By Ted Hesson, Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Wendy Ortiz was surprised to find out she was being fined by U.S. immigration authorities for being in the country illegally – but it was the amount that truly shocked her: $1.8 million.
Ortiz, 32, who earns $13 an hour in her job at a meatpacking plant in Pennsylvania, has lived in the United States for a decade, after fleeing El Salvador to escape a violent ex-partner and gang threats, she said in an interview and in immigration paperwork. Her salary barely covers rent and expenses for her autistic 6-year-old U.S.-citizen son.
“It’s not fair,” she said. “Where is someone going to find that much money?”
In the last few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has started to operationalize a plan to fine migrants who fail to leave the U.S. after a final deportation order, issuing notices to 4,500 migrants with penalties totaling more than $500 million, a senior Trump official said, requesting anonymity to share internal figures.
Reuters spoke with eight immigration lawyers around the country who said their clients had been fined from several thousand dollars to just over $1.8 million.
The recipients of the notices were informed that they had 30 days to contest, in writing, under oath, and with evidence as to why the penalty should not be imposed.
The steep fines are part of Trump’s aggressive push to get immigrants in the U.S. illegally to leave the country voluntarily, or “self deport.”
The Trump administration plan, details of which were first reported by Reuters in April, include levying fines of $998 per day for migrants who failed to leave the U.S. after a deportation order.
The administration planned to issue fines retroactively for up to five years, Reuters reported. Under that framework, the maximum would be $1.8 million. The government would then consider seizing the property of immigrants who could not pay.
It remains unclear exactly how the Trump administration would collect the fines and seize property.
IMMIGRATION LAWYERS BAFFLED
The fines reviewed by Reuters were issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but a separate agency – Customs and Border Protection – has been asked to process them and handle potential forfeitures, Reuters reported in April.
CBP is still working out the complicated logistics to conduct seizures, a CBP official said, requesting anonymity.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in April that immigrants in the U.S. illegally should “self deport and leave the country now.”
The fines stem from a 1996 law that was enforced for the first time in 2018, during Trump’s first term in office, and target the roughly 1.4 million migrants who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge.
The Trump administration withdrew fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars against nine migrants who sought sanctuary in churches in his first term after a legal challenge, but proceeded with smaller penalties. Joe Biden’s administration dropped the fines in 2021.
Robert Scott, a New York City-based immigration lawyer, said he was baffled when one of his clients – a low-income Mexican woman who has lived in the U.S. for 25 years – also received a $1.8 million fine.
“At first you look at something like this and think it’s fake,” he said. “I’ve never seen a client receive anything like this.”
Scott said the woman received a final deportation order in 2013 but was not aware of it at the time. The woman filed a motion last year to reopen the removal order, which is still pending, Scott said.
“She hasn’t been hiding,” he said. “I find it curious that they would pick on someone like that. I don’t know if it’s random, I don’t know if she’s low-hanging fruit. I don’t know.”
SEEKING RELIEF, THEN TARGETED
After crossing the border in 2015, Ortiz was released to pursue her asylum claim when an officer found she had a credible fear of persecution, documents show. But she said she never received an immigration court hearing notice and was ordered deported after failing to show up to court in 2018.
Ortiz’s immigration lawyer requested humanitarian relief from the U.S. government on Jan. 8, saying she faced danger in El Salvador and that her son would not have access to services for autistic children. The petition asked for “prosecutorial discretion” and for the government to reopen and dismiss her case.
Twelve days later, Trump took office and launched his wide-ranging immigration crackdown.
Rosina Stambaugh, Ortiz’s attorney, said she had requested a 30-day extension and was considering ways to fight the fine in court.
“She is a mother of an autistic child, she has no criminal history, and they have all of her background information,” Stambaugh said. “I just think it’s absolutely insane.”
Lawyers said clients who received the notices also included spouses of U.S. citizens, who were actively trying to legalize their immigration status.
Rosa, a U.S. citizen in New York, said her Honduran husband was fined $5,000. She said her husband wasn’t able to leave the country after being granted voluntary departure in 2018 because she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She hopes once she explains the situation, that the fine may be waived. If not, she said, he will have to work many extra hours to pay it.
“It’s one thing after the other,” she said. “This whole process has cost us so much money.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Suzanne Goldenberg and Mary Milliken)
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