ICE Speeds Up Fines for Civil Immigration Violations (1)

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is streamlining civil monetary penalties for immigration law violations, including unlawful entry and failure to depart after a removal order.

The agency is updating the process in an interim final rule, allowing changes to take effect immediately when it’s published in the Federal Register on Friday.

The new process is intended to allow the Department of Homeland Security to impose more penalties, more quickly, and deter future unlawful entry, the agency said. Current procedures “have the potential to become unnecessarily burdensome and cause unnecessary delay as DHS expands its use of the failure to depart and unlawful entry civil monetary penalties,” it said in the rule released Thursday.

Among changes adopted, ICE will be able to serve immigrants with penalties via routine, rather than certified, mail and appeals will be handled by DHS rather than the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals. It’s also shortening the appeal period from 30 to 15 days.

Monetary penalties for failing to voluntarily depart the country can range between $1,992 and $9,970. Immigrants who enter the US unlawfully can be charged penalties between $100 to $500 for each entry. As of June, ICE had issued almost 10,000 fine notices for failure to depart penalties, it said.

The penalties are part of a larger effort to financially penalize immigrants to push them to leave the country, said Nicolas Palazzo, policy counsel at HIAS, which provides legal services and resettlement support to refugees and asylum seekers.

“It’s a particularly egregious policy on the southern border where many individuals sacrifice their life savings to dangerous human smugglers for the opportunity to seek asylum,” he said in a statement.