Trump Administration Fining Illegals $500,000 for Refusing to Leave

The Trump administration is sending notices of fines up to $500,000 to illegal aliens who failed to leave the country as agreed.

“It is the intention of ICE to order you pay a fine in the amount of $497,777,” wrote U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Lisa Hoechst in a letter to Edith Espinal Moreno dated June 25, according to a National Public Radio (NPR) report.

The report states that the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was enacted in 1952, gives ICE officers the legal right to impose “civil fines on aliens who have been ordered removed or granted voluntary departure and fail to depart the United States.”

ICE said in a recent statement that it is “committed to using various enforcement methods – including arrest; detention; technological monitoring; and financial penalties – to enforce U.S. immigration law and maintain the integrity of legal orders issued by judges.”

The report comes after President Trump announced June 22 that he would delay the mass deportations previously planned to be carried out by ICE.

He wrote:

At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!

Breitbart News reported that the raids were based on “cases filed in 10 immigration court locations — Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco.” Two-thousand of those families received letters from ICE in February, asking them to comply with orders by reporting to the agency’s offices.

However, Trump’s announcement drew criticism from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) later that week when he said illegal aliens who have received an order from ICE should be removed from the country.

“These are people who have claimed asylum in our country; they’ve had their day in court; they’ve had their claims rejected, and now they face a valid and final order of removal,” Cotton said. “If we can’t deport people like that, who can we deport? That’s why the Democrats’ position ultimately comes back to, in essence, open borders.”