Biden Admin Rewards Illegal Aliens for Ignoring Court Orders to Go Home
The federal government can levy fines on foreign nationals for failing to return to their home country after receiving an order from an immigration judge to do so. Congress created these penalties in order to encourage compliance with the nation’s immigration laws. Though this important tool has existed in federal law since the 1990s, it went unused for decades until the Trump administration started to issue fines to illegal aliens who were evading law enforcement in sanctuaries.
One of the first acts of the Biden administration was to prohibit ICE from using this statutory tool, a clear indicator the administration doesn’t care about compliance with immigration law. But now it’s gone further and cancelled the removal orders of a handful of illegal aliens who received the fines, and gave them “deferred action” for three years, meaning protection from deportation and potentially work permits. (Read the settlement agreement here.)
The individuals in these cases had their full day in court. They were ordered to go home. After a number of years of ignoring the removal order, ICE issued them a fine. The aliens could have paid it, they could have returned home as ordered, but because they apparently believe they are above the law, they decided to hide out in so-called “sanctuary churches” in continued violation of federal law. Now, the Biden administration is siding with these lawbreakers and against the rulings of immigration judges.
Fines are critical for creating compliance with the nation’s immigration system, but the Biden administration is run by people who fundamentally don’t believe the American people have a right to live in a sovereign nation. They are not interested in creating compliance because they don’t believe immigration laws should exist; the natural follow-through is allowing foreigners to ignore the directions and decisions from immigration officers and judges. It is impossible to run a functioning immigration system under conditions like this, and every immigration judge should speak out.
The fines include a penalty for failure to depart voluntarily (8 U.S.C. § 1229c). Voluntary departure is a generous order from an immigration judge that allows an alien to leave the country on their own within a certain time frame without certain impacts on their records. An alien remaining in the country after receiving a voluntary departure order “shall be subject” to a fine ranging from $1,881 to $9,413.
The other fine for failure to depart (8 U.S.C. § 1324d) is for any alien subject to a final order of removal who willfully fails or refuses to depart from the United States, make timely application in good faith for necessary travel documents, or refuses to present themselves for removal at the time and place required by the government, or conspires or takes any action designed to prevent or hamper their departure. In any of these instances, the alien “shall” pay a penalty of not more than $942 for each day the alien is in violation of the law.
Though the first fine is limited to $9,413 the second fine adds up on a daily basis and is dependent on how long the alien decides to ignore American law. For example, an alien who ignores an immigration judge’s deportation order for six months faces a fine of almost $170,000.
Fine amounts in all areas of federal law are adjusted annually. The latest table on fine amounts, as of 2023, is available here.
What Can Congress Do? One top complaint from political appointees who served in the Executive Branch is that although Congress can create important provisions in law, lawmakers often fail to ensure that the tools they’ve created are actually being used by federal agencies. That was the case with these fines. From the research ICE conducted, it appeared that, prior to the Trump administration, the last time these fines had been used was sometime in the late 1990s – before DHS even existed. As a result, there was no institutional memory on how to issue the fines, no forms, no process, and so on. The effort to issue these fines had to be started from scratch, and that required a lot of work from a lot of different parts of the federal government. Not surprisingly, as the effort was developed, we discovered a number of issues that had to be addressed; for example, when mailing off the fines, it became clear very quickly that many of the addresses aliens had provided ICE and immigration courts were incorrect or, at least, hadn’t been updated by the alien as required by law.
Congress should conduct some follow-through on enforcement tools like this to ensure federal agencies are actually making use of them. In the next DHS funding bill, Congress could dedicate a certain amount of funding to standing up a Fines and Penalties Unit at ICE to carry out all fines and penalties that fall under the agency’s authority. While the Biden administration won’t want to do it, they’ll have to get the ball rolling and that will be a benefit to any future administration that actually cares about the nation’s immigration laws.
An Ongoing Effort to Nullify Immigration Rulings. While this decision by the Biden administration to cancel final orders, rescind fines for ignoring immigration judges, and allow these illegal aliens to remain in the country is entirely lawless, the administration is also quietly dissolving countless immigration cases with almost no outcry from Congress. Biden’s appointee to run ICE’s legal division — which is supposed to lead prosecutions of immigration law violations — is “administratively closing” thousands of cases that don’t meet the Biden administration’s so-called enforcement priorities. All the work that has gone into those cases is ignored and abandoned, meaning that the cases will have to be re-opened by a future administration. Congress could presumably also direct the Biden administration to re-open these cases immediately. Either way, the illegal aliens in these closed cases are still in the country illegally and face deportation.
Another assault on immigration enforcement by the Biden administration includes the removal of immigration judges who refuse to let all foreigners break our laws. As reported by the Washington Times, the Biden administration appointees currently running the Justice Department — where immigration courts are located — have gone on a tear in dismissing Trump-era judges from the immigration courts. As one source explained, “It’s clearly ideological because only IJs appointed under Trump are being fired.” The source continued: “The ideological goal is to firmly establish a de facto amnesty for anyone in [Executive Office for Immigration Review] proceedings by breaking EOIR so that almost no one is ordered removed regardless of the law.” The source said the upheaval in the Biden era is unprecedented.
