Illegal immigration and financial incentives in Trump’s America. By Wall Street Apes.
More than 100,000 illegals have been mailed huge fines by the Trump Administration for being in America illegally
“A Michigan immigrant recently opened his mailbox and learned the federal government was fining him $579,838. He’s one of more than a hundred thousand people who’s gotten one of these new fines under the Trump administration”
The goal of issuing these fines is to encourage self deportation or face financial ruin
The civil penalties are being issued against people who have deportation orders, but remained in the United States
“They’ve been legal since 1996, but they were rarely used until President Donald Trump took office again. Under the law, the federal government can charge someone $998 dollars for every day they stayed in the country after an immigration judge ordered them removed. They max out at $1.8 million dollars”
The federal government says if someone leaves on their own, the fines will be erased. In addition to having their fines waived they will also get a free flight and a $2,600 check as an exit bonus.
If you’re an illegal this is your sign to self deport
If the person accumulates these fines and doesn’t self deport. When they’re caught by ICE if they ever went to come back into America these civil penalties will need to be paid. Meaning it’ll be basically impossible to pay these off and come back.
Why doesn’t ICE just arrest them? Because it’s cheaper and easier to just fine them into leaving. From ChatGPT:
ICE can generally arrest these people. A final removal order gives DHS the authority to apprehend and remove them; immigration judges decide removability, while DHS/ICE handles actual apprehension and detention.
So why fine them instead?
The main reason is that knowing someone has a removal order is much easier than physically finding and arresting them. There are about 1.4 million people with final removal orders, scattered across the country. ICE has finite officers, detention beds, transport capacity and diplomatic/removal logistics. A fine can be generated administratively for thousands of people without sending teams to thousands of houses.
There is also an important practical constraint: ICE can’t simply break into someone’s home because it has an immigration warrant — which is administrative, not a judicial search warrants. So ICE may know exactly who somebody is and approximately where they live, yet still need to encounter them at work, in public, at a courthouse, during a traffic/arrest handover, etc.
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