The federal government revived a policy that imposes fines on those ordered deported who fail to leave.
The Trump administration is suing an illegal immigrant to collect close to $1 million in fines for remaining in the country after a deportation order was issued against her.
The federal government alleges that Marta Alicia Ramirez Veliz of Chesterfield County, Virginia, failed to leave the United States after an appeals board ruled against her in 2022. The government said that as of April 2025, Veliz owed $941,114 in fines plus interest.
Veliz is being sued under a federal law that has been on the books since 1996 that allows civil penalties for illegal immigrants who deliberately fail to leave the country as ordered. In President Donald Trump’s first term, the federal government began assessing fines under the long-unenforced law but did not file lawsuits to collect them. President Joe Biden’s administration stopped assessing fines altogether.
The Trump administration revived the fine policy after the president issued Executive Order 14159 in January 2025, which authorized immigration officials to reinstitute the practice of assessing financial penalties under the law. In June 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued new regulations making it easier to issue fines.
DHS said that as of June 2025 it had sent more than 9,000 fine notices to illegal immigrants for a total of nearly $3 billion.
The legal complaint filed against Veliz on Jan. 23 in federal district court in Richmond, Virginia, states the government is suing “to collect a civil penalty imposed by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Veliz for willfully failing or refusing to leave the United States pursuant to a final order of removal.”
An immigration judge issued a removal order against Veliz in July 2019, which became final after the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed her appeal in September 2022. The civil penalty for remaining in the United States after a removal order has become final is $998 for each day the person subject to the order remains in the country, according to the complaint.
The Trump administration encourages illegal immigrants to “self-deport,” meaning they voluntarily leave the United States on their own.
