Judge blocks Trump administration move to fine migrants

A federal judge in Boston on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s effort to fine migrants up to $1.8 million for failing to leave the U.S. after receiving their final order to deport.

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole ruled that the administration unlawfully imposed the fines and wrote that migrants in the “economically precarious position” of responding to fines could be pushed into “insolvency.”

“They face the possible garnishment of their already modest wages, loss of any vehicles and homes, federal collections lawsuits and other adverse collateral consequences,” O’Toole wrote. “If they were ultimately successful in this suit, there is no indication that simply requiring the government to vacate their fine notices would –– or even could, at that point –– make the plaintiffs whole or return the circumstances to the status quo.”

The Hill has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment.

The Clinton-appointed judge, who presided over the 2015 trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, used examples of the migrant women who sued the DHS and Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and described how they work for meager salaries and fled to the U.S. to escape the threat of political violence.

“Nancy M. was fined over $1.8 million,” O’Toole wrote, referring to one of the plaintiffs. “She is a laborer working over 60 hours a week with two jobs, and she reports feeling serious anxiety affecting her ability to sleep, eat and live a normal life.”

O’Toole also wrote that the fines violated the Administrative Procedure Act for not providing specific allegations explaining why any migrant’s conduct warranted a penalty.

The DHS stated as recently as July 23 that it had issued more than $84 billion in civil fines to undocumented immigrants who chose not to leave the U.S. since the start of President Trump’s second term.

It was not until Trump’s first term that a presidential administration sought to impose monetary penalties under the Immigration and Nationality Act, based on what O’Toole called “a long-ignored provision … revived by the present executive administration.”

Deporting undocumented migrants in the U.S. has been a longstanding key issue for the president since launching his first presidential campaign in 2015. He has rolled out a more aggressive deportation agenda going into his second term, one that has drawn widespread condemnation from Democrats and protests on the streets of several American cities.

Lawmakers attempted to push back on the administration’s use of fines via the Immigration and Nationality Act, with Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in July calling on DHS and the Department of Justice to pause the “improper application of certain civil penalties” in the law to “law-abiding immigrants.”