DHS has issued $84 billion in fines to illegal immigrants who won’t go home

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Thursday, July 23, 2026

Homeland Security has now issued fines to more than 100,000 illegal immigrants who have refused to leave the country even after being ordered out by an immigration judge.

The department can levy civil fines of $998 for each day someone has remained in defiance of a removal order. DHS said the 103,000 illegal immigrants it’s targeted already owe a cumulative $84 billion.

“Our message to illegal aliens is clear: Leave now. If you don’t you will face the consequences, including fines, arrest, and deportation,” said Lauren Bis, an assistant secretary at the department.

DHS has been trying to push illegal immigrants to self-deport, rather than wait to be arrested.

Those who accept that option can apply to the department for a $2,600 bonus payment and a free plane ticket.

Migrants can even have their existing fines erased.

Those who ignore that carrot become targets, Ms. Bis said.

Secretary Markwayne Mullin said 3 million migrants have left the country under pressure since President Trump took office.

Some were formal removals carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the majority were voluntary departures.

Only a minority of those applied for and collected the self-deportation bonus.

The fine, known officially as the “failure to depart” penalty, was set in law in 1996. At that time it was $500. The current $998 figure is adjusted for inflation.

Fines can stretch up to five years, meaning an individual migrant could be on the hook for more than $1.8 million.

As of May, DHS had issued about 65,000 fines, totaling $36 billion. That suggests that in the last two months the department has doled out nearly 40,000 new fines, totaling nearly $50 billion.

The law was largely ignored until the first Trump administration, which levied fines against illegal immigrants who took sanctuary in churches to try to avoid deportation.

Under President Biden, the fines were rescinded.

The new Trump administration has been far more aggressive, drawing condemnation from immigrant-rights supporters.

Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin and Alex Padilla said some of those being fined are currently in the process of trying to regularize their status, or have received temporary reprieves from deportation.

The senators, in letters to DHS and the Justice Department last week, called the fines “an attempt to frighten immigrants” into giving up their cases and self-deporting.

Mr. Durbin, from Illinois, and Mr. Padilla, from California, questioned whether the Trump administration was following the law. They said the fines require willful refusals to depart, and merely having been ordered deported isn’t enough to meet that bar.

“Without case specific analysis, your departments cannot properly determine whether assessing penalties for failure to comply with departure obligations is appropriate under the law,” the senators said.