A federal judge in Boston on Sept. 30 put on hold a 2025 rule that immigration authorities used to fine people for not leaving the country after removal or voluntary departure orders, along with every fine issued under it. U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. found that the challengers, including a Massachusetts nail technician and a Florida laborer fined more than $1.8 million, are likely to show the government imposed the fines without deciding whether each person's failure to leave was willful or voluntary, as the law requires.
The stay keeps the rule and the fines from being enforced while the lawsuit goes on, but it is not a final decision on whether the rule is lawful. O'Toole's opinion and a separate order stay the rule "and all fines issued thereunder" "pending further Order of this Court." He acted under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act, which lets a court preserve "status or rights" while it reviews an agency action. The plaintiffs' lawyers announced the ruling Oct. 6.
The fines come from a 1996 law. After inflation adjustments, it allows up to $998 a day when a person under a final removal order "willfully" fails to leave, and $1,992 to $9,970 when a person "voluntarily" fails to leave under a voluntary departure order. The opinion says the penalties went largely unenforced until President Donald Trump's first term and that he revived them with a Jan. 20, 2025, executive order.
On June 27, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department issued an interim final rule, without first taking public comment, that replaced notices of intent to fine with final penalty decisions sent by regular mail, cut the time to respond from 30 days to 15 and dropped the in-person interview. The two women, identified in court papers as Maria L. and Nancy M., sued in November 2025 with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit, in a proposed class action.
O'Toole wrote that the rule and what the plaintiffs call ICE's "Blanket Fine Policy" likely violate the law because they effectively read the words "willfully" and "voluntarily" out of it. "Indeed, initiating nearly 10,000 notices for failure-to-depart civil monetary penalties between March and June 2025 belies an argument that each of those circumstances were individually evaluated for willfulness or voluntariness," he wrote. In the Sept. 30 opinion, a footnote added that "it appears that the defendants have now assessed over 65,000 penalties amounting to roughly $36 billion."
Nancy M. was fined $1.82 million while she was in the country under an order of supervision, and she has since been admitted as a lawful permanent resident, the opinion says. O'Toole also found the challengers likely to show the agencies should have taken public comment before the rule took effect, and he wrote that its cut to a 15-day appeal window "seems to be essentially punitive."
According to the opinion, the government argued that it makes individual assessments in each case, that the rule fell under the foreign affairs and procedural exceptions to the public-comment requirement, and that the fines could be set aside later if the challengers win. The government did not dispute that it skipped public comment, the opinion says. O'Toole rejected those arguments at this stage, writing that the government did not "point to any actual examples" in which it found that a person's failure to leave was not willful or voluntary.
The stay does not resolve the challengers' claims under the Fifth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments, and the court has not ruled on their request to certify a class. O'Toole wrote that the stay does not stop the government from imposing fines under the procedures that applied before the rule.
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