The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington has effectively waved the white flag in the face of a relentless barrage of habeas corpus petitions filed by illegal aliens challenging their ICE detention.
In a letter dated October 26, 2026, Acting United States Attorney Charles Neil Floyd informed Chief U.S. District Judge David S. Estudillo that his office no longer has the manpower to respond to every one of the dozens of § 2241 immigration habeas petitions flooding the district each week.
Going forward, the office will decline to enter appearances and provide a defense in “many” of these cases.
“The USAO unfortunately does not have the available resources, at this juncture, to continue entering AUSA appearances in every one of the dozens of § 2241 Immigration Petitions filed each week,” Floyd wrote.
“Thus, going forward, in order to conserve resources, there will be many habeas cases in which the USAO will no longer assume responsibility for providing a defense on behalf of the respondents.”
If the office does not file a Notice of Appearance within seven court days of a standard scheduling order, the court may simply assume the government will not respond and rule on the merits based solely on the papers filed by the petitioner. Release orders can then be emailed directly to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.
Floyd noted that General Order No. 08-26, issued in July 2026, was intended to streamline and expedite these petitions.
Instead, the volume, often involving petitions that copy from one another, has “severely impacted the government’s ability to respond to specific petitions that require appreciable attorney time” and has spilled over to harm the office’s capacity to handle other civil litigation.
Overtaxed, US Atty for Western District of Wash tells chief judge it will no longer handle most immigration habeas cases. If the office enters no appearance for 7 days, judges should rule on their own. If they order release, judges should notify ICE themselves. https://t.co/FApnFgXHUQ
— Roger Parloff (@rparloff) November 10, 2026
In July, the far-left Ninth Circuit ruled in Rodriguez Vazquez v. Bostock that illegal aliens arrested inside the United States generally cannot be held in mandatory detention without a bond hearing. The decision, which bound courts in Washington and other Ninth Circuit states and involved a class of detainees at the very Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, was widely expected to generate a wave of new habeas petitions and more releases.
The Gateway Pundit reported at the time that the ruling would guarantee “more habeas petitions, more releases, and more opportunities for illegal aliens to disappear while their cases drag on for years.”
Nationally, the numbers are staggering. Border Czar Tom Homan has stated that courts have been weighed down by roughly 85,000 immigration habeas cases amid the Trump administration’s enforcement efforts, with radical judges frequently ordering the release of illegal aliens back onto American streets.
Jim Hᴏft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
You can email Jim Hᴏft here, and read more of Jim Hᴏft’s articles here.
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