South Florida Federal Judge Enters $668,390 Penalty Against Honduran Woman Who Ignored Deportation Order

A federal judge in South Florida has entered a civil judgment of $668,390.95 against a Honduran woman who stayed in the United States for more than three years after an immigration judge ordered her removed under a long-dormant law that the Trump administration has turned into a central part of its immigration enforcement push.

U.S. District Judge Ed Artau of the Southern District of Florida granted the government's motion for a default judgment after the woman, identified in news coverage by the initials K.E.V.D., did not respond to the federal lawsuit, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, which announced the judgment on Oct. 21. Artau found that she willfully failed to comply with a final order of removal.

The case is drawing close attention in South Florida's immigrant communities, particularly among Cubans living under Form I-220A release documents and others with pending or final removal orders, because it shows the government is willing to take these fines to federal court and turn them into enforceable judgments.

How the case unfolded

According to court records cited in coverage of the case, an immigration judge ordered the woman removed on July 22, 2022, and that order became final on Aug. 23, 2022. She did not leave the country. The government then filed a civil suit in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, docketed as case 26-cv-80141, to collect the penalty.

The woman never answered the complaint. A default judgment means the court ruled for the government because the defendant did not contest the case, not because the claims were litigated at trial. The amount reflects the balance of a daily civil fine plus statutory interest calculated through Feb. 6, according to reports on the judgment.

Because it is now a federal court judgment, the government can pursue collection tools such as wage garnishment, property liens and seizure of tax refunds, CubaHeadlines reported.

The law behind the penalty

The fine comes from Section 274D of the Immigration and Nationality Act, codified at 8 U.S.C. 1324d. It says a noncitizen who is subject to a final order of removal and willfully fails or refuses to depart, or who obstructs their own removal, must pay a civil penalty for each day the violation continues.

The statute originally set the penalty at $500 a day. With federal inflation adjustments, the current maximum is $998 per day, and the judgment against the Honduran woman was calculated at that rate, according to reports on the case.

The provision was added to immigration law in the 1990s but for decades was rarely enforced. That changed in 2025, when the Trump administration announced it would penalize people living in the country illegally under the law, CBS News reported. In May 2025, CBS reported that ICE had sent a 41-year-old Honduran mother of three living in Florida a notice fining her $1,821,350, calculated at $500 a day, for remaining in the country after a 2005 removal order. Her attorney said she planned to contest it. An ICE spokesperson told CBS that the best option is to comply with the law and leave the United States, and the Department of Homeland Security urged people to self-deport using the CBP Home app.

A national program under legal challenge

The administration has used the law at enormous scale. DHS said in July that it had issued more than 103,000 such fines totaling about $84 billion since President Donald Trump returned to office, Reuters reported. Because the government applied the penalties retroactively for up to five years, individual fines could reach roughly $1.8 million.

That program is now partly frozen. In a ruling reported in early October, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. in Boston stayed the ICE rule that streamlined the process for issuing the fines, while a class action challenging it proceeds. O'Toole found the fines likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the forms ICE used did not lay out specific allegations about why an individual's conduct warranted a penalty, and because the change required public notice and comment that the government did not provide, according to coverage of the decision.

The Boston order does not strip the federal government of its underlying authority to fine people who willfully refuse to leave after a final removal order. The South Florida judgment shows a separate path: rather than relying solely on administrative notices, the government sued in federal court and won a judgment from a judge.

The judge

Artau joined the federal bench in September 2025 after President Trump nominated him to the seat vacated by Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. The Senate confirmed him 50-43. Before that, he served on Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal from 2020 to 2025 and as a circuit judge in Palm Beach County from 2014 to 2020, and he was previously general counsel of the South Florida Water Management District. The son of Cuban American parents, he sits in a district that includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and the Florida Keys.

What it means for Cubans with I-220A and others in Florida

Spanish-language outlets in Miami framed the ruling as a warning for Cubans who hold Form I-220A, an order of release on recognizance that tens of thousands of Cuban migrants received after crossing the border in recent years. But the I-220A is a release document, not a removal order, and the judgment does not by itself change anything for people who only hold one, Rio Times and other outlets noted.

The risk applies to people with a final order of removal. That includes I-220A holders whose asylum claims are denied or who are ordered removed in absentia after missing a hearing, as well as Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Haitians and others across Florida whose cases have ended in removal orders. The lesson for families, Rio Times noted, is to answer every court and ICE notice; the woman in this case lost by default after never responding to the lawsuit.

Separately, Cubans with I-220A documents are pressing their own legal fight in Miami. In September, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra denied the government's motion to dismiss a lawsuit, Bello-Rubio v. DHS, that seeks to change how those documents are treated for purposes of the Cuban Adjustment Act, according to Telemundo 51. Meanwhile, Cuban migrants with I-220A documents have been detained at routine ICE check-ins in South Florida, including in Miramar, according to reports.

What's next

The government can now begin collecting on the judgment. The woman could ask the court to set aside the default, though she would need to show good cause. In Boston, the class action against ICE's fines rule continues, and its outcome will determine whether the agency can resume issuing administrative penalties at the pace it set this year.