Prosecutor sanctioned amid crush of Sacramento immigration cases. ‘Overwhelming burden’
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- More than 3,000 petitions seek relief for detainees in Central Valley facilities.
- Federal court in Sacramento missed legal deadlines with overwhelming caseload.
- Eric Grant brought in four new attorneys, added legal assistants and reassigned staff.
A flood of cases challenging the detention of thousands of undocumented immigrants in California has swamped the federal court district that includes Sacramento, overwhelming judges and forcing the U.S. Attorney’s office to hire additional staff.
The caseload of more than 3,000 petitions seeking relief for detainees in facilities in the Central Valley is so great that legal deadlines are being missed, and at least one federal prosecutor has been sanctioned by the court for failing to submit documents on time, records reviewed by The Bee show.
In a detailed pleading obtained by The Bee, U.S. Attorney Eric Grant said he has brought in four new attorneys, hired additional legal assistants reassigned staff lawyers and set up a new immigration unit to handle the cases. Grant, who heads the office of about 100 lawyers, has even gone into court himself to handle 10 of the cases.
In his pleading, Grant asked Judge Troy Nunley to reconsider his order sanctioning one of the new attorneys, Jonathan Yu, saying the lawyer should not be held personally responsible for a systemic problem. Grant asked the judge to sanction him instead, or the office as a whole.
“His failure to comply with the court’s orders was not willful, but the result of a mistake,” Grant said of Yu. “It was the strain of the system that is not keeping up with the overwhelming burden.”
The stresses in the federal court district that includes Sacramento, the Eastern District of California, are particularly acute because immigration detentions can only be challenged in the judicial district where someone is being held, and there is a concentration of these facilities in the Central Valley.
By their nature, these cases, known as habeas corpus petitions, must be processed quickly, leading judges to try to respond immediately, even in the middle of the night, Nunley said an interview unrelated to this specific case.
Grant’s petition opens a window into the ways that immigration issues, which are normally handled in an entirely different court system, are making up an increasing part of the workload in U.S. district courts, as well as the stresses on government the lawyers tasked with handling the workload.
It grows out of a case filed in March, challenging the detention of Eblis Alexander Yanez Tovar, who is described in court documents as a non-citizen who entered theU.S. in 2023.
Compliance with court orders ‘not optional’
The owner of a drywall company and the sole provider for his wife and four children, Yanez Tovar was pulled over in an undisclosed location in February for failing to appear in court for a traffic ticket, a ruling by Nunley says. He was handcuffed and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who detained him at the California City Correctional Center, the ruling says.
Nunley ordered him released on April 3, and told Yu to provide documentation showing compliance by April 6. But Yu neither filed the documents nor requested an extension of time, Nunley wrote in his decision to sanction the lawyer. On April 7, Nunley ordered the government to return Yanez Tovar’s personal property, including his passport and driver’s license, and to file an update showing compliance by April 10. Again, Nunley wrote, the documents were not filed.
In response, Nunley wrote, Yu said he had been assigned over 300 immigration habeas corpus cases in the past three months, with dozens of legal responses due every day. But Nunley was not persuaded.
“Compliance with court orders is not optional,” he wrote. “It is a fundamental obligation of any attorney appearing before this court.”
The conduct by the government’s lawyer, he said, “reflects a pattern of disregard for that obligation.”
But Grant, who was appointed by former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi last summer and reappointed by the court in December, said in his pleading that Yu was not to blame.
Yu, whom Grant did not name in the pleading, was assigned 300 cases, and required to work within a system that he did not design and over which he had no control, the head prosecutor said. He praised Yu’s work, saying that the lawyer works long hours, helps other attorneys and “generally meets every standard of excellence that I rightly expect of each attorney representing this office.”
Yu, who declined to comment for this story, acknowledged his mistakes and did not attempt to blame others, Grant wrote.
“He has made no effort to shift blame,” Grant wrote. “His explanation is simple — that the missed deadlines were the result of inadvertent mistakes.”
A judicial sanction against Yu would have to be reported to higher-ups at the Justice Department and could harm his career, Grant wrote.
New hires and procedures for prosecutors
Grant admitted that his office’s response to court orders has not been perfect. He acknowledged that deadlines were missed in this case. But he said he had spoken to his staff and impressed upon them the importance of strict compliance.
He detailed changes he had made since last summer, when habeas cases began to surge, including setting up a new unit to defend the government against such petitions.
In addition to reassigning attorneys to the immigration team and borrowing four lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security, he brought in two ICE officers to work directly with his staff locating necessary documents and verifying that detainees had been released as ordered by the court, Grant said.
He has implemented procedures for daily communication between his staff and the detention facilities within the court district and has automated the opening of new cases to speed them along, Grant said. His staff circulates a daily list of all detainees in the district, which stretches from Bakersfield to the Oregon border.
Grant also took the unusual step of asking to appear before Nunley personally, to explain his reasoning in an oral argument. By the late Thursday afternoon, Nunley had not set such a hearing on his calendar.
“These measures have been reasonably effective in helping to maintain the standard rightly expected of this office among a surge of more than 3,000 cases that operate on very tight timelines,” he wrote. “But as the present case demonstrates, the measures have not achieved perfection.”
