Judge Joseph Goodwin wrote an impressive and powerful opinion in an immigrant case in West Virginia (Southern District of West Virginia, Charleston Division). The petition was for a Writ of habeas corpus by a person who was detained by purported ICE officers. Goodwin’s opinion was well-reasoned, and began with this paragraph:
“Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening. Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind—are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process. The systematic character of this practice and its deliberate elimination of every structural feature that distinguishes constitutional authority from raw force place it beyond the reach of ordinary legal description. It is an assault on the constitutional order. It is what the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent. It is what the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment forbids.”
I am grateful that many in the Judiciary refuse to allow Trump to break the law. Just Security maintains a site that tracks the number of legal decisions that have opposed Trump policies (215 so far). Since the Supreme Court has decided that Presidents are immune from prosecution as long as those acts are considered part of “official” acts, the only legal recourse to this lawlessness is impeachment. Let us hope that the there is a Congress that will understand its responsibilities to the Constitution. Three’s the charm.
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