Donald Trump plans to fine migrants facing deportation $998 a day if they fail to leave the U.S., and seize their property if they don’t pay, it emerged Tuesday.
A 1996 law will be invoked to impose the penalties on migrants under deportation orders, Reuters reported, citing internal government documents and emails. Those who fail to pay the fines could have their property seized and sold.
A senior Trump official told Reuters the fines would be applied retroactively too, meaning some immigrants with long-standing deportation orders could be hit with penalties exceeding $1 million.
In a statement to Reuters, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally should use the CBP Home app to “self deport and leave the country now.”
“If they don’t, they will face the consequences,” McLaughlin said.
Scott Shuchart, a top ICE policy official under President Joe Biden, told Reuters the point of the fines “isn’t really to enforce the law, it’s to project fear in communities.”
The fines are expected to target the roughly 1.4 million immigrants who have been ordered deported by federal immigration judges but remain in the U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is being tapped to carry out the plan, though the Department of Justice’s civil asset forfeiture division has also been floated as a potential partner.
Trump, who ran on an anti-immigration platform on his way to recapture the White House, he has cracked down on immigration with executive orders targeting refugee status and birthright citizenship since the start of his second term.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have been ramped up and family detention, a practice halted under the Biden administration, resumed in March. Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan told Semafor Monday that 100,000 migrants have already been deported from the country.
The president did secure some form of Supreme Court win Monday, when the justices threw out U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s ruling that had temporarily blocked the deportation of men accused of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador under the controversial Alien Enemies Act.
According to Reuters, Trump attempted to use the 1996 law to fine nine migrants taking sanctuary in churches during his first term, with penalties reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars. After withdrawing those fines, he imposed smaller ones—around $60,000 each—on at least four of the migrants.
