A Clinton-appointed Boston judge blocked Trump administration fines of up to $1.8 million aimed at illegal immigrants who ignore final deportation orders, stalling a tool Congress authorized decades ago.
U.S. District Judge George O'Toole granted preliminary relief Monday in a class-action case, stopping the Department of Homeland Security from pressing civil penalties against people who already received final orders of removal and still refused to leave.
Fox News reported that the ruling freezes a renewed push to make defiance of deportation orders carry real financial cost, after DHS said it had issued more than 103,000 fines totaling about $84 billion since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.
The targets are not people waiting in line. They are individuals under final removal orders who stayed anyway. Congress gave the government power to fine that conduct in 1996. Until Trump's first term, no administration had used it.
DHS defended the penalties as a consequence for people who refuse to leave after a final order of removal. The daily rate cited was $998. Fines could run retroactively for up to five years and climb to a maximum of $1.8 million.
As recently as July, the department said the tally had already topped 103,000 notices and roughly $84 billion since January 2025. In July 2025, DHS and the Justice Department also streamlined how those fines were assessed. They scrapped a 30-day notice period and shortened the challenge window.
Plaintiffs in the class action, filed last year by two of the thousands who received civil penalties, argued Immigration and Customs Enforcement used boilerplate forms. They said the agency did not independently decide whether a person's failure to leave was "willful" or "voluntary."
O'Toole, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, agreed the process broke federal rules. He found the administration imposed the fines unlawfully, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and skipped required public comment when it changed the streamlined process.
The judge framed the money at stake as crushing for the people who sued. He pointed to one plaintiff identified as Nancy M., fined more than $1.8 million.
O'Toole wrote:
"Nancy M. was fined over $1.8 million,"
He continued:
"She is a laborer working over 60 hours a week with two jobs, and she reports feeling serious anxiety affecting her ability to sleep, eat and live a normal life."
The judge said the broader group of plaintiffs already lived on thin margins and faced garnishment, loss of vehicles and homes, federal collection suits, and other fallout if the notices stood while the case moved forward.
O'Toole stated:
"The plaintiffs live in an economically precarious position even without the imposition of the government’s exorbitant fines,"
And:
"They face the possible garnishment of their already modest wages, loss of any vehicles and homes, federal collections lawsuits and other adverse collateral consequences,"
He added that even a later win might not unwind the damage:
"If they were ultimately successful in this suit, there is no indication that simply requiring the government to vacate their fine notices would, or even could, at that point, make the plaintiffs whole or return the circumstances to the status quo."
The ruling grants preliminary relief. It does not erase the 1996 statute. It does halt this administration's current method of applying it while the litigation continues.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 authorized civil penalties for people who ignore final removal orders. For nearly three decades, that authority mostly sat unused. Trump's first term marked the first serious attempt to put it to work. The renewed drive after January 2025 produced the six-figure and seven-figure notices now in dispute.
That sequence matters. Lawmakers created a financial consequence for staying after the legal process was finished. The executive branch finally used it at scale. A single district judge in Boston has now paused the effort on procedural grounds, notice language, willfulness findings, and rulemaking steps.
Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had urged DHS and the Justice Department to pause what they called the "improper application of certain civil penalties" to "law-abiding immigrants." The administration's position, as described in the coverage, remained straightforward: final order, refusal to leave, daily fine.
Fox News Digital reached out to DHS for comment on the ruling. The process questions O'Toole flagged, boilerplate notices and the shortened challenge path, are now the battlefield. The underlying conduct the statute targets is not ambiguous. A final order of removal means the government has already decided the person must go.
Preliminary relief is not a full trial verdict. It is an early block. O'Toole concluded the plaintiffs showed enough on the legal process, and enough risk of irreversible money harm, to stop the fines while the case proceeds.
For taxpayers and lawful residents, the practical result is immediate. People who already lost their removal cases and stayed put will not face these civil penalties under the paused system. The $998-a-day meter, the five-year lookback, and the $1.8 million cap are off the table for now in this class.
DHS had treated the fines as leverage against open defiance of removal orders. The judge treated the rollout as a rulemaking and due-process failure. Both can be true in the record: the statute exists, the numbers are large, and the Boston order freezes the current machine that produced them.
Nancy M. and the other named plaintiff were described as among thousands who received notices, and as having come to the United States to escape political violence. Their immigration status under final orders, not their life stories, is what triggered the penalty statute Congress wrote. The court focused on how the notices were built and how hard the sums would hit.
That leaves the core policy choice where it started. Congress authorized civil fines for people who will not leave after a final deportation order. The Trump administration used that authority at a volume prior administrations never attempted. A Clinton-appointed judge has blocked the present method.
When final removal orders carry no real cost, more people ignore them. Judges who strip the penalty tools Congress already approved make that outcome more likely, not less.
