As both of my regular readers know, the question of how best to deal with the huge numbers of people who have illegally entered the United States in recent years is both contentions and highly divisive.
But it didn’t always used to be so.
Let me point out in passing that the U.S. isn’t anti-immigrant, as some suggest. In 2025, 1.32 million individuals LEGALLY entered the country after going through the process of applying to do so at their local U.S. embassy or consulate.
I thought I would broach this topic today because I noticed the other day that when Denver Police arrested Stanley Acquah, a Ghanian national, for sex related offenses, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) noticed and asked the Denver Police to release Mr. Acquah into their custody so that they could deport him. But because Democrat politicians, who support open borders, call all the shots in Denver, the request was ignored and Mr. Acquah released back into the community. Likely to offend again.
Way back in 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) with strong bi-partisan support–it passed the House 278 to 126 and the Senate 72 to 27.
In signing the bill, President Clinton asserted that the legislation strengthened “the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system, without punishing those living in the United States legally.”
In a memo written a few months after IIRIRA was passed, the Democrat party’s much revered Rahm Emanuel recommended a series of aggressive steps President Clinton could take in the wake of the law, including the admonition to “claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.”
IIRAIRA introduced expedited removal procedures allowing deportations without immigration court hearings, imposed a one year deadline to apply for asylum, introduced a mandatory 3-year or 10-year ban before a deportee could legally re-enter the U.S., and, added the ability for authorities to levy civil monetary penalties against individuals who willfully failed to depart the United States after being ordered by the courts to so.
The daily fine was set at $500 per day in 1996 but with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, it is now $998 per day. The maximum retrospective period is five years worth of fines.
With so much opposition to ICE’s deportation of criminal illegal aliens, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has begun leaning on IIRAIRA to fine individuals who failed to prove their case for asylum in the courts and ignored orders from immigration judges to voluntarily leave the county.
There are currently 3,195,137 pending asylum cases backlogged in 71 immigration courts across the nation. A lot! In fiscal year 2025, 874,106 new asylum cases were filed although these won’t be heard until the 2030s. In the interim, anyone who has applied for asylum is lawfully allowed to remain in the U.S. and can secure a work permit after a wait period of 150 days.
So far this fiscal year, through June, immigration judges have closed 687,353 asylum cases and issued removal and voluntary departure orders in 81.9% of those cases, totaling some 555,737 deportation orders.
There is no follow-up to see if someone self-deports so as another arrow in its quiver to uphold laws mandated by Congress requiring the removal of individuals who have willfully entered or who are remaining in the country illegally, DHS has begun locating and issuing IIRAIRA fines to those who have willfully ignored immigration court orders to depart.
So far, these fines have totaled around $84 billion and have involved 103,000 plus individuals.
As anyone knows who has ever crossed the federal government, the feds have the power to garnish wages, seize assets and unleash third party debt collectors on anyone who fails to pay taxes or repay government guaranteed loans. It isn’t a fun experience.
Of course the primary objective of the fines, which can be as large as $1.82 million for anyone who has illegally remained in the county for more than five years, is to apply financial pressure to force the individual to self-deport. And to encourage compliance, DHS offers total fine forgiveness and a free flight away from the U.S. with an exit bonus of up to $2,600.
Meanwhile immigration attorney are girding their loins to fight the fines, tooth and nail, because just like a moth to a flame, attorneys love a good fight (just as long as there is money in it for them).
The pen might be mightier than the sword but money sometimes achieves better results.
