The Trump administration is preparing to fine tens of thousands of migrants $18,000 each to recoup the cost of arresting, detaining, and deporting them, publishing the proposed fee increase in the Federal Register on 20 May and opening a public comment period until 22 June. The new penalty, a sharp rise from the current $5,130, would target roughly 23,670 people annually who are ordered “removed in absentia” after missing immigration court hearings, though Department of Homeland Security officials privately acknowledge that most of the debt will likely never be collected. With annual per capita household income in Mexico at only $5,000, the fine is designed less as a revenue tool and more as a sledgehammer to pressure undocumented migrants into leaving voluntarily through the administration’s CBP Home self deportation program.
The policy lands atop an already towering enforcement apparatus. Immigration judges ordered more than 300,000 people removed in absentia last year, a figure that has more than tripled since 2022, when such orders stood at 62,510. Under the proposal, those who ultimately face detention and deportation after failing to appear would be billed the full $18,000 estimated cost of their removal. The White House has paired this threat with an alternative, migrants who use the CBP Home app to self deport receive a $2,600 stipend, free travel, and forgiveness of any civil fines, reducing the taxpayer cost per departure to roughly $5,100. DHS claims that more than 100,000 people have used the app to leave and that 2.2 million have self deported since January 2025, though a Brookings Institution report released last week called those figures unreliable and estimated true removals in 2025 at only 310,000 to 315,000.
Advocacy groups and immigration attorneys say the fines are less about fiscal recovery than about instilling fear. The ACLU’s Sarah Mehta described the policy as an effort to “terrify people and make them feel they have to leave as soon as they can,” while the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin Melnick argued that effective enforcement requires a system people can actually comply with, not ever larger punishments for those who miss hearings because they never received notice or could not understand the proceedings. The numbers already issued are staggering, between 20 January 2025 and 18 March 2026, ICE levied $36 billion in civil fines against roughly 65,000 people, averaging about $553,000 per person. Some cases have reached absurd extremes, one Texas attorney reported a client hit with a $1.8 million penalty backdated to a decades old removal order she never knew existed. Meanwhile, the administration’s practice of arresting migrants at court appearances has driven attendance down, paradoxically swelling the in absentia docket that now feeds the new fine regime.
Congress ordered DHS to begin imposing these fines last year, and the administration is now delivering a punitive framework that reimagines deportation as a billable service. Whether the $18,000 threat actually drives migrants toward the CBP Home app or merely saddles them with unpayable debt while enriching collection agencies remains an open question. With the comment period running through late June and legal challenges almost certain to follow, the policy stands as the latest escalation in an enforcement strategy that treats deterrence through financial ruin as a substitute for comprehensive immigration reform.
