California Sen. Alex Padilla and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin urging them to end the improper application of rarely-imposed immigration fines to intimidate law-abiding immigrants.

The Trump administration is fining them up to $1.8 million in certain civil penalties in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), without any explanation for why the fines have been assessed. The immigrants include individuals with legal authorization to be in the country, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, those seeking a green card and survivors of domestic violence or trafficking with pending applications for immigration status. 

The INA authorizes civil monetary penalties for certain violations of immigration law. The penalties have rarely been applied. Since the introduction of the civil penalties in 1996, only Trump has ever sought to impose civil penalties on noncitizens under these provisions.

“In assessing these fines, your departments appear to have abandoned critical safeguards that have long prevented law-abiding immigrants from being improperly targeted with unreasonable penalties,” wrote Padilla, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary’s Immigration Subcommittee, and Durbin, Democratic Whip and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Last year, President [Donald] Trump issued a series of executive orders implementing his mass deportation campaign, through which he directed federal agencies to use these civil penalties to achieve ‘the garnishment of wages and the confiscation of savings and personal property, including homes and vehicles,’” they wrote. “[This] administration is quietly changing federal policies to eliminate procedural safeguards that might have prevented … these penalties.”

DHS made a form change that allowed for penalty issuance without any individualized explanation for the basis for a fine. DHS and the Department of Justice issued an interim final rule (IFR), which codifies many of these changes and permits the issuance of penalties based on a finding that an individual has a final order of removal or has agreed to voluntary departure.

“These changes raise serious legal concerns,” continued the senators. “They were made without advance notice to the public, leaving many noncitizens who had been complying with the law unsure of the basis under which these fees could be assessed and unsure of how to challenge them. An individualized determination is necessary to provide adequate notice of the basis for a violation and a meaningful way to challenge the penalties. In addition, the mere existence of a removal order or voluntary departure agreement … is not sufficient to establish willful or voluntary failure to comply with departure obligations, as is required under the statute.

“As of May, the federal government had issued more than 65,000 fines … seeking more than $36 billion in total,” they wrote. “However, as with the rest of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies, this policy does not appear intended to target the ‘worst of the worst,’ but rather to coerce law-abiding immigrants to leave the United States.”

In the letter, the senators request responses to a number of questions no later than July 31, 2026.