A federal judge in West Virginia has given the Trump administration an ultimatum: Stop illegally detaining immigrants or face contempt rulings and “monetary sanctions against responsible officials.”
“Today, the Government continues to wrongfully detain those petitioners without due process,” [Goodwin’s] opinion reads. “Even now the Government incredulously asserts that the federal district courts do not have jurisdiction, that petitioners cannot raise due process violations, and that the Government has authority to mandatorily and indefinitely detain noncitizens in the local jail. The Government is wrong. Judges in this district have said that over and over and over again. I have said it myself.”
‘Monetary Sanctions’
Fuck you; ISSUE ARREST WARRANTS YOU SPINELESS CUNT
Fines are more civil and not subject to pardon.
State criminal charges are not subject to federal pardons either.
Who gives a fuck about showing the Nazis civility? Punch them in the dicks and take their shit
But, we’re paying them
Oh ok. Then yeah we should probably just bend over.
Wait, you don’t mean ‘civil’ as in polite, right?
You can only issue arrest warrants for criminal contempt, meaning Trump can just issue a pardon. Civil contempt isn’t subject to the pardon power.
And the people to issue the contempt judgements against aren’t Trump and team. They need to issue them to the foot soldiers. It sounds weak, but it’s effective.
I work in in the development department of a very small municipality that’s an enclave for the mega-rich. Literally 100% of households are at least multi-millionaires. The average new house being built is about 8 million dollars. That means that when we Rey tonfine homeowners for illegal shit, it means nothing because they can just write a check if they don’t want to comply.
So we’ve recently changed tactics on code enforcement. We start by telling them to stop and issuing a citation to the owners, but when they don’t we fine the individual workers on site and if things aren’tcleaned up we start to cite them each $500/day until they start to comply. It didn’t take long until the rich assholes couldn’t find workers willing to do their bidding.
So instead of something like proportional fines related to the value of the properties, you’ve fucked over the working class for violations that they didn’t commit, didn’t know about, and likely had no control over? Do you have any idea what an unexpected $500, $1000, or $1500 bill can do to a family that is struggling? Are these fines even legal? What types of violations by the rich are the working class being made to pay for? Do you also send warnings to the workers before taking their money, or do the owners get a warning and you just hope they tell everyone else? I find this little story completely abhorrent and I hope some of these workers sue your organization and get their money back.
The people we’re talking about have billions and we can only legally charge them a few thousand. We can’t cut off the money spigot, so we cut off the supply of workers willing to work for them.
And the workers that get fined are the ones still performing the work after we’ve issued a verbal and written stop-work order and cited the owners. And it’s not like we just put something in the mail - we discover the work by driving by, seeing the workers on site, and speaking with them directly and telling them to stop. Our code enforcement people don’t cite the individual workers until their third trip to the site in which they’re told to stop. Hell - if they stopped when we first asked we wouldn’t even know who to cite if we wanted.
Most of the time, they stop without being cited and work with us on permitting and remediation. We end up having to go after the contractors for violation of a SWO about 1% of the time (though we’ll also cite them for other things like wrenching through public utilities in the ROW more often). And in those cases it’s almost always the contractors who lie and either tell the owners a permit isn’t needed or that they already have one. The last time we did it they had actually printed out a forged permit placard.
And that 1% that repeatedly refuses to follow the rules gets to go to court and explain their side to the judge, where the reality is they’ll probably have the daily fine dismissed and only pay the initial $500 or whatever if they start to cooperate.
hilarious that they pay the fine to get the thing but won’t pay someone else’s smaller fine to get the thing out of sheer moneybrain
…ok? And therefore what?
When you can’t take out the head, you sweep the legs.
We can’t get Trump or his minions in Washington right now. But if we go after ICE and DHS people with massive civil fines, he’ll run out of people willing to do his bidding.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
I mean it guys. Really stop doing it or I’ll be angry.
Courts mean nothing if no one enforces their rulings.
Judge: “Police, I demand you arrest these police!”
Another strongly worded letter. Arrest them. Do it now.
Perfect.
The Trump admin are shaking in their boots at this FINAL NOTICE. They better watch their step or they might be getting a FINAL FINAL NOTICE next!
This is one year overdue. Just fucking do it!!!
Not good enough, arrested, convict, and executed there traitors.
Monetary sanctions? Oh ok, nevermind. They’re not going to do anything.
Everyone go back to loading magazines and assembling pipe bombs.
Like that’s going to do jack shit. You don’t stop the secret police with sanctions.
It’s still extremely unusual for district judges to title a section of their order “Final Notice”.
ya sure… when
“This is our final warning” -type energy here.
Make it arrests and potentially executions for the egregious extremity of the nature of misuse of state power against citizens, and something might actually change. Nothing else resonates with this regime, clearly, why would they stop now?
Not explicit enough
Explicit notice would be finding the assholes in contempt. Maybe if the ICE/Justice Department lawyers dropped their pants and took a crap on the gavel it would result in something other than a strongly worded letter.
