If the Trump administration felt defeated in Minneapolis and thought it could score easy wins in ruby red West Virginia, it couldn’t have been more wrong.
It’s true that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained hundreds of people in the state in January, snatching them from businesses, homes and along the interstates. It’s also true that West Virginia might not have seen the kind of massive protests that occurred in Minnesota.
But what our state lacks in population density or large-scale demonstrations, we make up for in dedicated community groups willing to do hard work, day and night. Whether the work is loud and attention-grabbing, or quiet and impactful, there are countless attorneys, activists and pissed off people working to resist this onslaught, and their numbers are growing.
In private chats, churches and coffee shops, the community of rapid responders has planned and mobilized.
Like so many places across America right now, responders in our state have shown up to film and protest cowardly masked ICE agents disappearing people from our communities.
Many of their stories will never make the news out of respect for the victims and to protect the work being done, but hundreds of people are putting in long days to make sure their fellow mountaineers will always be free.
Responders are driving kids to school, taking people to doctor appointments, and going on grocery runs for people too afraid to leave their homes. They’re helping people recover items stolen by ICE. They’re holding people’s hands as they walk into government buildings, terrified of being kidnapped again, but able to face these systems knowing that people care and are mad as hell about how their neighbors are being treated.
Advocates around the state are hosting fundraisers for legal representation, and buying cribs and formula for new mothers who go to bed afraid every night. We’re conducting training sessions for bystanders and witnesses to ICE activity to ensure people know the Constitution protects everyone in this country, regardless of where they come from.
And then there’s the work we can talk about in detail; the work that’s happening not in whispers but in the permanent record of American law.
Attorneys and the activists who have connected them with clients have been winning in court on behalf of those caught up in what the governor called “Operation Country Roads.”
In January, a partnership between ICE and local law enforcement swept up an estimated 650 people. Now, they’re running headlong into judicial rebukes over and over again.
In the Southern District of West Virginia, federal judges have taken a stand against the illegal actions of the federal government and shot down its legal arguments.
Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, who has sat on the bench for more than three decades, abandoned what he called “antiseptic judicial rhetoric” to describe what’s happening in plain language:
“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.”
Judge Thomas Johnston, appointed by former President George W. Bush, has been just as forceful. When he ordered the release of Danny Briceno-Solano, a contractor who pays taxes and was grabbed on Interstate 77 for having unclear plates, Johnston warned:
“Today, immigrants are being detained without due process. Tomorrow, under the Government’s interpretation of the law, American citizens could be subject to the same treatment. This Court will not allow such an unraveling of the Constitution.”
Judge Robert Chambers called the detentions a stain on the American dream, saying in a recent ruling that “The endless opportunity of the American dream that promises ‘liberty and justice for all’ is tarnished with each night an individual spends wrongfully detained.”
Judge Irene Berger accused the administration of showing a complete lack of respect for the law and exposed the shocking sloppiness of the government’s cases. Just last week, federal officials tried to justify detention by claiming a petitioner had marijuana convictions from 2009, even though the petitioner was just four years old in 2009.
As reported by MetroNews, “The most likely cause of the error, Berger concluded, was that the document supplied by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement referred to a different person who was convicted but who had the same name. This mistake occurred ‘despite the differences in birthdate, birthplace, parents’ names, and immigration status.’ The judge’s footnote concluded, 'This sloppiness further validates the Court’s concerns about the procedures utilized by the Respondents depriving people present in the United States of their liberty.'”
These are judges in the heart of Trump country, appointed by Clinton, Bush and Obama, reading the same Constitution and arriving at the same conclusion: What is happening here and across the country is illegal.
Attorneys from across the state (including Jonathan Sidney of the Climate Defense Project, attorney Shane Wilson, and attorneys with Mountain State Justice) have been filing habeas petition after habeas petition, and they are winning. Dozens of people have been released, and judges have made clear they’re done asking nicely.
Resistance to tyranny can look like a lot of things. Sometimes it’s loud and fierce. Sometimes it’s so under-the-radar you might not be sure it’s happening.
One thing we can be sure of is that from the streets of Minneapolis to the hollers of West Virginia, resistance to the administration’s lawless cruelty is getting stronger every day.
- Eli Baumwell is the executive director for American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia. He helps manage ACLU-WV's political advocacy efforts and develop its policy platform and priorities. He works closely with other advocacy and community outreach staff members to direct campaigns for federal, state and local policy efforts.
