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.
DHS said last year that civil fines or penalties for illegal immigrants would be forgiven for those who self-deport through the CPB Home App, which is available for smartphones.
“By self-deporting, illegal aliens take control of their departure and may preserve the opportunity to come back to the U.S. the right and legal way in the future,” the agency said in a statement.
The government served a notice of intention to fine on Veliz in April 2025, but she did not appeal the notice, and a final order imposing the penalty took effect in June 2025, the complaint said.
The complaint does not disclose personally identifying information for Veliz such as nationality, age, or address. Veliz does not appear to have legal representation.
Efforts by The Epoch Times to contact her were unsuccessful.
A group called Public Justice filed a proposed class action lawsuit in November 2025 challenging the imposition of the fines on illegal immigrants who fail to leave the country after being ordered to do so.
In a class action, a plaintiff sues on behalf of a larger group of people who claim to have suffered the same injury at the hands of a defendant. Federal and state rules govern whether a class action gets certified and is allowed to proceed.
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Massachusetts.
The plaintiffs are “hardworking individuals facing significant personal hardships who, like millions in this country, have been navigating the U.S. immigration system.” ICE has fined them “exorbitantly,” sending notices advising them they owe large fines that run from hundreds of thousands of dollars to approximately $1.8 million, the legal complaint said.
The large fines were imposed without the government considering whether they were appropriate in an individual case, and under regulations that were issued without the legally required public input, the complaint said.
The complaint said the fines will drive the plaintiffs and thousands of other people residing in the United States into “ruinous debt, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The Administrative Procedure Act is a 1946 federal statute that governs administrative law procedures for federal executive departments and independent agencies. The late Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.) said the law was “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the federal government.”
On Jan. 26, the Veliz lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Roderick C. Young.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Jan. 29, 2026, in The Epoch Times.