Key facts
- A US federal judge blocked the Trump administration's policy of fining migrants up to $1.8 million.
- The fines were imposed on migrants who failed to leave the US after receiving deportation orders.
- US District Judge George O'Toole ruled the fines were unlawfully imposed and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
- The judge stated that collecting the fines would likely drive plaintiffs into insolvency.
- The Department of Homeland Security had issued over 103,000 fines totaling approximately $84 billion since the policy began.
- The fines were $998 per day, retroactively applied for up to five years.
A federal judge in Boston on Monday blocked the Trump administration's policy of imposing fines of up to $1.8 million on migrants who fail to leave the US after receiving final deportation orders.
US District Judge George O'Toole issued the ruling in a class-action lawsuit filed by migrants who had been assessed civil penalties by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). O'Toole stated that the administration imposed the fines unlawfully, finding that collecting them would likely drive the plaintiffs into insolvency.
"The plaintiffs live in an economically precarious position even without the imposition of the government’s exorbitant fines," O'Toole wrote.
The DHS had no immediate comment. As of July, the department had issued over 103,000 fines to migrants, totaling approximately $84 billion since the policy began during President Donald Trump's second administration. The fines were levied at $998 per day for failure to depart after a deportation order, retroactively applied for up to five years, reaching a maximum of $1.8 million.
The plaintiffs, including the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, challenged the policy, arguing that DHS and its agency, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, issued fines using boilerplate forms without assessing whether the failure to depart was willful or voluntary. O'Toole agreed, ruling that the fines violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the forms lacked specific allegations and that the administration failed to comply with rulemaking processes by not allowing public comment on the streamlined fine-imposition process.