A lawsuit was filed Thursday against the federal government on behalf of immigrants who say they are facing devastating civil fines — in some cases up to $1.8 million each — for remaining in the United States without legal status.
The federal government has imposed daily penalties of $998 on more than 21,500 immigrants. According to their lawyers, many of those individuals were actively trying to follow immigration procedures and comply with federal law. The fines were originally introduced as a way to pressure undocumented immigrants to leave the country.
Attorneys for the immigrants argue that their clients have been hit with “ruinous civil fines” that are “grossly disproportionate to the gravity” of any immigration violation and therefore unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts on behalf of two immigrant women, seeks class-action status so it can represent thousands of people who have been targeted with fines that lawyers say total more than $6 billion under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies.
“The people we serve are doing exactly what the law requires — pursuing legal relief through immigration courts and immigration agencies,” Hasan Shafiqullah, a supervising attorney with The Legal Aid Society, said in a news release. “In return, the government is threatening to seize their wages, cars, even their homes.”
One of the named plaintiffs, identified in court documents only as Nancy M. to protect her from retaliation, lives in Florida. She had been ordered to leave the U.S., but she also had an “order of supervision” and was checking in annually with immigration authorities while seeking to become a lawful permanent resident.
Despite her ongoing efforts to regularize her status, she received a bill earlier this year for about $1.8 million, calculated as daily $998 fines over the course of five years.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dismissed the lawsuit as “just another attempt to nullify federal immigration law through activist litigation.”
“The plaintiffs in this case are here illegally and are suing so they can remain in the country illegally without any consequence or penalty – contrary to decades-old federal law,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Shortly after Trump returned to the White House in January, his administration outlined a series of measures intended to encourage undocumented immigrants to depart voluntarily. In February, DHS announced that immigrants who decline to self-deport could face “significant financial penalty.”
Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “have a clear message for those in our country illegally: leave now,” McLaughlin said in February. “The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws — we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce.”
