The Immigration and The operation of Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minnesota driving the United States court system to its breaking point.

Since Operation Metro Surge began in December, federal immigration agents have arrested about 4,000 people, ACCORDING to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The result was an avalanche of lawsuits filed in the US district court in Minnesota for people challenging their detention by federal immigration enforcement agents. According to WIRED’s review of court records and official judicial statistics, lawyers filed nearly as many so-called habeas corpus petitions in Minnesota alone than filed in the entire US in an entire year.

The bombardment of cases filed in federal court in Minnesota and other states is the result of two policies of the Trump administration: a dramatic increase in the number of people detained, and the elimination of an important legal mechanism for securing their release. The result is a US court system that has collapsed: Judges, immigration lawyers, and federal prosecutors are all overwhelmed, while the people at the center of these cases remain behind bars, often in states thousands of miles from their home—many after judges have ordered their release.

“I haven’t said the word yet you have many times in my life,” said Graham Ojala-Barbour, a Minnesota immigration attorney who has been practicing for more than a decade. Ojala-Barbour says that when he sleeps, his dreams are about habeas petitions.

Fatigue is endemic. On February 3, a now-former special assistant US attorney, Julie Le, pleaded with a US judge in Minnesota to hold her in contempt so she can finally rest. He was listed in 88 cases, according to data obtained through PACER, the US court records database. Daniel Rosen, the United States attorney for the district of Minnesota and head of Le’s office, previously told the judge in a letter that they were “struggling to keep up with the high volume” of petitions and allowed at least one court order requesting the return of a petitioner who slipped through the cracks. Le did not respond to a request for comment. In response to a request for comment, the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office sent an automated response stating that they are currently short of a public information officer.

Le was reportedly fired after a hearing in February, where he told the judge, “This job is not good.”

In response to a request for comment, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, “The Trump administration is more than prepared to handle the legal case necessary to deliver President Trump’s deportation agenda for the American people.”

As difficult as the job is for US attorneys, the situation is even more dire for people detained by immigration authorities. In court filings, the detained people described being packed into cells so crowded they couldn’t sit up before being transferred to detention centers in Texas. One described the need to share cells with people who are sick with Covid. Some said agents repeatedly forced them and other detainees to self-deport.

McLaughlin told WIRED, “All detainees are provided with proper food, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. All detainees receive due process.”

Ana Voss, the civil division chief for the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office, has been listed as one of the attorneys defending the government in nearly all habeas petition cases filed in Minnesota since Operation Metro Surge began. Before December, most of the cases involving Voss were about other issues, such as social security and disability cases. Since then, habeas petitions for immigrant detainees have dramatically outnumbered all other cases.