Status as of November 10, 2026. Federal prosecutors in western Washington have announced that they cannot respond to every immigration detention lawsuit. The decision concerns litigation staffing, not a blanket release order.

Federal prosecutors in western Washington say they can no longer defend the government in every lawsuit brought by immigrants challenging their detention. The unusual admission follows a surge in habeas corpus petitions, as people held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ask federal judges to determine whether their confinement is lawful. In a November 9 report, the Associated Press described a prosecutor's office so overwhelmed by these cases that it plans to leave many of them without a government defense.

The decision does not mean that ICE has stopped detaining people or that every immigrant who files a lawsuit will be released. It means federal judges may increasingly have to decide detention challenges without the written opposition they would ordinarily receive from the Justice Department.

What the federal prosecutor told the court

Acting U.S. Attorney Charles Floyd informed U.S. District Judge David Estudillo in an October 26 letter that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington lacked the resources to enter an appearance in every immigration habeas case. The office was receiving dozens of petitions each week, according to the letter as reported by AP.

Floyd explained that these lawsuits can involve repeated written submissions, hearings and motions. The workload, he said, was interfering with the office's ability to handle other civil cases. He announced that prosecutors would no longer undertake a defense in many immigration habeas proceedings. The letter did not specify how many cases would be left uncontested or establish a nationwide Justice Department policy.

Western Washington includes the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, a major immigration detention facility. The district's federal courts therefore hear substantial litigation over custody decisions affecting people held there. The change is a response by one federal prosecutor's office to its own caseload, rather than a judicial ruling striking down detention practices across the country.

Why detainees are bringing federal lawsuits

A petition for a writ of habeas corpus asks a court to examine whether the government has legal authority to hold someone in custody. Federal jurisdiction over these petitions is grounded in 28 U.S.C. § 2241. In immigration cases, the challenge can concern prolonged detention, the legal basis for custody or the absence of procedures to contest confinement.

A habeas case is separate from the immigration proceeding that determines whether a person may remain in the United States. A federal judge can find a particular detention unlawful without granting asylum, canceling a removal order or deciding that the person has lawful immigration status.

Disputes over bond hearings are a major source of litigation. The government has argued that certain immigrants must remain detained while removal proceedings continue. Detainees and their attorneys have challenged that interpretation, and federal courts have reached differing conclusions about which groups are entitled to a hearing. Those legal disagreements help explain why the volume of detention lawsuits has grown, but they do not make every petition legally identical.

What happens when the government does not respond?

Failure to defend a petition does not automatically establish that detention is unlawful. Federal judges still examine the facts, their jurisdiction and the legal grounds for the requested remedy. Depending on the record, a court may order release, require a bond hearing or deny some or all of the requested relief.

The public docket for Singh v. Blanche, No. 2:26-cv-04143, confirms that Baljit Singh filed a habeas petition in the Western District of Washington on October 27 and that the case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Tiffany Cartwright. AP reported that the judge ordered Singh released after the government did not contest his petition. The publicly accessible docket excerpts reviewed for this report do not reproduce the full release order, so the precise terms of that ruling cannot be independently described here.

Other federal orders from the same district illustrate why the distinction matters. In an October 23 decision in Lozano v. Blanche, the court ordered a bond hearing under specified procedural protections, rather than immediate unconditional release. Such outcomes depend on the legal and factual record in each case.

The announcement exposes a tension in the administration's immigration enforcement strategy. Increased detention generates more legal challenges; those challenges require federal attorneys to defend custody decisions before judges. When the litigation volume outpaces available staff, the government may choose not to contest individual petitions even while continuing its broader enforcement program.

AP reported that White House border adviser Tom Homan had referred to approximately 85,000 habeas cases nationally. That figure is an administration official's characterization, not a count independently verified for this report. Nor does the Washington prosecutor's letter establish that other federal districts will adopt the same approach.

For immigrants detained in the region, the immediate development is procedural: some federal challenges to custody may proceed without a response from government lawyers. The underlying statutes, immigration court proceedings and the requirement for judges to assess each petition remain in place. What has changed is the federal government's stated capacity to defend its detention decisions in one of the country's busiest immigration litigation districts.

Sources: Associated Press, November 9, 2026; Singh v. Blanche, federal docket, No. 2:26-cv-04143; Lozano v. Blanche, federal court order, October 23, 2026; 28 U.S.C. § 2241.