The Department of Homeland Security has hit roughly 103,000 illegal immigrants with civil fines totaling nearly $84 billion for ignoring deportation orders, a number that has more than doubled since May as the Trump administration turns financial pressure into a deportation tool of its own.
DHS has issued 103,000 civil fine notices worth approximately $84 billion to noncitizens who defied final removal orders, according to figures reported by Fox News and the New York Post. About $1.2 billion of that has actually been collected as of July 2026. The gap between what has been billed and what has been paid is the story here, and it says as much about the scale of the crackdown as the headline number does.
The fines are not new invention. They come from 8 U.S.C. 1324d, a provision written into the 1996 immigration law that sat almost entirely unused for two decades. The statute allows the government to charge up to $998 a day, adjusted for inflation from an original $500 cap, against anyone who fails to leave the country after a final deportation order. Trump's first term tested the law in 2018 against nine people. This time DHS is applying it retroactively, reaching back as far as five years and compounding daily penalties into six and seven figure bills. A Justice Department collection suit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in January sought $941,114 from a single defendant, calculated at $998 a day across 943 days. Other individual notices have topped $1.8 million.
Two months ago the number stood at 65,000 notices totaling $36 billion, per figures cited in a Senate letter and reporting from the Marshall Project. It has since grown to 103,000 notices and $84 billion, a jump that shows DHS is not slowing the program down, it is accelerating it. Recipients get a narrow window, roughly two to four weeks depending on the notice, to contest the fine in writing under oath. Those who do not pay face Justice Department lawsuits seeking wage garnishment and liens on property, which is how the $941,114 Virginia case and roughly 50 similar suits filed since last September ended up in federal court.
DHS has paired the fines with a carrot. Immigrants who leave voluntarily through the CBP Home app get a free flight, a $2,600 exit bonus, and automatic forgiveness of any fines already assessed against them. The department has credited that combination with pushing self-deportations past 2 million since January 2025, with voluntary departure agreements up sevenfold compared to the same period under President Biden. Immigration attorneys quoted by the Marshall Project dispute how DHS is counting those numbers, arguing the figures blend genuine self-deportations with removals the government would have carried out anyway. DHS did not name an official when it confirmed the $84 billion figure to Fox News.
Democrats and a Class Action Push Back
Senators Alex Padilla and Dick Durbin sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding the department halt the fines, arguing they are landing on immigrants with pending green card applications, DACA recipients, and domestic violence survivors rather than the people who defied final orders outright. The senators gave DHS and the Justice Department until July 31 to answer detailed questions about the program's legal basis, a deadline that has not yet arrived.
A class action filed in federal court in Massachusetts in November, brought by Public Justice and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center on behalf of more than 21,500 fined individuals, argues the fines violate due process protections and the Eighth Amendment's ban on excessive fines. "If the Administration is going to impose these fines that no other President has ever pursued, it at least has to follow the law," said Charles Moore, an attorney with Public Justice. Legal Aid Society attorney Hasan Shafiqullah told reporters the government is threatening to seize wages, cars, and homes over the debts.
The Massachusetts case and the Senate letter both land in the coming weeks, and either could force DHS to explain how it decides who gets fined and why collection has captured barely one and a half percent of what has been billed. Until then, the number keeps climbing, and so does the pressure on anyone still weighing whether to leave on DHS's terms or wait for a bill.
Also read: Schmitt demands feds revoke citizenship papers wrongly given to diplomats' kids • Trump overrules DHS pause, orders ICE to resume traffic stops • Rubio strips legal status of child rapist Walz pardoned, ICE deports him
