The Biden administration seeks to make the whole country a “sanctuary state” for illegal aliens

That’s how veteran journalist Daniel Greenfield interprets the latest policy directives from the Homeland Security Department.

Sanctuary states and cities had previously tried to force ICE to stop making arrests. Now Biden is giving them what they wanted and making all the country into one giant sanctuary state in blue and red states, in places that want immigration enforcement and those that don’t.

Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s Homeland Security boss, has issued guidelines for what he deemed to be “protected areas”. Renaming “sanctuary” to “protected” does little to disguise what the Biden administration is doing to protect its illegal aliens from arrest and deportation.

The new DHS Guidelines for Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas make it essentially impossible for ICE to do its job by barring arrests in these “protected areas”.

Protected or sanctuary areas are places where illegal aliens can’t be arrested and they include, but are not limited to, any kind of school or college, a medical or health center, any kind of religious area, playgrounds, school bus stops, community organizations, or a protest zone.

And arrests can’t be made in their general vicinity either.

This comes after Biden and Mayorkas had already barred ICE from detaining illegal alien criminals in the vicinity of courthouses making it easy for sanctuary cities to keep releasing them until they finally kill someone, and also barred raids on companies employing illegal aliens.

Mayorkas’ only working definition of Biden’s sanctuary zones is any place where people “receive or engage” in “essential services or activities”. That could be used to cover nearly anything.

Including possibly supermarkets and grocery stores.

Jon Feere, a former senior adviser for ICE, now working at the Center for Immigration Studies, notes how broad the list of protected sites is. “Near a vaccination site (any street with a Walgreens?)” That would potentially cover nearly every single pharmacy in America and the endless variety of other institutions that have been repurposed as COVID vaccination sites.

Not to mention, “any place where children gather”.

Law enforcement personnel are now expected to play a bizarre game of hopscotch and make sure that there isn’t a Safeway, a school bus stop, a church, a food pantry, a community center, a playground, an urgent care clinic, or anything else on a block where they detain an alien.

In a high-density urban environment this is calculated to make detaining illegals impossible.

Mayorkas refuses to provide a full list of sanctuary areas or the legal proximity where arrests can be made.

. . .

Beyond arrests, the Biden sanctuary guidelines also rule out, “searches, inspections, seizures, service of charging documents or subpoenas, interviews, and immigration enforcement surveillance”. That means ICE can’t even monitor illegal aliens in a sanctuary zone or serve papers for immigration violations even without any intention of arresting the illegal alien.

. . .

The only consistent theme here is that any government, federal or state, has the right to protect illegal aliens from deportation, but has no right to detain and deport the mobs of illegal aliens.

There’s more at the link.

This is nothing less than using the law as a weapon against enforcing the law.  The laws against illegal aliens remain on the books:  but ICE and other law enforcement agencies will be prevented from enforcing those laws in all but the most innocuous of circumstances.  Effectively, the rule of law is being destroyed from within.

This is, of course, unconscionable.  Look up for yourself the number of crimes committed by illegal aliens, who should not be here in the first place, but now cannot and will not be removed unless they are unusually careless.  The death toll is already high:  vehicle accidents, murders, suicides after gross violations by criminals . . . there’s a very, very long list of them.  All that will now get worse, almost by the day.

You may despair and say, “Well, what can we do about it?  If the law won’t act against them, we can do nothing!”  Actually, there are things we can do.  Think about these possibilities:

1. If you see illegal aliens being employed, that’s against the law as it stands.  Complain to their employers, complain officially to ICE and other relevant agencies, make a fuss, get others to join in demonstrations on the street in front of companies that employ illegal aliens.
2. Don’t employ illegal aliens yourself.  How many people hire casual labor from in front of stores like Home Depot or Lowes?  How many hire contractors for, say, roof repair that they know are using cheap illegal alien labor, because their prices are correspondingly lower?  If we want to take a stand against illegal aliens, we need to put our money where our mouths are and stop hiring them.
3. Continuously inform your elected representatives (local, regional, state and national) about the problem.  Nag, cajole and hound them.  Make sure they know you’ll give them no rest until they do something about the problem.  Get your family and friends to do likewise.  Politicians do listen, and some of them will act.  Those who don’t can be “named and shamed”, and you can use their inaction to campaign against them at the next election.  If they’re put on the spot about it, they’ll be forced to act whether they want to or not.
4. Contribute to activities and groups that seek to reduce illegal immigration.  For example, Texas is building its own border fence to reduce illegals crossing into the state.  Why not support that by writing to state politicians, asking them to fund the work?  Thank those responsible for the effort, and let them know you’ll support them electorally for taking a stand.  How about donating to the support of officers in affected law enforcement agencies, as they fight against the smuggling of illegal aliens, drugs, etc. across state borders?  How about joining groups that seek to publicize the problem and whip up public support to reduce it?  Get involved.

Illegal immigration is evil in itself, in that it’s basically human trafficking (so-called coyotes and criminal cartels control and make money out of virtually all those who sneak across the border).  It also gives rise to greater evil in the form of human exploitation, increased crime, and the breakdown of the rule of law.

We should fight those evils whenever and wherever possible.  Since we can’t rely on the Biden administration to do so, it’s up to us – that is, until we can replace the Biden administration with one that respects the rule of law.  Meanwhile, to quote President Theodore Roosevelt:

“Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right … Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Peter