A federal judge in Boston has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing civil fines of up to $1.8 million against migrants who remain in the United States after receiving final deportation orders.
US District Judge George O’Toole issued the ruling on October 5 in a class-action lawsuit brought by two migrants and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. He found that the administration’s process for imposing the penalties was unlawful and that collecting the fines could cause serious financial harm to people with limited incomes.
The fines were set at $998 a day and could be applied retroactively for as much as five years, allowing individual penalties to reach approximately $1.8 million.
The Department of Homeland Security said in July that it had issued more than 103,000 such penalties since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. The department estimated their combined value at about $84 billion.
O’Toole said the financial consequences could be severe for affected migrants, including the possibility of wage garnishment, loss of property, and government collection actions. He noted that some of the plaintiffs were already living in difficult financial circumstances.
One plaintiff identified in the court proceedings as Nancy M. was facing a fine of more than $1.8 million. According to the court record cited in the reporting, she works more than 60 hours a week in two jobs and reported significant anxiety related to the penalty.
The judge also found problems with how the government issued the penalties. He ruled that the notices did not provide sufficiently specific allegations explaining why an individual migrant’s conduct justified a fine.
The court further found that the administration had improperly changed the procedure for imposing the penalties without following the required public rulemaking process. In July 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department had introduced changes that removed a 30-day notice period and shortened the process for challenging fines.
The migrants challenging the policy also argued that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had relied on standardised forms without independently determining whether an individual’s failure to leave the country was voluntary or intentional.
Civil penalties for failing to comply with certain immigration orders were authorized by Congress in the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. However, the current administration revived large-scale use of the penalties after Trump returned to the White House.
The latest ruling does not end the broader legal dispute. The class-action case will continue while the government’s use of the fines remains blocked under the court’s order.
The decision adds to a series of legal challenges involving the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. For migrants with final deportation orders, the ruling temporarily removes the threat of the challenged civil penalties while the court considers the underlying case.