U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin ripped federal and state officials for continuing the mandatory, indefinite jailing of noncitizens arrested in West Virginia, concluding the practice violates Fifth Amendment due process rights.
The final-straw language in Goodwin’s order came in the specific case of Miguel Antonio Dominguez Izaguirre, a Honduran national held in immigration detention without a bond hearing. Goodwin noted that multiple judges in the district have already declared these specific detention practices unconstitutional.
The judge threatened contempt proceedings and sanctions if the government continues to ignore the binding legal rulings in future cases. He wrote that his order “serves as explicit notice to all officials — state and federal — involved in the detention of individuals whose cases come before this court.”
He wrote that “Continued detention without individualized custody determinations, after this court’s repeated holdings that such detention violates the Fifth Amendment, will result in legal consequences.
“For state jail officials, those consequences include personal civil liability without qualified immunity protection. For federal officials, those consequences include exercise of this court’s full inherent authority to enforce constitutional compliance including contempt.”
In a footnote, the judge noted that the South Central Regional Jail in Charleston “accepts physical custody of the immigrant petitioners under circumstances and practices already declared unconstitutional by this court and judges in this district.
“Jail officials act pursuant to state law, and under color of state law, are depriving each of these petitioners their right to liberty, a clearly established constitutional right. After this court’s and this district’s multitude of rulings, state officials are clearly on notice, and the petitioners’ liberty interests have clearly been established.”
A wave of cases in recent weeks before judges in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia have focused on people seized in immigration sweeps contesting the basis of their arrests and subsequent incarceration.
These cases have typically involved people who first entered the United States unlawfully and then wound up at processing centers, where they were released under conditions that their immigration status would be reviewed. Many of the people in these cases have declared asylum because of upheaval in their home countries.
Being in the United States without authorization is generally a civil violation, not a crime, and violation of immigration law is handled by civil immigration courts, not criminal courts.
Lawyers for the people in these cases contend that they have cooperated with the immigration system and that judges in that system should make final determinations of status.
Instead, they have been caught up in West Virginia highway sweeps, arrested and sent to jail without being charged with a criminal offense. So their lawyers have been contesting the grounds of their recent West Virginia arrests and incarcerations.
The judges have consistently concluded that the people, often detained after minor traffic stops, lacked histories of violence and were frequently held without warrants or proper hearings. In case after case, the judges have ordered the people set free from West Virginia jails.
Despite the consistent rulings, Goodwin wrote last week that the case of Miguel Antonio Dominguez Izaguirre was one of 17 assigned to the court just last week.
“How can that be?” Goodwin asked, noting that multiple rulings by other judges in the district have consistently held that the government’s position on mandatory detention is contrary to established law.
Yet on Feb. 12, 14, 17, 18, 21 and 22, the judge wrote, the government arrested noncitizens already in the interior of the United States. “Today, the Government continues to wrongfully detain those petitioners without due process,” Goodwin wrote.
“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.”
This is a view shared by other judges in the Southern District of West Virginia.
That includes Judge Irene Berger, who wrote in a recent case that “counsel for the Respondents indicated, in response to the Court’s inquiry, that the Respondents intend to continue to arrest and detain people in this district under the same circumstances and based on the same legal justifications that all four district judges to address the matter have found to be illegal and unconstitutional.
“The Court has previously prohibited re-arrest and detention absent a significant change in circumstances to justify detention. The Court concurs with the Petitioners that the language previously used provides inadequate protection due to the Respondents’ lack of respect for the law.”
The particular case before Goodwin involved Miguel Antonio Dominguez Izaguirre, who entered the United States in 2016 and currently lives in Cana, Va., with his two children who are both United States citizens.
This past Valentine’s Day, he was arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers while traveling near Summersville, Nicholas County. Following the arrest, he continued to be held in South Central Regional Jail in Charleston.
“Despite facing no criminal charge, Petitioner sits in the local jail with no hearing to determine his custody. There is no evidence in the record that Petitioner is a danger to the community or a flight risk, and there is sufficient evidence that he has community ties. Still, he has been afforded no hearing. This violates his due process rights,” Goodwin wrote.
As in the other cases, the judge ordered Izaguirre to be released.
Goodwin, a Bill Clinton appointee who has served on the federal bench since 1995, wrote in a footnote that the assistant federal prosecutors who have come before the court are not to be blamed.
“I note that counsel for the Government has been responsive and professional before this court. In the Government’s briefing it is clear to me that the attorneys are aware of the law of this district and how it affects the Government’s argument,” Goodwin wrote.
“The problem lies in the attorneys’ clients, federal government actors, who have offered no evidence that they have seen or even care about the legal rulings of this district. The disregard for the law shames every hard working public servant who toils for the benefit of the country and its people.”
But he wrote that once a federal court has declared particular conduct unconstitutional, the court possesses equitable authority to prevent the same defendants from engaging in the same unconstitutional conduct again.
“Government officials — federal and state—subject to this court’s jurisdiction are required to conform their conduct to this court’s constitutional rulings,” he wrote. “This court possesses inherent authority to enforce its constitutional determinations and will not permit systematic violations to continue while awaiting appellate resolution.”