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.”
This happens all the time even on the federal level. My company just ate a several thousand $ fine because we were working on a site where the plumbers didn’t mark an open pit while plumbing a mop sink. We were the HVAC contractors working on the roof. We were not even working in the same area and had no way of knowing what the plumbers were doing. OSHA didn’t care. Every company who was working the job got hit with a fine for continuing work on an unsafe site. It’s complete bullshit but, at the same time, everyone onsite is going to think twice about ever working with those plumbers again. So even though it’s complete and utter shit, it is probably the most effective tool at their disposal with current laws.