Immigrants Must Now Pay to Be Deported

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more bizarre

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

WTF?

Yes, our government is now requiring immigrants to pay $18,000 to cover the costs of arresting, detaining and deporting them.

Supposedly, it is to encourage undocumented immigrants to self-deport rather than pay an exorbitant fine, saving ICE the time, effort and cost of rounding up people of color.

I know what you’re thinking. This must be a Stephen Miller idea. He’s really good at coming up with insane shit when it comes to illegal immigration. But you would be wrong. This is actually a Congressional thing. Congress ordered DHS to start charging fines last year.

Yes, Congress.

Apparently, there are already fines for shit like illegally crossing the U.S. border, for refusing to leave once ordered to do so and for not leaving after promising a judge you would. Hope you’re sitting down for this: from January 20, 2025 to March 18, 2026, DHS has issued $36 billion in fines to about 65,000 people.

I’ll do the math for you. That’s an average of about $553,000 per person. Has anyone actually paid these fines? I don’t think so. The annual per capita income in Mexico, for instance, is a measly $5,000, so who the hell can afford it? Nevertheless, the DHS is raising the fines for deportation to $18,000 from the original $5,130.

So who has to pay these fines? Immigrants who entered the United States legally but overstayed a student or tourist visa, and immigrants who entered the country under an asylum claim but were later ordered to leave.

Now here’s the fun part. Fun for ICE, anyways. Say, you’re claiming asylum and have a court date. If you show up for court, ICE will detain and deport you but if you don’t show up for court, the judge will order you deported.

So, basically you are screwed either way. Which is the whole idea.

There is a way to get around it if you self-deport. In addition to the juicy $2,600 payment you get upon self-deportation, you can also get all of your fines forgiven. I wonder if that includes the $1.8 million fine owed by one unfortunate migrant who had her fine backdated to a removal order from decades ago?

The absurdity of all of this is just incredible. Especially when you consider that most of these migrants are hardworking taxpaying people who just want a better life for their families while billionaires who live off the hardworking migrants’ labor pay no taxes.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That was sarcasm.

Trump World makes less and less sense every day. But it seems that Trump has finally gone too far with his senseless war, slush fund for his buddies and Get Out of Audits Free card. Republicans are beginning to stand up to him.

That’s nice. That’s hopeful. But way too slow.

A massive, fatal stroke would be much quicker, wouldn’t you agree?