The Trump administration is proposing a $998 a day fine for illegal migrants who refuse to self-deport.
The suggested policy could also result in the confiscation of property if the migrants do not pay the fines. A similar plan was put in place in 2018 during Trump’s first term in office and is reportedly based on a law passed in 1996, according to a report by Reuters.
The policy in 2018 was far more narrowly invoked. Trump used the 1996 law to levy fines on nine migrants who had taken shelter inside churches, eventually imposing a $60,000 per migrant fine in that case.
Unsurprisingly, Biden reversed the policy once he took office in 2021.
According to the reports, Trump adviser Stephen Miller has been suggesting a re-implementation of the fines and property seizures as another tool to convince illegals to leave of their own volition.
However, there would also have to be new operations put in place to levy, collect, and track these fines, as right now there is no method in place to do so, according to a memo from Customs and Border Protection, Reuters said. If the policy is fully adopted, it could result in several hundred more paralegals added to the staff.
No time line for implementation has been set, so the policy is clearly still in the proposal stage.
The proposal, if implemented, could serve to speed the self-deportation that has already begun among migrants living illegally in the United States.
Already reports have revealed that migrants have begun hiring the coyotes that brought them into the United States to help them smuggle themselves back out of the country.
Texas-based journalist Alfredo Corchado recently told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relation that coyotes are now offering packages for migrants to go back home. He added, “They’re offering these packages where you can just go back home. Not all of them are taking it; I mean, many [are].”
Along with the pressure placed on illegals by the nationwide campaign being waged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — resulting in more than one hundred thousand illegals being detained and deported — the president has also shut down Joe Biden’s unaccountable CHNV program that gave temporary status with no vetting to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Many communities across the country have already started seeing evidence of a dwindling illegal community. After making national news with an influx of thousands of illegals from Haiti, the town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, is now seeing that community start to empty out with an as-yet small but noticeable drop in numbers, according to WESA radio.
The administration has also begun sending letters to migrants who benefited from Biden’s CHNV program informing them that their temporary status has come to an end and they are expected to return to their home nations.
Those who are not able to obtain some form of lawful status will be subject to “expedited removal,” the letter says, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.
“Any decision to revoke your employment authorization is final and no appeal should lie from the decision to revoke your employment authorization,” the letter further states.
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