By Jack Morphet

The Trump administration has issued $6.1 billion in fines to immigrants it says have ignored deportation orders. Now it is moving to collect those penalties.

In recent weeks, the government has threatened immigrants with lawsuits, debt collectors and ruinous tax bills if they don't pay financial penalties. If the recipient self-deports, Homeland Security says the fine will be waived and they will receive a $1,000 "exit bonus."

Since President Trump's return to office, the Department of Homeland Security has issued 21,500 fines to persuade people in the backlogged immigration court system to leave the U.S. The penalties come as the department struggles to fulfill Trump's promise for the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history.

"It's driving immigrants to the point where they feel like they will lose everything if they remain in the United States, so it's better to cut their losses, pack up and self-deport," said immigration attorney LaToya McBean Pompy. "It's psychological warfare."

With some immigrants overstaying by decades and penalties of as much as $998 a day, the fines routinely levied retroactively for five years amount to $1,820,352.

"These fines are targeted toward illegal aliens who ignore removal orders and do not honor voluntary departure agreements," Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

Compounding penalties

Immigrants, many of whom are low-wage workers, have received past-due notices warning they could also be subjected to hefty interest fees, late payment penalties and administrative charges worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The government has threatened to garnish tax refunds, launch civil litigation, engage private collection agencies, alert credit-rating bureaus and curb federal and state payments owed to the fine recipient.

In a novel move, Homeland Security has also indicated it could report unpaid fines to the Internal Revenue Service as potential income, just as when a lender writes off credit-card debts, mortgage deficiencies or medical bills and the IRS treats the forgiven balance as taxable income.

"I don't think I've ever seen income from a penalty waiver," said Center for Taxpayer Rights Executive Director Nina Olson, the former national taxpayer advocate at the IRS.

Tax experts doubted that penalty relief produced the same type of financial gain as a forgiven mortgage debt, likening it instead to removing a compliance charge such as when a parking ticket is waived. However, resisting collection efforts could prove complicated.

"Defending against the tax debt takes time, effort and tax knowledge which many people in this situation may lack," said Keith Fogg, emeritus clinical professor at Harvard Law School, who previously worked at the IRS.

$1 million fine on minimum wage

Many of the fine recipients aren't in the financial position to pay them. Some immigration lawyers say that is the point of the penalties.

A restaurant worker in Brooklyn who was ordered by a judge to leave the U.S. in 1998 received the $1.8 million fine in June, his attorney, Edward Cuccia, said.

"You're going to give someone a $2 million fine who works a minimum-wage job?," Cuccia said. "Clearly they're not expecting to collect the money, they're just scaring people."

Cuccia has 10 clients with notices of fines exceeding $1 million each. It would be difficult for the government to collect fines against his clients, he said, because the amounts sought far eclipse the sum total of their assets.

Despite this, some of his clients intend to self-deport anyway because they fear the Trump administration's removal campaign.

"It's an easy choice: Leave voluntarily and receive [a] $1,000 check, or stay and wait till you are fined $1,000 [a] day, arrested and deported without a possibility to return legally," a senior DHS official said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has vowed to recoup the fines and said he was proud to work with ICE to "obtain the funds owed to Americans."

"As part of the effort to fulfill President Trump's agenda, Treasury's Debt Collection Service is actively working with ICE to secure payment for all civil fines and penalties owed by illegal aliens to the U.S. government," Bessent said on social media.

Seeking legal status

Some immigrants with removal orders later qualify for legal status in the U.S. if their circumstances change, which is why many remain in the country after being ordered to leave.

A Mexican mother of four who sells cosmetics to her neighbors in the Bronx borough of New York City was considering self-deporting out of fear the Treasury Department would repossess her house.

The woman came to the U.S. in 2000 and her husband's employer sponsored their residency soon after. A judge ordered her deportation in 2013 after she missed a mandatory immigration-court hearing her former lawyer failed to inform her of, said her current attorney, Robert Scott.

A "past due notice" dated June 30 warned that payment of her $1.8 million fine was overdue and interest was already accruing at a 5% annual rate, or roughly $250 a day. Penalty rates of 6% will be applied 91 days after the fine was issued, adding roughly a further $300 a day.

She could also be subject to administrative costs of at least 32% of the fine, or more than half a million dollars, according to invoices from Homeland Security.

Because she has been in the country for so long and has adult U.S.-citizen children, she is seeking to vacate her removal order to obtain a green card. Asked whether she would leave the U.S. to avoid the fine, the woman said: "If I am not able to pay it and there is no other solution, I may have to."

Next steps

Some immigration lawyers questioned whether paying the fines would help or hinder their clients' efforts to remain in the U.S.

"Even if she had $1.8 million and wrote that check, then what? It's not as if she's going to jump on a plane and go back to China after paying $1.8 million," attorney McBean Pompy said of her Chinese-born client who was issued the maximum fine.

"Are they going to continue to assess additional fines against her if she remains here in the United States? Where does this end?"

Write to Jack Morphet at jack.morphet@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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