Trump’s $84 Billion Fine Crackdown May Have Moved Faster Than the Law

Two words buried inside federal immigration law have now jammed one of President Donald Trump’s biggest enforcement tools: “willfully” and “voluntarily.” A Massachusetts federal judge stayed the Trump administration’s streamlined immigration-fine system after concluding the government likely moved too fast to impose penalties without making the individualized findings Congress requires.

The scale explains why this is more than another courtroom skirmish. The DHS said in July that it had issued more than 103,000 civil fines totaling about $84 billion, including penalties of $998 per day for illegal aliens who remain after final removal orders. Some assessments reached about $1.8 million after the government applied daily penalties retroactively for years.

From the DHS:

“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS is working faster than ever before to remove criminal illegal aliens from our country,” said Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “Our message to illegal aliens is clear: LEAVE NOW. If you don’t you will face the consequences, including fines, arrest, and deportation. Illegal aliens have a choice: They can use the CBP Home app and receive a free flight home and $2,600, or be fined, arrested, and deported.”
In June of 2025, DHS and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a streamlined process for fining illegal aliens. This included eliminating a 30-day notice period announcing the intent to issue a fine, authorizing DHS immigration officers to send fines to illegal aliens by regular mail, and shortening the process that applies if illegal aliens contest their fines.

Congress created the underlying penalty authority in 1996. One statute permits fines when someone granted voluntary departure voluntarily fails to leave, while another allows daily penalties when someone under a final removal order willfully fails or refuses to leave, obtain needed travel documents, or present for removal.

Judge George O’Toole, a Bill Clinton appointee, didn’t hold that Congress lacked the power to impose those penalties. He found the challengers were likely to succeed because the administration’s new process effectively read “voluntarily” and “willfully” out of the statutes.

From Reuters:

He said the administration imposed the fines unlawfully. Halting the penalty-related policies was necessary, O'Toole said, because collecting the fines 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," he wrote.
DHS had no immediate comment.
As recently as July, the department said it had issued more than 103,000 fines to migrants amounting to about $84 billion in total since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year.

The problem was the machinery DHS and DOJ built in 2025 to do this “quickly and at scale.” The interim final rule replaced notices of intent to fine with final penalty decisions, cut the response period from 30 days to 15, removed an in-person interview option, shifted appeals, and allowed regular mail rather than personal or certified service.

Speed was the objective, and the government said as much. The rule explained that the old system wasn’t designed for the number of people who remained after removal or voluntary-departure orders and that the new one would let DHS impose more penalties faster.

O’Toole found the government’s forms apparently didn’t explain why a particular person’s conduct was willful or voluntary. The DHS argued that officials made individual assessments, but the judge said they didn’t point to examples showing they examined personal circumstances and decided whether a failure to leave met those statutory standards.

One plaintiff was assessed roughly $1.82 million even though she remained in the country under an ICE order or supervision and was later admitted as a lawful permanent resident. Whatever anyone thinks about the administration’s enforcement goals, facts like those hand a judge an easy question to ask: Did the government prove the conduct Congress said it had to prove?

The second problem was administrative law. The DHS and DOJ put the interim rule into effect immediately, without the usual notice-and-comment process. O’Toole rejected the government’s arguments that foreign-affairs and procedural-rule exceptions excused that step and found the challengers likely to succeed on that claim, too.

The important part is what the ruling doesn’t do. O’Toole wrote that staying the new rule wouldn’t stop the government from imposing immigration fines or pursuing Trump’s broader enforcement agenda. It would require officials to use the earlier procedures while this case continues.

Trump’s instinct was right: Congress put these penalties in the law, and decades of neglect didn’t erase them. His administration’s mistake may have been trying to turn a little-used statute into an $84 billion enforcement program before building a record sturdy enough to carry the weight. The case can continue, and the administration can appeal, revise the process, or return to the earlier procedures while fighting over the merits.

For an administration fighting constantly over the limits of executive power, this ruling offers a useful lesson. Enforce the law hard, but enforce the version Congress actually wrote, including the two inconvenient words sitting in the middle of it.

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