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How government fines of over $1M are increasingly targeting immigrants

First came the fines: Last year, the Trump administration began aggressively fining immigrants who allegedly stayed in the country past a deportation order. The law allowing these fines had been on the books since 1996, but was rarely used before 2025 — and the original fines were much lower.

dug into how the federal government is imposing steep fines on immigrants while pushing for them to self-deport.

As of May, the federal government had issued who reportedly have deportation orders but who remain in the U.S., seeking more than $36 billion in total. Some of the individual fines are — $998 per day for the statutory maximum of five years. The Department of Homeland Security also reduced the number of days’ notice that immigrants receive under the federal rule before collection efforts can begin, providing only a window of 15 business days to contest the fine.

After the fines came the lawsuits: The Department of Justice began filing civil lawsuits in federal court against a handful of immigrants who had received fine notices but had not yet paid. It started last September as a small trickle of cases in federal court districts from California to Florida. By May, had identified more than 50 lawsuits, some demanding more than $1 million. Essentially, the government is seeking a court-ordered financial judgment against these individuals, which it could then use to seize assets, garnish wages and intercept tax refunds.

“It’s a manufactured perfect storm,” said Hasan Shafiqullah, a lawyer with The Legal Aid Society, part of a coalition of nonprofit advocacy groups fighting the immigration fines through an attempted . Shafiqullah said that many of the people being fined are not just ignoring removal orders — some have pending immigration cases open, or are “present with ICE’s permission on orders of supervision, or otherwise lawfully here.”

And now come the debt collectors: A recent found government contracts with at least four private companies that secured debt collection deals as DHS began ramping up its efforts to fine immigrants. Another company is doing debt collection work for DHS through a contract with the Department of the Treasury, which manages the account where payments for these fines are deposited.

As a result, more immigrants are now receiving collection letters from these private companies seeking steep interest and fees on top of the already massive fines. The Lever’s investigation found at least one $1.8 million fine that ballooned to $2.3 million under these debt collection efforts.

To be sure, the government has little hope of collecting most of these debts. So what is the plan?

When initially announcing the fines, DHS officials said the agency would forgive all fines and penalties for any immigrant who opted to use the CBP Home mobile app of a free flight home and an “exit bonus,” now , to be paid after their return is confirmed via the app. Officials at DHS declined to say how many people have been paid that bonus, but saying that “there have already been nearly 100,000 users of the CBP Home app,” and more than 2 million immigrants have chosen to “voluntarily” self-deport since January 2025.

Some immigration attorneys, however, have said in the past that DHS’ assertions about those offers are misleading. And some demographers have raised the country.

Lawyers representing the immigrants who are fighting these fines say the goal is primarily to scare people or force them to self-deport (even those who had legal status or pending asylum claims). Some of the attorneys say this process also gives the government an avenue to seize whatever money or personal property immigrants have acquired while in the U.S. — or to trap them in debt forever.

“They jammed these notices through the administrative process. Now they’re taking them to court and trying to get default judgments,” said Charles Moore, a senior attorney at Public Justice, one of the groups representing the class plaintiffs. He was referring to cases in which immigrants said they were never notified before a judge issued a decision. The federal government is trying to do all of this without any independent review, he said, because “they know the fines themselves are legally dubious” and may target people who should not be fined.

“And as much as they can keep this out of the public eye, the better.”

In a recent lawsuit filed on behalf of the plaintiffs represented by Moore’s nonprofit, one person said that she never received initial notice of the million-dollar-plus fine from DHS, and didn’t know about it until the Treasury Department seized her joint tax refund. She filed taxes with her husband — a U.S. citizen and active duty service member. She and her husband have four children together, all U.S. citizens, and she has been in the process of applying for legal residency. Now there is a civil judgment against her. The federal government reported her to credit bureaus, claiming she is in default on the debt, damaging her credit.

And the debts could soon get even worse for some immigrants. In May, DHS . Under the proposal, the civil penalty would jump from $5,130 to $18,000 for immigrants who received an in absentia removal order, which means they were ordered deported because they did not appear before an immigration judge.

on the rule change closed on June 22. Some of the comments support the fine increase, saying it will shift the burden away from taxpayers — but others note the unlikelihood of the government ever recouping these costs: “Instead of helping the government recover its money, this will just trap people in a huge amount of debt that they won’t be able to escape.”

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