$1.8M Immigration Fines Spark Lawsuit

A lawsuit filed on Thursday challenges the exorbitant civil fines levied on unauthorized immigrants, a tactic that the Trump administration has increasingly adopted to force individuals to flee the country. The complaint claims that the government has sent tens of thousands of warnings to migrants alerting them to the $1,000 daily fee for being in the country without authorization. The lawsuit claims that in certain instances, fines totaling around $1.8 million have been imposed retroactively, spanning five years. According to the lawsuit, many individuals seeking legal status have been forced into “ruinous debt” as a result of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional seizure of a limited immigration law provision that has never been used extensively.

The case, which was created as a class action, was filed on behalf of two women who claimed that despite their attempts to follow the law and find a way to remain in the country lawfully, they were nevertheless charged the costs. It requests that a federal court in Massachusetts provide a decision that applies to all of the at least 21,500 individuals who, as of August, had been hit with such fines. Based on a checklist from a government form created in 1957 that frequently ignores efforts people have made to cooperate with immigration officials, lawyers said the penalties had been imposed randomly.

With the exception of a brief period during President Trump’s first term, the government has never used the almost $1,000 daily punishment that was authorized by legislation passed in 1996 for anybody who “willfully” failed or refused to leave. Additionally, the law establishes a five-year statute of limitations for determining the penalty. According to the Trump administration, anyone who has been in the nation for more than that period may be fined five years’ worth of daily fines.

 In an interview with The New York Times, one of the plaintiffs—identified as Nancy M. in court documents—said that shortly after the Trump administration declared its intention to impose fines “swiftly and at scale” in June, she was notified that she would be fined $1.8 million. She said that the notification was unexpected since she had been residing in the country under an order of surveillance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for years, and as a result, she had been seeing immigration officials every year.