A Southern California woman says the Department of Homeland Security fined her more than $1.8 million, accumulating each day she’s been in the U.S. without legal status, despite her now 13-year effort to become a legal permanent resident.
The woman, who asked that NBC 7 not identify her out of fear for her safety, said she received a letter informing her of the fine in the mail on Friday.
“It was a shock,” she said. “When I started reading and I see the amount – $1,820,000 – it was kind of insane.”
She said she came to the U.S. from Mexico decades ago, when she was around 13 years old. She is undocumented and a judge issued her an order of voluntary departure – requiring her to leave the U.S. – in 2003. But she said she didn’t know about that order for a decade, until immigration agents came to find her in 2013, at which point she said she began the process to adjust her status.
“Since then I’ve been fighting my case,” she said. “I’ve been fighting for this too many years, to do the right thing.”
“No criminal record, no issues,” her immigration attorney William Menard said of her case. “She’s just been trying to get this fixed for a long time.”
Menard said the woman’s father and three adult children are all U.S. citizens and she’s in the process of applying for her green card, petitioning through her family.
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In June, DHS announced an update to its policies, making it easier to fine people who have been ordered deported, and to increase the amount of the fine: up to $998 per day, for each day in the U.S. past that order.
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Menard said his client’s original voluntary departure order from 2003 set a maximum fine at $5,000. DHS has since granted her permission to remain in the U.S. as her case makes its way through the backlogged immigration system, he added, noting that she has been checking in with ICE each year as she waits.
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