSA appearances in every one of the dozens of petitions filed each week under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, the statute governing immigration habeas corpus claims, as reported by immigration-analytics.com. Floyd, who formerly served as a judge, said the backlog has severely impacted the government’s ability to respond to immigration petitions, per the KATU report, which cites Associated Press reporting. He did not specify how many cases could be affected.
What Happens When No One Shows Up
Under the approach Floyd laid out, a court may treat a habeas petition as effectively unanswered if no government lawyer files a notice of appearance within seven court days of the court’s standard scheduling order. The office said it will keep reviewing petitions and reserves the right to appear in any case at any time, the same source notes — meaning the policy is a default, not an absolute refusal to litigate.
That default already had consequences in at least one case. U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright granted the habeas petition of a man named Baljit Singh after finding a plausible due-process claim; she also treated the petition as intentionally unopposed when no government lawyer appeared within the seven-day window, the same account states. Cartwright ordered Singh released five days before the government’s official answer was even due, giving the government just one day to comply.
A Docket Overwhelmed Nationwide
The scale of the problem extends well beyond Washington. The tracker habeasdockets.org counted more than 1,400 active habeas cases in the Western District of Washington last month, per the same report. Nationally, more than 8,000 habeas cases were filed in February 2026 and more than 9,000 in March 2026, according to TRAC data cited by The Hill. Separately, TRAC Reports found federal courts recorded 9,911 new immigration-related lawsuits in March 2026 alone, a 9.2% jump from the month before, with civil immigration filings up 1,278% from March 2021 levels and habeas lawsuits increasing more than 85 times over the preceding year.
Judges interviewed by Bloomberg Law said courts are still struggling to keep up with the thousands of time-sensitive cases months after the surge began, and that the caseload crunch has delayed decisions in civil cases while judges prioritize more urgent criminal and detention matters. The strain isn’t limited to local prosecutors, either — the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation has lost nearly 80 attorneys as its workload jumped 63 percent, The Hill reported, with staffing falling from 320 attorneys at the start of the Trump administration to 243 in August even as its caseload climbed from roughly 7,700 to nearly 9,500.
How Washington Compares to Other States
A June analysis cited by The Hill found that judges had sided with migrants in habeas cases more than 15,000 times nationwide, compared with just 2,200 rulings favoring the administration. A separate ProPublica analysis found more than 70,000 habeas cases had been filed since January 2025, with wait times varying enormously by state — Mississippi’s Southern District saw half of resolved cases take at least 92 days, the longest of any state examined, while Minnesota cases closed in a median of just 12 days. Louisiana, with more than 2,600 petitions filed, saw a median closure time of 89 days, and Oklahoma’s Western District took a median of 63 days.
Washington’s approach also differs from how at least one other state is handling the same pressure. Colorado adopted an Oct. 8 agreement requiring a detainee’s release within 24 hours if the government fails to answer within seven days — a binding rule, unlike the nonbinding letter Floyd sent Washington’s chief judge, per immigration-analytics.com. The same report describes Washington as the second federal district this fall to let government silence effectively decide the outcome of immigration habeas cases.
A New Court Procedure Takes Shape
Separately, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington has adopted a general order setting case-assignment and scheduling procedures specifically for habeas petitions filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 by people in immigration detention. The order’s detailed deadlines and current status were not independently verified beyond the court’s own notice.
