{"id":167123,"date":"2026-11-10T14:26:53","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T22:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/11\/10\/trumps-doj-ran-off-so-many-lawyers-it-cant-even-show-up-to-keep-people-locked-up-anymore\/"},"modified":"2026-11-10T14:26:53","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T22:26:53","slug":"trumps-doj-ran-off-so-many-lawyers-it-cant-even-show-up-to-keep-people-locked-up-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/11\/10\/trumps-doj-ran-off-so-many-lawyers-it-cant-even-show-up-to-keep-people-locked-up-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s DOJ Ran Off So Many Lawyers It Can\u2019t Even Show Up To Keep People Locked Up Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

The human cost of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration surge has been staggering, measured in detained parents, deported neighbors, and people held for months without ever seeing a bond hearing. There\u2019s a second casualty, too: a Justice Department that no longer has the lawyers to keep up with the mess its own policy created.<\/p>\n

In an October 26 letter<\/a> to Chief U.S. District Judge David Estudillo of the Western District of Washington, the self-styled Acting U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd told the court that his office just doesn\u2019t have the lawyers to keep defending the immigration detentions the administration keeps churning out. Per Floyd, the office \u201cunfortunately does not have the available resources, at this juncture, to continue entering AUSA appearances in every one of the dozens of \u00a7 2241 Immigration Petitions filed each week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Floyd opens by praising the district\u2019s streamlined habeas procedures, which he helped craft, as working \u201cto the benefit of petitioners, the government, and the public interest.\u201d Then comes the \u201chowever\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

Since the General Order was first issued, however, the influx of \u00a7 2241 Immigration Petitions has continued to increase. The large volumes of petitions that are being filed, often copying from other petitions, has severely impacted the government\u2019s ability to respond to specific petitions that require appreciable attorney time from the USAO to investigate and analyze. It has also negatively impacted the government\u2019s ability to respond to other civil litigation filed against the government in the District.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Among the burdens Floyd lists: having to \u201coppose EAJA motions,\u201d which are the fee requests from the lawyers who beat the government. He also complains about responding to \u201cmotions and orders to show cause stemming from what are often technical violations of the scheduling order.\u201d Way to downplay the government missing court deadlines.<\/p>\n

So the government will be sitting a lot of these out. \u201cThus, 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,\u201d Floyd wrote.<\/p>\n

If no government lawyer appears within seven court days of a scheduling order, the court can rule on the petitioner\u2019s papers alone. In those cases, Floyd wrote, the office \u201cwill take no responsibility for facilitating the processing of the case through the District Court nor will it serve as a conduit for communications between the District Court and respondents in the case.\u201d So the government\u2019s lawyers won\u2019t defend ICE, and they won\u2019t pass along the judge\u2019s messages to ICE either. Release orders can instead be emailed straight to the Northwest ICE Processing Center. Floyd\u2019s assessment is that the \u201cchange is expected to significantly streamline and expedite the resolution of most habeas petitions, providing more discretion to the District Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the office he\u2019s running is itself a legal mess. Floyd got the top job in Seattle after Attorney General Todd Blanche fired Roger Rogoff, the court-appointed U.S. Attorney, within an hour of his appointment. A federal judge has since ruled that Rogoff is the rightful officeholder, which is how we ended up with two guys in Seattle calling themselves US Attorney, neither confirmed by the Senate<\/a>. The government has appealed.<\/p>\n

None of this should surprise anyone who\u2019s been watching the department empty out. More than 10,000 federal lawyers have left the government since the start of 2025, and DOJ alone has shed 21% of its attorneys<\/a>. The department\u2019s answer has been to recruit AUSAs over Twitter<\/a>, lean on forward-this-to-a-friend referrals<\/a>, lower its hiring standards<\/a>, and offer $25,000 signing bonuses<\/a> to anyone willing to take on immigration cases. The lawyers who stayed are so buried that one handling habeas petitions in Minnesota asked a judge to hold her in contempt so she could get some sleep<\/a>. Border czar Tom Homan recently told Fox News that the courts are dealing with roughly 85,000 immigration habeas cases. About 2,000 of them have been filed in western Washington since January 2025, and when Floyd took over last year, DOJ said he\u2019d be leading an office of about 85 attorneys.<\/p>\n

Seattle is just the first office to put the impact of the brain drain in writing. As the DOJ\u2019s anti-migrant surge keeps wiping out what\u2019s left of the department<\/a>, it won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n

The flood of habeas petitions didn\u2019t come out of nowhere. It exists because the administration has been holding people without bond hearings, a policy Floyd helped pioneer. As an immigration judge in Tacoma, he was one of four judges who started denying bond hearings in 2022<\/a>, years before the Trump administration took the theory nationwide. When U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright ruled the practice unlawful last year, Floyd, by then U.S. Attorney, dismissed her decision as \u201can advisory opinion.\u201d The question is now before the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The letter became public when it was filed as an exhibit in the case of Baljit Singh, an asylum seeker from India. Singh was detained in September after he and some friends accidentally ended up at a Canadian border exit while visiting a state park. On Saturday, the same Judge Cartwright labeled his petition \u201cintentionally unopposed\u201d and ordered him released within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

Which, for Singh, is great news. As a statement about the United States Department of Justice, it\u2019s mortifying, and it *should* make the government rethink its catastrophic immigration policy. It won\u2019t, but it should. <\/p>\n

Earlier: <\/strong>There Are Two Guys In Seattle Calling Themselves US Attorney. Neither Was Confirmed By Senate.<\/a>
10,000 Federal Lawyers Are Gone And Trump\u2019s Response Basically Confirms Why They Left<\/a>
Trump\u2019s Anti-Migrant Surge Is Now A Mudslide That\u2019s Wiping Out What\u2019s Left Of His DOJ<\/a>
DOJ Puts Up $25K And Retention Bonuses To Bribe Lawyers To Rack Up Ethics Violations<\/a>
Pam Bondi\u2019s DOJ Lowers Hiring Standards After Driving Away Lawyers With Actual Experience<\/a>
DOJ Lawyer Asks To Be Held In Contempt So She Can Sleep<\/a>
Once-Elite DOJ Is Now Desperate For Lawyers, Resorts To \u2018Forward This To A Friend\u2019 Recruiting<\/a>
DOJ Begging For AUSAs On Twitter Like They\u2019re Putting Together A Kickball League<\/a>
DOJ Posts Star Wars-Themed Tweet Seeking Recruits Who Misunderstand The Whole Point Of Star Wars<\/a>
The DOJ Dishonors Program Is Having Trouble Finding Takers<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Trump\u2019s DOJ Ran Off So Many Lawyers It Can\u2019t Even Show Up To Keep People Locked Up Anymore<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

The human cost of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration surge has been staggering, measured in detained parents, deported neighbors, and people held for months without ever seeing a bond hearing. There\u2019s a second casualty, too: a Justice Department that no longer has the lawyers to keep up with the mess its own policy created.<\/p>\n

In an October 26 letter<\/a> to Chief U.S. District Judge David Estudillo of the Western District of Washington, the self-styled Acting U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd told the court that his office just doesn\u2019t have the lawyers to keep defending the immigration detentions the administration keeps churning out. Per Floyd, the office \u201cunfortunately does not have the available resources, at this juncture, to continue entering AUSA appearances in every one of the dozens of \u00a7 2241 Immigration Petitions filed each week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Floyd opens by praising the district\u2019s streamlined habeas procedures, which he helped craft, as working \u201cto the benefit of petitioners, the government, and the public interest.\u201d Then comes the \u201chowever\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

Since the General Order was first issued, however, the influx of \u00a7 2241 Immigration Petitions has continued to increase. The large volumes of petitions that are being filed, often copying from other petitions, has severely impacted the government\u2019s ability to respond to specific petitions that require appreciable attorney time from the USAO to investigate and analyze. It has also negatively impacted the government\u2019s ability to respond to other civil litigation filed against the government in the District.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Among the burdens Floyd lists: having to \u201coppose EAJA motions,\u201d which are the fee requests from the lawyers who beat the government. He also complains about responding to \u201cmotions and orders to show cause stemming from what are often technical violations of the scheduling order.\u201d Way to downplay the government missing court deadlines.<\/p>\n

So the government will be sitting a lot of these out. \u201cThus, 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,\u201d Floyd wrote.<\/p>\n

If no government lawyer appears within seven court days of a scheduling order, the court can rule on the petitioner\u2019s papers alone. In those cases, Floyd wrote, the office \u201cwill take no responsibility for facilitating the processing of the case through the District Court nor will it serve as a conduit for communications between the District Court and respondents in the case.\u201d So the government\u2019s lawyers won\u2019t defend ICE, and they won\u2019t pass along the judge\u2019s messages to ICE either. Release orders can instead be emailed straight to the Northwest ICE Processing Center. Floyd\u2019s assessment is that the \u201cchange is expected to significantly streamline and expedite the resolution of most habeas petitions, providing more discretion to the District Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the office he\u2019s running is itself a legal mess. Floyd got the top job in Seattle after Attorney General Todd Blanche fired Roger Rogoff, the court-appointed U.S. Attorney, within an hour of his appointment. A federal judge has since ruled that Rogoff is the rightful officeholder, which is how we ended up with two guys in Seattle calling themselves US Attorney, neither confirmed by the Senate<\/a>. The government has appealed.<\/p>\n

None of this should surprise anyone who\u2019s been watching the department empty out. More than 10,000 federal lawyers have left the government since the start of 2025, and DOJ alone has shed 21% of its attorneys<\/a>. The department\u2019s answer has been to recruit AUSAs over Twitter<\/a>, lean on forward-this-to-a-friend referrals<\/a>, lower its hiring standards<\/a>, and offer $25,000 signing bonuses<\/a> to anyone willing to take on immigration cases. The lawyers who stayed are so buried that one handling habeas petitions in Minnesota asked a judge to hold her in contempt so she could get some sleep<\/a>. Border czar Tom Homan recently told Fox News that the courts are dealing with roughly 85,000 immigration habeas cases. About 2,000 of them have been filed in western Washington since January 2025, and when Floyd took over last year, DOJ said he\u2019d be leading an office of about 85 attorneys.<\/p>\n

Seattle is just the first office to put the impact of the brain drain in writing. As the DOJ\u2019s anti-migrant surge keeps wiping out what\u2019s left of the department<\/a>, it won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n

The flood of habeas petitions didn\u2019t come out of nowhere. It exists because the administration has been holding people without bond hearings, a policy Floyd helped pioneer. As an immigration judge in Tacoma, he was one of four judges who started denying bond hearings in 2022<\/a>, years before the Trump administration took the theory nationwide. When U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright ruled the practice unlawful last year, Floyd, by then U.S. Attorney, dismissed her decision as \u201can advisory opinion.\u201d The question is now before the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The letter became public when it was filed as an exhibit in the case of Baljit Singh, an asylum seeker from India. Singh was detained in September after he and some friends accidentally ended up at a Canadian border exit while visiting a state park. On Saturday, the same Judge Cartwright labeled his petition \u201cintentionally unopposed\u201d and ordered him released within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

Which, for Singh, is great news. As a statement about the United States Department of Justice, it\u2019s mortifying, and it *should* make the government rethink its catastrophic immigration policy. It won\u2019t, but it should. <\/p>\n

Earlier: <\/strong>There Are Two Guys In Seattle Calling Themselves US Attorney. Neither Was Confirmed By Senate.<\/a>
10,000 Federal Lawyers Are Gone And Trump\u2019s Response Basically Confirms Why They Left<\/a>
Trump\u2019s Anti-Migrant Surge Is Now A Mudslide That\u2019s Wiping Out What\u2019s Left Of His DOJ<\/a>
DOJ Puts Up $25K And Retention Bonuses To Bribe Lawyers To Rack Up Ethics Violations<\/a>
Pam Bondi\u2019s DOJ Lowers Hiring Standards After Driving Away Lawyers With Actual Experience<\/a>
DOJ Lawyer Asks To Be Held In Contempt So She Can Sleep<\/a>
Once-Elite DOJ Is Now Desperate For Lawyers, Resorts To \u2018Forward This To A Friend\u2019 Recruiting<\/a>
DOJ Begging For AUSAs On Twitter Like They\u2019re Putting Together A Kickball League<\/a>
DOJ Posts Star Wars-Themed Tweet Seeking Recruits Who Misunderstand The Whole Point Of Star Wars<\/a>
The DOJ Dishonors Program Is Having Trouble Finding Takers<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The human cost of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration surge has been staggering, measured in detained parents, deported neighbors, and people held for months without ever seeing a bond hearing. There\u2019s a second casualty, too: a Justice Department that no longer has the lawyers to keep up with the mess its own policy created. In an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":167088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}