US Judge Blocks Trump Policy of Fining Migrants up to $1.8 Million

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US District Judge George O’Toole in Boston issued the ruling, opens new tab ‌in a class-action lawsuit filed last year by two of the thousands of migrants who have been assessed civil penalties by the Department of Homeland Security.

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.

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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.

While Congress authorized civil penalties under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, no administration sought to impose them ​until Trump’s first term.

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In July 2025, DHS and the US Department of Justice implemented a new process they said would streamline the assessment of fines by eliminating a 30-day notice period and shortening the process for challenging penalties.

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