A Boston federal judge blocked the Trump administration from fining migrants up to $1.8 million for ignoring final deportation orders, stalling a revived tool meant to force compliance.
U.S. District Judge George O'Toole issued the ruling Monday, finding the fines were unlawfully imposed and violated the Administrative Procedure Act because notices lacked specific allegations explaining why any individual's conduct warranted a penalty. The order delivers preliminary relief in a suit brought by migrant women against the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
The Hill reported the decision halts an effort targeting people who received final orders to leave the United States yet remained. One plaintiff, identified as Nancy M., was hit with a fine exceeding $1.8 million.
O'Toole, a Clinton appointee who once presided over the 2015 trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wrote that the migrants sit in an economically precarious position. He warned the penalties risk pushing them into insolvency.
"They face the possible garnishment of their already modest wages, loss of any vehicles and homes, federal collections lawsuits and other adverse collateral consequences,"
the judge stated. He added there was no sign that later vacating the notices would restore the plaintiffs to their prior circumstances if they ultimately prevailed.
Fox News reported the administration had used a streamlined process to impose $998-per-day fines retroactively for up to five years. DHS said as recently as July 23 that it had issued more than $84 billion in civil fines to illegal immigrants who chose not to leave since the start of Trump's second term, covering over 103,000 cases.
The provision sits in the Immigration and Nationality Act. O'Toole described it as a long-ignored authority revived by the current administration. Trump first sought monetary penalties under the same statute during his initial term, consistent with the deportation focus that has defined his campaigns since 2015.
Nancy M. works more than 60 hours a week across two jobs as a laborer. The judge noted she reported serious anxiety that disrupted her sleep, eating, and ordinary life after the multimillion-dollar notice arrived.
"Nancy M. was fined over $1.8 million,"
O'Toole wrote while detailing the personal stakes for the named plaintiff and others in the class action.
Similar fights over executive power and judicial pushback have marked other fronts, including moments when Trump faulted certain justices for rulings that broke from administration priorities.
In July, Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) urged DHS and the Justice Department to halt what they called the improper application of certain civil penalties to "law-abiding immigrants." Their letter framed the targets as people following the rules even as final removal orders remained outstanding.
The administration cast the fines as a straightforward consequence for those who received due process, lost their cases, and still refused to depart. DHS figures show the scale of noncompliance the policy aimed to address. The Hill reached out to the department for fresh comment after the ruling; no new response appeared in the initial coverage.
O'Toole's opinion stressed the immediate harm from collection efforts. He concluded that simply requiring the government to withdraw the notices later would not undo wage garnishment, property loss, or related damage already set in motion.
"If they were ultimately successful in this suit, there is no indication that simply requiring the government to vacate their fine notices would, or even could, at that point, make the plaintiffs whole or return the circumstances to the status quo."
That language locked in the preliminary block while the broader case proceeds.
Trump has faced repeated tests of how far courts will let enforcement tools run, much as Senate debates have tested limits on other presidential authorities.
A final deportation order is not a suggestion. It follows immigration court proceedings. The people facing these fines had reached the end of that process and stayed anyway. The revived INA penalties sought to attach real financial cost to that choice rather than relying solely on physical removal capacity.
Critics on the left treated the notices as excessive. Supporters of stricter enforcement saw them as one more lawful lever after years of catch-and-release patterns and sanctuary resistance. Protests against the wider deportation agenda have already filled streets in several American cities.
The ruling leaves the underlying statute intact but stops the current notice-and-collection practice for the plaintiffs and the certified class. How widely the injunction sweeps beyond those parties remains tied to the precise order text, which was not fully reproduced in early accounts.
Legal and political collisions around Trump decisions continue on multiple tracks, from military justice calls to fights over reporting accuracy when damaging stories surface.
Taxpayers finance the costs of prolonged illegal presence, repeated hearings, and the enforcement backlog that grows whenever final orders go unheeded. A fine structure calibrated to daily noncompliance was one attempt to change the incentive math. A single district judge has now put that attempt on hold.
When courts strip practical consequences from ignored removal orders, the border message travels fast: the paperwork may say leave, yet the price for staying can still be deferred.
