Trump Is Taking Immigrants to Court, Seeking Millions in Fines

The Trump administration has issued thousands of fines against immigrants and has started taking people to court, seizing their tax refunds, and demanding payments for being in the US illegally, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.

The government issued 65,101 civil fines totaling more than $36 billion from the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025 to mid-March this year, the Department of Homeland Security said. The Justice Department has sued immigrants to force them to pay the fines in more than 50 lawsuits beginning last September, the Bloomberg Law analysis of court dockets found.

Some of the cases seek as little as $3,000. In at least five instances, the administration demanded $1 million or more.

“It’s all part of a scare campaign,” Hasan Shafiqullah, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Law Reform Unit, said. “It’s part and parcel of creating an environment where it’s so painful to be here if you don’t have status that you’ll agree to self-deport.”

The penalties imposed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are the latest, little-known measure to supercharge Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The scale of the fines is unprecedented and they’re issued so quickly that some immigrants don’t learn they’re on the hook until they’re hit with a lawsuit or lose a tax refund.

The Trump administration says the penalties are necessary to address a rise in unlawful entries and to deter violations of immigration law.

“The Trump administration is saying we are going to use our full statutory power even in cases where it hasn’t been used in the past,” Gabriel J. Chin, a professor and scholar of immigration law at University of California Davis School of Law, said.

‘Leave Now’

The Immigration and Nationality Act allows fines for civil violations, including improperly entering the country, failing to leave the US after agreeing to voluntarily depart, and not leaving after an immigration court issues a final removal order. The latter violation carries the biggest potential penalty—up to $998 per day.

The message? “Leave now or face consequences,” Acting Assistant Secretary at DHS Lauren Bis said.

In the past, the government pursued financial penalties almost exclusively from employers that knowingly hire immigrants without legal work authorization. Even during the first Trump administration, a limited number of fines were issued. The agency had only 26 active fine cases before DHS withdrew the policy under President Joe Biden in 2021.

Now the second Trump administration is dramatically scaling up its use of the civil penalties targeting immigrants. On top of lawsuits, the government is also targeting immigrants by taking their tax returns, garnishing wages, and referring them to debt collectors.

“By signaling they’re going after your assets, they’re attempting to make life really difficult for people,” said Charles Moore, an attorney at Public Justice, a public interest law firm that specializes in labor and civil rights issues and is suing to overturn the new fine regime. “Whether they succeed in getting someone’s assets is in some ways besides the point.”

Faster Fines

Marta Veliz, a 46-year-old Guatemalan migrant living in Richmond, Va., was sued for more than $940,000 for failure to depart after an immigration court issued a removal order. That’s an “astronomical amount” that there’s no way she can pay, said her attorney, Ivan Yacub. It was also issued despite a pending claim for a T visa, which shields trafficking victims from removal, he said.

Veliz said she fled to the US in 2016 after suffering domestic violence in her home country. In tears, she said she fears for her life if forced to return to Guatemala.

“I’m scared to return, I don’t want to suffer again what I suffered for years,” Veliz said in an interview conducted in Spanish.

She first learned of the fine when ICE agents served her with notice of the penalty at her home. A Trump administration overhaul of regulations on monetary penalties last year dropped requirements that the government personally serve fine notices or send them by certified mail. It also cut the window to appeal the fines in half to 15 business days and moved review of appeals from the DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals to DHS, citing a backlog of tens of thousands of cases at BIA, which primarily considers deportation relief claims.

Since the regulations were finalized, total fines are up more than 550% over the 10,000 ICE had issued before streamlining that process.

The Homeland Security rule said the effectiveness of immigration enforcement measures depends on the government’s ability to apply them quickly and at scale. In practice that means fines notices may not go to correct addresses, Moore said.

“The government really has no assurance the person who is the intended target is actually receiving notice of these fines,” he said.

Mounting Lawsuits

Attorneys in the civil division of US attorneys’ offices are bringing the cases on ICE’s behalf, according to the Bloomberg Law analysis. These include attorneys in financial litigation units and other civil litigation teams tasked with collecting monetary debts and penalties owed to federal agencies.

US attorneys’ offices have taken a predominant role defending the Trump administration’s detention and deportation agenda in court. This has played out especially in response to habeas petitions from migrants challenging their detention, which have fueled a mounting workload for civil attorneys and forced some offices to temporarily shift prosecutors from other divisions to help tackle the cases.

DOJ leadership under the second Trump administration has pressed the 94 US attorneys’ offices to prioritize immigration litigation, dating back to a memo issued days into Trump’s second term directing all offices to prosecute immigration cases referred to them and report an explanation for any immigration violations not pursued.

While Bloomberg Law identified dozens of lawsuits, the total number is unclear, and DOJ wouldn’t provide a figure. Total penalties sought in cases identified exceed $16.2 million. In several, the government has sought default judgments when a defendant didn’t respond to the suit. It’s also dropped nearly 20 suits filed against immigrant defendants.

It’s unclear how the government decides who to target with the suits, immigration attorneys say. The DOJ didn’t respond to detailed questions from Bloomberg Law about those decisions on the litigation or what agency-wide instructions have been issued to pursue such cases.

“The Department of Justice is using every statutory tool available to deter and discourage illegal entry into the United States,” Natalie Baldassarre, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in a statement.

Collecting Outside Court

Beyond the lawsuits, the government is also collecting fines by referring the debts to collections agencies and garnishing wages. ICE is also making use of a Treasury Department program allowing it to withhold tax refunds from people who owe money to state and federal agencies, attorneys say.

That’s what happened to Affisetou Tchedre, an immigrant from Togo and mother of four US citizen children living in the Bronx, N.Y. Since an immigration judge denied her asylum claim and ordered her removal, her husband filed for a green card on her behalf as well as temporary protections known as “parole-in-place” for family of active military members.

ICE is suing her for $1.8 million for failing to leave the country and Treasury this year seized $10,662 from a joint federal tax refund, according to a court filing. Tchedre has filed a counterclaim against DHS and ICE and is seeking a return of the tax refund.

It’s likely many more immigrants will see their tax refunds taken—including from many who didn’t know they were hit with penalties, said Shafiqullah, whose firm is counsel for Tchedre and a part of a coalition of groups challenging the fee rule.

“They don’t have deep pockets,” he said of immigrants facing the fines. “For someone who’s at the poverty line and is counting on this tax refund as a huge part of their annual budget, to have it seized through treasury offset is a huge hit.”