A US attorney’s office near the US-Mexico border is buckling under strained morale and departures as the team handles the largest number of legal claims from individuals challenging their detention under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The Western District of Texas, based in San Antonio with outposts in six other cities, faces a record 4,000 habeas petitions filed within its district since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, with more than 80% coming in since January. That’s on top of the more than 11,000 criminal prosecutions tied to immigration filed in the district since January 2025.
Even as Minneapolis and other cities targeted by federal immigration raids attract the most attention for how their US attorney’s offices are overwhelmed by the workload, the Western District of Texas—home to multiple immigration processing centers—has been hit with a swarm of habeas cases and rebukes from judges about recycled arguments and delayed responses.
The Texas district has a team of about a half-dozen prosecutors dedicated to responding to habeas cases, two people familiar with the situation said. At least two criminal prosecutors were temporarily moved to help defend the detentions, according to the people, who requested anonymity to speak openly or because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Accompanying the mounting workload are a series of prosecutor departures from the district. At least a dozen assistant US attorneys have left since January 2025, though some people familiar indicated the number could be higher. In 2022, the office had more than 100 criminal division prosecutors.
The exits included those who took retirement buyouts and others who wanted to avoid defending the administration’s immigration agenda, multiple people familiar with the departures said.
The office is diverting resources from white collar crime and other criminal prosecutions as attorneys try to keep up with the seemingly never-ending pile of immigration matters.
“When you start losing people and start having to divert prosecutors to deal with things like habeas petitions, it makes it harder to do the same number of bigger, more complex cases,” said Robert Almonte, a former federal prosecutor who left the office in 2023 to practice criminal defense law in the district.
The Western District, led by US Attorney Justin Simmons, is looking to fill “many vacancies” for assistant US attorneys on the civil and criminal side at six of the office’s seven locations, according to postings on USAJOBS.gov. At least one posting lowers the experience requirement for prospective hires, aligning with a broader DOJ move to boost recruitment.
A spokesperson for the Western District confirmed the number of habeas cases but declined to answer additional questions.
“Our attorneys continue to do their best to manage the caseload and have represented the interests of the American people on this front with professionalism and a degree of legal acumen all Americans should be proud of,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Handling Habeas
Attorneys from other divisions and federal agencies are helping the team in San Antonio respond to habeas petitions, a legal process for detained individuals to challenge their detention in court.
A Bloomberg Law analysis found at least 14 different attorneys listed for the government on these cases in recent months. One is an El Paso-based Department of Homeland Security attorney, and another is a military lawyer who joined the office in January.
Government lawyers seem to be “slammed and don’t have a lot of time or energy to focus on individual cases,” said Bobby Painter, managing attorney at the Texas Immigration Law Council who is representing noncitizens in habeas cases.
“A lot of government responses have tended to ignore the facts of a particular case completely and instead focus on rehashing the same argument in favor of detention,” Painter said.
Some judges have aired frustration about how prosecutors have managed the cases.
Senior US District Judge David Briones wrote in a March 24 order that despite warning the government to “avoid boilerplate arguments this Court has already rejected,” the lawyers failed to make “new legal arguments nor any effort to distinguish the facts of this case.”
DOJ spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre said in an email that the administration “is complying with court orders and fully enforcing federal immigration law.”
“The level of illegal aliens currently detained is a direct result of this Administration’s strong border security policies to keep the American people safe,” Baldassarre said.
Immigration Focus
Simmons has promoted immigration as a top priority, regularly boasting more than 200 new illegal reentry, human smuggling, and similar cases filed each week.
Military lawyers have also been detailed to the El Paso division to staff some criminal cases, according to longtime defense lawyer Richard Esper.
While the office is still prosecuting some drug trafficking and wire fraud cases, the shift of investigative resources to immigration will limit prosecutors’ ability to bring white collar, public corruption, and other criminal cases for some time, according to three former prosecutors who requested anonymity to speak openly about the situation.
In 2025, the office indefinitely delayed or declined to take up cases involving shootings and other violent crime in part because federal agents were diverted to immigration enforcement, according to one person familiar with the matter.
Jennifer Freel, a former federal prosecutor in Austin, said when an administration sets priorities, it inevitably leads to office resources being rearranged.
“If you are putting resources toward drugs and immigration you’re naturally not going to have as many resources for financial fraud,” Freel said.
Staffing Strain
Some of the recent exits were due to frustration with diminished attention to some complex criminal cases, according to two former prosecutors. Some wanted to avoid defending immigration policies they believed presented due process issues, according to one of the former prosecutors.
Freel said the retirements were incentivized by DOJ and not necessarily driven by changes in priorities.
The office’s recent job listings are a sign that they’re looking to staff up as the case numbers rise.
One listing cites a “border surge,” and seeks a temporary lawyer at the border courthouse in Del Rio. Another is for an attorney to work on legal matters tied to construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border.
A job listing for three criminal prosecutor vacancies in Alpine, Del Rio, and Midland seeks applicants who will be law school graduates by June 2026, dropping the one year, post-bar experience requirement that’s long been standard for US attorneys’ offices.
These early-career attorneys don’t have the institutional knowledge and experience of career prosecutors who’ve left, Almonte said.
“If you’re losing a prosecutor with 15 years experience,” Almonte said, “replacing somebody with that type of prosecution ability is not easily done.”
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