{"id":32840,"date":"2026-08-20T14:42:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=32840"},"modified":"2026-08-20T14:42:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:42:28","slug":"immigrant-wants-to-pay-368000-in-fines-but-broken-payment-system-wont-let-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=32840","title":{"rendered":"Immigrant Wants to Pay $368,000 in Fines, but Broken Payment System Won\u2019t Let Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When Daniel arrived<\/span> in the U.S. about two decades ago, he came on a legal tourist visa. Once here, having fled his home country in South America, he filed an asylum application. A judge, however, eventually denied his claim.<\/p>\n

Then 11 years ago, he married his partner, a U.S. citizen. Together, they had two children, who are also citizens. The couple filed a petition to grant him legal status through their marriage, but then Daniel was issued a deportation order, which presented a barrier in his case.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to comprehend how it can be so difficult<\/a> to legally stay with one\u2019s family, but Daniel, for whom The Intercept is using a pseudonym, would soon face an even more mystifying hurdle: He recently received a letter from the government saying he owes about $368,000, according to his attorney, who recounted his tale.<\/p>\n

Last year, President Donald Trump issued<\/a> an executive order using a never-before-touched law to levy fines on an immigrant for each day he \u201cwillfully fails or refuses\u201d to leave after receiving a removal order. Trump\u2019s order also increased the fine from $500 to $998 per day to, supposedly, update it for inflation.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s \u2018Hurry and pay \u2014 oh, by the way, we\u2019re not going to give you any appropriate information.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

The Trump administration quickly started issuing fines as high as $1.8 million<\/a> \u2014 the maximum penalty for the maximum five-year period, although unpaid fines can also accrue interest \u2014 to immigrants last year. As of July, more than 100,000 immigrants had received notices of fines, totaling more than $84 million, according to the government.<\/p>\n

The administration says<\/a> it will forgive the debts if immigrants leave the country.<\/p>\n

Daniel is eager to pay as much as he can, fearing the financial and immigration repercussions of not responding to the notice he received. But there\u2019s a big problem: He can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not for a lack of funds. Instead, Daniel simply doesn\u2019t have the information necessary to make a payment; the government never provided it to him. The letter he received informing him of the fines he owed had a blank field where there should have been an identification number for the online payments system. (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

Daniel and his wife tried putting his Social Security number and the alien number that tracks him in the immigration system into the website. Neither worked. His wife even tried calling to find out how to pay, only to sit on hold for over an hour and a half and then have the call disconnect.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s \u2018Hurry and pay \u2014 oh, by the way, we\u2019re not going to give you any appropriate information,\u2019\u201d said Melanie Zamenhof, a senior attorney on the New York Legal Response Team at Neighbors Link, who has been helping Daniel.<\/p>\n

Daniel\u2019s experience is not unique. Zamenhof hasn\u2019t had a single immigrant client who was able to successfully pay the fine the administration levied against them. No one at her organization has, either.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

No Way to Pay<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The letters immigrants are receiving about the fines are typically brief<\/a>. <\/p>\n

They include the date an immigrant was issued an order of removal and a checked box saying, \u201cYou willfully failed or refused to depart from the United States pursuant to the order.\u201d Based on that, the letters say, \u201cyou are subject to a civil monetary penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letters don\u2019t explain how the figures have been calculated, whether interest has been applied and at what rate, or even when the fines started being tolled or when they might stop.<\/p>\n

The letters say recipients only have 15 business days after issuance to formally contest the fines, though many received them after the period had expired.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike any bill that anyone receives,\u201d Zamenhof said, \u201cyou always want an explanation of benefits, some breakdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, the helpline at Neighbors Link started getting calls from about a dozen immigrants saying they\u2019d received letters. The callers asked the attorneys where they should go to pay what they were told they owe.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the attorneys are like, \u2018What a great question. Where do you pay it?\u2019\u201d Zamenhof said.<\/p>\n

Finding a working website to pay the fines leads to dead ends. Typically, immigration-related fees are paid to other agencies, such as the Department of Justice or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but none of those avenues work for the failure-to-leave fines.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhere do you pay it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Instead, a sheet included with the government letters offers \u201cpayment options.\u201d Those include a QR code that points to pay.gov and instructions to search for \u201cDHS Civil Penalty and Fee\u201d in a box on the website.<\/p>\n

The pay.gov website is frequently down, Zamenhof said, and when it\u2019s working, the option to pay the civil penalty is sometimes not on the dropdown menu.<\/p>\n

The government also no longer accepts cashier\u2019s checks or money orders, Zamenhof said, which means the fines can only be paid with a debit or credit card \u2014 a hurdle on its own for any immigrant who can\u2019t qualify for a U.S. bank account yet.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, to get through the payment system an immigrant must have a payor number; the information sheet says they need a \u201cpenalty tracking number.\u201d That\u2019s supposed to be on the letters they receive about their fines, but Zamenhof has seen multiple letters like Daniel\u2019s, where the field for the number is left blank.<\/p>\n

Even if someone were able to get through to a payment page, most don\u2019t have these vast sums of money at hand. Attorneys at Neighbors Link have seen amounts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars; the fines go as high as $1,820,352.<\/p>\n

A recent report<\/a> from the New York University Law School\u2019s Immigrant Rights Clinic found that none of the immigrant advocates they spoke to had clients who were able to pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re always going for the maximum amount that they think they can charge based on just the passage of time,\u201d said Hasan Shafiqullah, the supervising attorney for immigration at the Legal Aid Society.\u00a0\u201cNobody has that money laying around.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

A Willful Failure?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There doesn\u2019t appear to be any way to make a partial payment or set up a payment plan. All the while, the fines and interest keep accruing as people are unable to pay any of it off. Even if someone pays the entire amount, it\u2019s not clear that will stop more fines from accruing.<\/p>\n

The Legal Aid Society is among a coalition that sued the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> over the fines, arguing that they have not been legally assessed nor that recipients have a meaningful opportunity to contest them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not making an individualized determination about: \u2018Am I unwillful?\u2019\u201d Shafiqullah argued. \u201cThe fact that I have a removal order and I\u2019m physically present isn\u2019t enough to show that I willfully failed to depart. Y\u2019all didn\u2019t make an individual determination, there\u2019s no space on the form to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the New York University report<\/a>, 71 percent of survey respondents\u00a0had legal immigration status or protection against removal or were in the process of pursuing remedies.<\/p>\n

The immigrants who come to the Legal Aid Society often have or are seeking permission to stay in the country. Some have an order of supervision from ICE that allows them to stay and work; others are seeking legal status through visas for victims of crime or through their family members.<\/p>\n

Some of the people facing the fines have even successfully reopened their immigration cases and no longer have an order of removal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not willfully failing to depart, they\u2019re doing all the things they\u2019re entitled to do under the law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even when immigrants in these situations have appealed their fines, Shafiqullah said, they\u2019ve been denied.<\/p>\n

Failure to pay could result in the government seizing assets, including people\u2019s homes, or wage or tax refund garnishment. As of May, the administration had initiated over 50 lawsuits<\/a> against immigrants to get them to pay, in some cases seeking their tax refunds. One immigrant woman says<\/a> the Treasury Department seized her and her U.S. citizen\u2019s joint tax refund and reported her to credit bureaus.<\/p>\n

The administration is also sending the debts<\/a> to collections agencies, which are adding hundreds of thousands on to the original amounts in administrative fees.<\/p>\n

Not paying could also harm potential pathways to legal immigration status: Judges can deem unpaid debt to the government a negative factor \u2014 potentially leading green card applicants to be labeled as \u201cpublic charges<\/a>,\u201d blocking them.<\/p>\n

Zamenhof, the lawyer from Neighbors Link, has been urging clients to document their attempts to pay their fines \u2014 recording how many phone calls they made and taking screenshots of the faulty website portal being down or broken \u2014 in case their debt is brought before a judge.<\/p>\n

Daniel and his wife are ready to pay a quarter of what the government says he owes and find a way to pay down the rest, though they would still like to understand a breakdown of how the charges and interest were calculated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very eager to comply with this, even though they dispute and don\u2019t agree with the total amount,\u201d Zamenhof said.<\/p>\n