Trump’s immigration approach is gumming up the courts, frustrating his Justice Department and judges

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department and federal courts are struggling to keep up with the exponential increase in federal court cases of immigrants in custody who are challenging their detentions – another result of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies across the country.

The cases, in which a person can challenge detention in the jurisdiction where they are physically held, through what’s called a habeas corpus petition, have skyrocketed in Minneapolis and Texas over the past three weeks, several attorneys responding to the surge say and court records show.

“There has been a shift. It’s happened all so fast,” said Jacqueline Watson, an attorney in Austin, Texas, and board member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The increase in the habeas cases in federal court has exposed how the justice system and the Trump administration are straining to respond to the White House and Department of Homeland Security’s escalation of immigration arrests. The situation has become especially acute this month with the Operation Metro Surge campaign in Minnesota, where the Trump administration has sent more than 3,000 Homeland Security border and immigration officers to the Twin Cities, and as immigrants arrested in Minnesota and elsewhere are being moved to federal detention facilities near the US-Mexico border.

“I’ve seen people (in court representing DOJ) I’ve never heard of. The cases are just getting sent to whatever attorneys can handle the workload within the district,” Watson said of the prosecutors now being tasked to respond to immigration detention challenges in the Western District of Texas. “The volume slows down already scarce court resources.”

At least one US attorney in a district on the US-Mexico border has raised the possibility that the Justice Department, which must respond to the federal court cases individually, may need to discuss changes in approach at the Department of Homeland Security, which takes immigrants into custody, according to internal DOJ discussions described to CNN.

Since January 1, more than 400 detainees have filed habeas petitions in the federal court in Minnesota, often seeking bond hearings or to be released, according to the court’s public docket. There were just over 125 habeas petitions in the state during all of last year.

Federal courts near the border have seen similar increases. In December, US attorneys from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi told an appeals court that their prosecutors were struggling to field responses to immigrants’ detention challenges.

“To respond to this wave of habeas petitions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has been forced to shift its already limited resources from other pressing and important priorities,” Justin Simmons, the Trump-appointed US Attorney for the Western District of Texas, wrote to the Fifth Circuit, describing how he’s moved civil and criminal attorneys in his office to full-time habeas case duty.

Homeland Security officials are far more likely to make arrests and keep a person who has no criminal history in detention under the Trump administration. And a DHS policy change last summer now allows far fewer detainees to be eligible for bond hearings in immigration courts, which exist within the Justice Department and outside the federal court system.

As a result, people in custody are now more likely to file an emergency petition with the federal district court where they are being held. The judges then hear from the Justice Department and from the immigrant’s lawyer to determine if the person should be released or receive a bond hearing, with proceedings and responses needing to happen within days.

Last week, detainees filed nearly 180 new habeas petitions in the Western District, according to court records. And the week before, 125 new habeas petitions were filed in the court, Simmons’ office announced in a press release.

US Attorneys’ offices with major increases of immigrants in DHS detention have been pushing for additional prosecutors as well, but lawyers alone may not be enough, according to a source familiar with the discussions at the Justice Department.

Justice Department spokespeople didn’t respond to requests for comment this week on the increase in immigration detention cases in the federal justice system.

DOJ has, however, called for more attorneys from other midwestern US attorneys offices to go to Minnesota during the immigration arrest surge, CNN has reported.

A frustrated judge

A federal judge on Monday called out the Trump administration for not being prepared for the onslaught of new habeas petitions.

The administration, wrote chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, “decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.”

“The scale we’re talking about is not what we’ve ever seen before. And it’s just the pure amount of enforcement going on,” My Khanh Ngo, an attorney with the ACLU who is working on dozens of habeas cases for people in custody.

On Monday, Schiltz noted how line prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office in the Twin Cities have struggled to respond on the Justice Department’s behalf.

The US Attorney’s Office has “struggled mightily to ensure that respondents comply with court orders despite the fact that (the Trump administration) have failed to provide them with adequate resources,” Schiltz wrote in a court order in the case of a man from Ecuador who had come to the US as a child nearly 30 years ago.

The man was detained and had been in ICE custody since early January, and Schiltz decided he should have a bond hearing or be released. But neither had happened for three weeks.

“The Court’s patience is at an end,” Schiltz said.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.