Judge blocks Trump fines of up to $1.8 million on migrants in case brought by a Florida woman

A federal judge in Boston has blocked the Trump administration from imposing fines of up to $1.8 million on immigrants who did not leave the United States after receiving final deportation orders, in a class action led in part by a Florida woman who was billed about $1.82 million while she was checking in with immigration officers and pursuing a green card.

U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. ruled Monday that the Department of Homeland Security imposed the penalties unlawfully, finding the process violated the Administrative Procedure Act, according to reporting by Reuters and The Hill. The ruling halts a policy that DHS said in July had produced more than 103,000 fines totaling about $84 billion since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, and it matters in Florida, where immigrants in Miami-Dade and across the state have received some of the most widely reported fine notices.

What the judge decided

O'Toole, an appointee of President Bill Clinton who presided over the 2015 trial of the Boston Marathon bomber, found two main problems with how the fines were issued. The penalty notices ICE used did not contain specific allegations explaining why an individual's conduct warranted a fine, and the administration changed its procedures without first giving the public a chance to comment, as federal rulemaking law requires.

The judge said halting the penalty policies was necessary because collecting the fines would likely drive the plaintiffs into insolvency. "The plaintiffs live in an economically precarious position even without the imposition of the government's exorbitant fines," O'Toole wrote, according to Reuters.

He described what the plaintiffs stood to lose if collection went forward. "They face the possible garnishment of their already modest wages, loss of any vehicles and homes, federal collections lawsuits," the judge wrote, as quoted by The Hill.

The Florida plaintiff

The lawsuit was filed Nov. 20, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Justice Department. The named plaintiffs are two immigrants identified in court papers only as Maria L. of Massachusetts and Nancy M. of Florida, along with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national immigration legal advocacy group.

Nancy M. had been told to leave the country but was living under an ICE order of supervision and meeting with immigration officials every year while she tried to become a lawful permanent resident, according to coverage of the suit. She received a bill of about $1.82 million, an amount that appears to reflect the maximum daily penalty applied over the previous five years. She later obtained an immigrant visa and was admitted as a lawful permanent resident, according to those reports.

In his ruling, O'Toole noted that Nancy M. works more than 60 hours a week at two jobs and said the fine caused her serious anxiety affecting her ability to sleep, eat and live, The Hill reported. The plaintiffs were described as women who had fled political violence.

The suit was brought by a coalition that includes Public Justice, the Legal Aid Society of New York, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, known as RAICES, the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic, the Free Migration Project and the law firm Covington and Burling. When it was filed, the groups sought to represent a nationwide class of more than 21,500 people who had received the fines since January 2025, with total penalties then exceeding $6 billion. They said many of those fined were applying for immigration relief such as adjustment of status, complying with ICE supervision orders, or unable to safely return to their home countries.

How the fines worked

The penalties rest on a 1996 federal immigration law that authorizes civil fines against people who willfully fail to depart after a final removal order. Congress created the authority decades ago, but no administration used it until Trump's first term. The Biden administration rescinded those first-term fines.

In his second term, Trump revived the provision on a much larger scale. DHS began assessing fines of $998 for each day a person remained in the country after a removal order, applied retroactively for up to five years, which produces a maximum of about $1.8 million per person. In July 2025, the department adopted a streamlined process that, according to court filings described in news reports, relied on boilerplate forms rather than an individual assessment of whether a person's failure to leave was willful.

The scale of the program grew quickly. The key figures reported so far:

Only a tiny fraction of that amount, about $1.2 million, has reportedly been collected, according to published analyses of the program.

An earlier South Florida case

Florida was the setting for one of the first fine notices to draw national attention. In May 2025, CBS News Miami reported that ICE had sent a 41-year-old Honduran woman living in Miami-Dade County a notice for $1,821,350, dated May 9, giving her 30 days to pay. The woman, a mother of three U.S. citizen children who asked to be identified only as Maria, had been ordered removed in 2005 after missing an immigration court hearing about two months after she entered the country through California.

Her attorney, Michelle Sanchez, told the station she had filed in 2024 to reopen the case, arguing her client qualified for residency after more than 10 years in the country with no criminal record, and that ICE declined in March 2025. "ICE is terrorizing individuals by sending notices fining them exorbitant amounts that people sometimes don't make in their lifetime," Sanchez said at the time.

An ICE spokesperson told CBS News Miami then that people who violate immigration laws and fail to comply with removal orders "will face legal consequences." The woman told the station she could not sleep after receiving the notice. "Please have mercy I want to stay with them," she said of her children.

Why it matters in Florida

Florida has one of the largest immigrant populations in the country, and both of the fine cases that drew the most attention in the state involved long-settled residents with U.S. ties: a Miami-Dade mother of three citizen children and a Florida worker who was checking in with ICE while seeking a green card. Sanchez's description of fines larger than people earn in a lifetime captures the gap between the bills and what most recipients could ever pay, which is the same concern O'Toole cited in finding the plaintiffs faced likely insolvency.

The ruling does not cancel anyone's removal order or protect anyone from deportation. It addresses only the civil penalties and the process DHS used to impose them. Immigrants in Florida who have received fine notices should consult an immigration attorney about how the injunction applies to their case, since the scope of relief for class members may be refined as the litigation continues.

What's next

O'Toole's order is preliminary, meaning the case continues on the merits while the fine policies are on hold. The administration can ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to pause or reverse the ruling. DHS had not publicly announced whether it would appeal in coverage reviewed by The Florida Press as of Wednesday. The outcome could shape how far DHS can go in using civil fines to pressure people with removal orders to leave.