Immigration attorney Willy Allen warned this Monday that a proposal from the Trump administration would allow immigration judges to impose fines ranging from $1,000 to $3,500 for contempt on immigrants, defense attorneys, and witnesses, in a regulation that he considers to have no legal basis and is designed to intimidate.
The proposal was published on July 30 by the Executive Office for Immigration Review of the Department of Justice and remains open for public comments for 60 days, with a deadline of September 28.
Allen was categorical in stating that immigration courts currently lack that authority. "Look, they do not have the power to impose fines. They can try to sanction lawyers by reporting them to the immigration courts or to the bar associations in each state. But the issue of fines is something they do not have the power to enforce."
The prestigious lawyer from Florida predicted that the regulation will face legal challenges, primarily due to its asymmetrical nature: "I suspect it will be contested in federal courts. Especially since the fines are not for all lawyers in general, but only for defense attorneys and for immigrants."
The exclusion of federal government lawyers—including those from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security—is precisely the most criticized point by organizations in the sector. The American Immigration Lawyers Association described the proposal as a "completely biased regulation" that protects government prosecutors while solely penalizing the defense side.
Allen also raised practical doubts about the implementation of the measure. "Who will determine which order they are obeying? And how will they be fined?"
During the program, the lawyer mentioned the case of a colleague who was imposed a fine of nearly $250,000 a week ago, partly due to the volume of asylum cases he had submitted to the court.
To illustrate the difference between the current powers and those proposed, Allen drew on a personal anecdote from about 35 years ago, when a judge fined him for an inappropriate comment directed at the prosecutor. "The judge says to me, I'm going to fine you, how much do you have in your wallet? The wallet had about 40 dollars. I open the wallet and take out 40 dollars. And he says, okay, how much do you have in your pocket? I tell him, Your Honor, we're talking about the wallet."
The episode served to underscore that state and federal judges do have that authority, but the situation was different in immigration courts. "In immigration courts, I haven't always been as controlled. So I was very happy that they couldn't fine you."
The proposal is based on Section 304 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, an authority granted by Congress three decades ago but which had never been developed through regulation. The Trump administration was already imposing fines of up to $998 per day on immigrants with final deportation orders who fail to leave the country, with the possibility of retroactive application for up to five years.
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