Key takeaways:
Five immigrants sue DHS over $5,130 fines
Lawsuit filed in Maryland federal court
Plaintiffs represented by The Legal Aid Society, Public Justice and Brown, Goldstein & Levy
Fines challenged as unlawful retroactive penalties
A proposed class-action lawsuit filed Monday accuses the Trump administration of unlawfully assessing an “inadmissible alien apprehension fee” for over $5,000 on noncitizens as young as 14.
Five immigrants seeking permanent legal status sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Maryland federal court after being fined, despite arriving in the United States years before the law authorizing the fines, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, took effect.
The plaintiffs, three of whom live in Maryland, call it the “fine everyone policy” and say in the complaint that it’s part of the Trump administration’s “campaign to inflict maximum punishment on noncitizens in the United States.”
A spokesperson for DHS acknowledged receipt of a request for comment but did not respond. In a Facebook post cited in the complaint, DHS stated, “This fee can be issued to all aliens who illegally entered regardless of processing disposition, location of illegal entry, length of time present in the United States, or current immigration proceedings.”
One of the plaintiffs lives in Montgomery County, and two live in Prince George’s County; the other two live in Virginia and New York.
All of them were fined $5,130 at some point this year — the fee was adjusted for inflation for the current fiscal year in November 2025. They are represented by the New York-based Legal Aid Society, Public Justice in Washington, D.C., and Brown, Goldstein & Levy in Baltimore.
“Since Day 1, the Trump Administration has tried to harass and intimidate noncitizens by using financial sanctions as punishment,” Charles Moore, a senior attorney with the nonprofit Public Justice, stated in a news release.
“Our clients, like many others, are just trying to navigate the complex immigration system in this country,” Moore said. “Rather than let the process play out, the government is trying to make things as difficult as possible by saddling many families with thousands of dollars in debt. There is no justification for what the government is doing.”
Hasan Shafiqullah, immigration supervising attorney at The Legal Aid Society, added, “The ‘Fine Everyone Policy’ is another example of the Trump Administration’s brazen lawlessness.”
The plaintiffs are seeking to represent a class that they estimate in the complaint could be “hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals.” One class would comprise those who arrived before July 4, 2025, and were fined retroactively; another would include those who were fined far from the border, after they were apprehended upon entering the country.
The lawsuit does not challenge the fee as applied to those who came to the U.S. since the fees were authorized and who were apprehended and fined when they arrived.
The plaintiffs argue that DHS and two of its constituent agencies — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection — violated the Administrative Procedure Act, alleging an arbitrary and capricious agency action and an action not in accordance with the law.
President Donald Trump’s signature bill increased or imposed many fees on immigrants, some of which are facing legal challenges.
For example, asylum claims, which used to be free, now cost $100. An application for an appeal with the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals used to be $110 and now cost more than $1,000. The administration’s enforcement and detention tactics have also prompted tens of thousands of people to file petitions for habeas corpus, which can cost thousands to litigate.
Public Justice and The Legal Aid Society are representing the plaintiffs in another proposed class-action case. Two women sued DHS in Massachusetts federal court in November after allegedly receiving “ruinous” civil penalties for “failure to depart” the country. One of them was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars; the other was fined roughly $1.8 million, according to the complaint.