U.S. immigration enforcement agencies have the ability to impose fines on people who fail to leave the country after either entering illegally or arriving legally with a visa but remaining in the country after it has expired. And they were doing it up until January 20th of this year. (I’m sure that date is strictly a coincidence.) Since that time, no new fines have been issued to illegal aliens. But now the Department of Homeland Security has made the new policy official. Not only will there be no new fines issued, but there will be no effort made to collect on fines that were already issued. Why? Because fining people who are in violation of our immigration laws “runs counter to the agency’s best interest.” And no… you really can’t make this stuff up. (Daily Wire)

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas announced on Friday that he directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to cancel fining illegal aliens who fail to leave the United States, claiming that fining people who are illegally in the U.S. runs “counter to the agency’s best interest.”

“There is no indication that these penalties promoted compliance with noncitizens’ departure obligations,” Mayorkas said. “We can enforce our immigration laws without resorting to ineffective and unnecessary punitive measures.”

Mayorkas, who has presided over an immigration crisis exploding on the southern border under the new administration, claimed that the fines were not effective and did not “meaningfully advanced the interests of the agency.”

Former DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf saved me some time by asking the appropriate question.

How does withdrawing a consequence (i.e. fine) and holding individuals accountable when they overstay their visa and fail to depart in the best interests of DHS?

— Chad Wolf (@ChadFWolf) April 23, 2021

It’s certainly not a surprise that many people in the country illegally don’t pay their fines. Why would they when they’ve already demonstrated that they don’t care about breaking the law? Violating another one by refusing to pay a fine probably doesn’t mean a great deal to them. Also, the act of paying a fine might make it easier to track them down.

But is that a reason to stop issuing the fines and enforcing collection? You could make the same argument for virtually any other fine that gets issued for noncompliance with the law. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t impose penalties on law-breakers. One of the many responsibilities of DHS is to enforce our nation’s immigration laws. How is any particular act of enforcement counter to the agency’s best interests?

Now ICE has to go pester the Treasury Department to get them to cancel the fines. We’re apparently just going to drag the entire federal government into this food fight just so Open Borders Joe can continue to flood the country with illegal aliens until he figures out a way to give them all amnesty.

Of course, this policy does seem to be in keeping with Biden’s previous orders on related subjects. You may recall that back in February, ICE agents were ordered to stop informing illegal aliens that they may face deportation following a court hearing. The reason for the order was that ICE’s “customers” (yes… that’s actually what they called them) might experience “undue stress” upon hearing this information. Of course, there’s no need to worry about stress any longer since we’re apparently not going to be deporting anyone.

This will probably come as great news to the four illegal aliens who came to New York to join up with MS-13 and recently dragged the mother of an 8-year-old child out of her car, beat her with baseball bats, and then hacked her to death with machetes. Perhaps they won’t be deported either. Heck, they may not even have to pay a fine.

Some of you are old enough to remember when both Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas said prior to taking office that they were not in favor of “abolishing ICE.” Perhaps that was technically true since there has been no order (yet) to dismantle the agency. But they’ve accomplished the same effect by paying ICE agents to mostly sit on their hands and do nothing.