Immigration Civil Fines in Texas: What the Final Rule Taking Effect October 14, 2026 Does, and What a Federal Court Order Already Did to It

What Changed, and When

On October 14, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, acting through the Executive Office for Immigration Review, published a final rule titled Imposition and Collection of Civil Penalties for Certain Immigration-Related Violations. It is document 2026-21024, published at 91 FR 65390, under RIN 1125-AB36 and RIN 1653-AA96, with ICE Docket No. ICEB-2025-0034. The rule states: “The effective date of this final rule is October 14, 2026.”

The rule finalizes the interim final rule the Departments issued on June 27, 2025, published at 90 FR 27439. According to the final rule, the Departments received 28 public comment submissions and adopted the interim rule with one change. It creates a new 8 CFR part 281 and amends 8 CFR parts 1003 and 1280.

The penalty amounts are not new. They are set by statute and adjusted for inflation, and the rule is about the procedure for assessing and collecting them. The three penalties it covers are:

• Unlawful entry or attempted entry — section 275(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. 1325(b)(1): $100 to $500 per entry or attempted entry.
• Failure to depart within a voluntary departure period — section 240B(d)(1)(A), 8 U.S.C. 1229c(d)(1)(A): an amount set by an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals, reported after inflation adjustment as $1,992 to $9,970, with a general default of $3,000.
• Willful failure to depart after a final removal order — section 274D(a)(1), 8 U.S.C. 1324d(a)(1): up to $998 for each day the person willfully fails to comply with the order. Because it accrues daily, the Departments acknowledge this penalty can run past $1 million over a long period.

What the rule changes is the process, and the process is now faster and shorter. As the final rule and independent summaries of it describe:

• The Notice of Intent to Fine is eliminated. A DHS immigration officer may issue a written decision and order directly. It must state the statutory basis, the type and amount of the penalty, and the reasons, and it must advise the person of appeal rights and of the right to counsel at no expense to the Government.
• The appeal deadline is 15 business days from service, by filing a notice of appeal with DHS. If no timely appeal is filed, the initial decision becomes final.
• The appeal is decided inside DHS. A supervisory immigration officer who did not issue the decision reviews it, is to review the appeal within 10 days of receipt, may request further briefing (to be provided within 15 days of the request), and issues a final decision within 45 days. That is the final agency action, subject only to discretionary review by the Secretary of Homeland Security.
• The Board of Immigration Appeals no longer hears these appeals. The rule states the person may not appeal the decision to the Board. Immigration judges still set the amount of a voluntary-departure penalty.
• The process is on paper. Review runs on written submissions and documentary evidence, with no in-person hearing. Service may be in person or by regular mail.
• DHS may reopen a decision on its own motion at any time to reduce or rescind a fine.

The one change from the 2025 interim rule is about late mail. In the Departments’ own words, the final rule “permits acceptance of a late-filed appeal based on documented mail delivery delays” that ICE finds were beyond the control of the person fined. Supporting documentation is required and these requests are decided case by case.

And then there is the court order. In Maria L. v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-13471, filed November 20, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by two noncitizens facing fines and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the complaint raises the Excessive Fines Clause, the Seventh Amendment, procedural due process, notice-and-comment and arbitrary-and-capricious claims under the Administrative Procedure Act, and claims that penalties were imposed without the willfulness and voluntariness findings the statute requires. Bloomberg Law reported an order by U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr., dated September 30, 2026, staying the June 2025 interim final rule and blocking enforcement of fines imposed under it while the case proceeds. Reporting on the order describes the court as finding the rule likely in conflict with the Immigration and Nationality Act, likely issued without the required notice and comment, and applied through a standardized process that did not make individualized findings about whether a failure to depart was willful. It is a preliminary order, not a final judgment, and it does not remove the statutory authority to impose these penalties.

The final rule does not address that order, and the interaction between the two is an open question as of this date. The published reporting notes that the Government may argue a final rule adopted after notice and comment answers the procedural objection, that the substantive objections are a separate matter, and that the public record does not spell out how far the stay reaches, whether amounts already collected must be returned, or what happens to referrals already made for collection. The Government has not publicly said whether it will ask the court to lift or narrow the stay or appeal to the First Circuit.

Who in Texas This Reaches

This is a federal rule with no Texas-specific text, but the three categories it names describe a large number of Texas households, and the scale has been reported by the agency itself.

• People with a final order of removal who are living in Texas. The daily penalty under section 274D is the largest of the three and the one that accrues. DHS announced in July 2026 that more than 103,000 civil fines had been issued, totaling roughly $84 billion, with individual penalties reported as high as $1.8 million.
• People granted voluntary departure by an immigration judge, including in the Texas immigration courts in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso and Harlingen, who did not leave within the period the judge set.
• People apprehended while entering or attempting to enter along the Texas border, where the per-entry penalty under section 275(b)(1) applies.
• Mixed-status families. A money judgment against one household member is a household problem, and a penalty that accrues daily behaves differently from a one-time fine.
• Anyone who received one of these notices by mail. Service by regular mail plus a 15-business-day appeal clock is the combination the single change in this final rule was written to address.

What This Changes Legally

A fine is a debt, and this rule is not a collection authority. The rule itself states that it does not authorize the confiscation of savings, the garnishment of wages, or the seizure of assets. Collection of a judgment is a separate step: the Department of Justice’s Civil Division or another litigating component would have to seek a judgment, and the rule describes a person’s ability to request a federal court hearing on the enforceability of the debt. Those are different proceedings with different rules and different timing.

Review of the fine itself is now internal and short. Fifteen business days, a paper record, a supervisory officer inside the same agency, and no route to the Board of Immigration Appeals. What a person puts in that written submission, and whether it is filed in time, carries more weight than it did under the prior framework in 8 CFR part 280.

Mitigation is narrower than people often assume. The preamble explains that 8 CFR 280.5 permits mitigation only where the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes it, and that the interim rule did not extend mitigation to the failure-to-depart and unlawful-entry penalties. The rule does separately describe rescission of many outstanding failure-to-depart penalties for people who depart using the CBP Home application under the program the agency calls Project Homecoming, and it describes circumstances in which officers may decline to issue penalties, including for approved or tentatively approved VAWA, T visa and U visa applicants, with agency guidance that penalties should not be issued to minors. Whether any of that reaches a particular person is a question about that person’s record, not about the headline.

The court order is the fact most likely to matter to someone holding a notice today. A stay of the interim rule and a block on enforcement of fines issued under it, entered September 30, 2026 and still in place while the case proceeds, changes the posture of a case in a way that an appeal deadline printed on a notice does not explain. How it applies to any individual notice depends on the order’s terms and on when and under what authority that notice was issued.

This page reports the facts and takes no position on the rule, the agencies, the litigation, any official, any party or any candidate.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing on this page is legal advice, and nothing here says that any particular person owes a penalty, does not owe one, is covered by the court order, or has an appeal available. Those turn on a notice, a date of service, an immigration history and a court record that a lawyer has to read. What an experienced Texas immigration attorney can review includes:

• Which statutory penalty a notice was issued under — section 275(b)(1), 240B(d) or 274D — and what the Government has to establish for each one, including the willfulness finding at issue in the Massachusetts case.
• Whether the 15-business-day appeal window is still open, how service is counted, and what a notice of appeal and written submission would need to contain.
• Whether documented mail delay supports a late-filed appeal under the one provision this final rule adds, and what documentation that takes.
• How the September 30, 2026 stay reads against a particular notice, and what it means for a referral already made for collection.
• Whether an underlying removal order or voluntary departure grant can itself be revisited — a motion to reopen, a change in circumstances, or relief that was never applied for — which is frequently the more consequential question.
• Whether any of the described exceptions or rescissions, including the VAWA, T and U categories or the departure-based rescission, bear on the record in front of them.
• What a collection action would look like if one is ever filed, and what defenses to enforceability of the debt exist in that separate forum.

People who read a six-figure or seven-figure number on a government notice often assume the matter is closed and the amount is fixed. Frequently it is neither. The point of talking to a lawyer early is to find out which of these documents actually applies to you while the clock is still running in your favor.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The deadlines here are short and they are stated in the rule. A notice of appeal is due within 15 business days of service, and if it is not filed the initial decision becomes final. A request for further briefing must be answered within 15 days. The reviewing officer is to act within 10 days of receiving an appeal and to issue a final decision within 45 days. Service may be by regular mail, which means the clock can start before the envelope is opened.

The record takes time the calendar does not give back. A notice has to be located, the date of service established, the immigration file obtained, mail-delay documentation gathered if that is the issue, and the court order read against the specific notice. It is best to talk to a lawyer while the appeal window is open rather than after a decision has become final, because a question that takes one conversation this month is a harder one once the deadline has passed.

Sources

1. Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review, Imposition and Collection of Civil Penalties for Certain Immigration-Related Violations, final rule, document 2026-21024, 91 FR 65390, published October 14, 2026, effective October 14, 2026, RIN 1125-AB36 and RIN 1653-AA96, ICE Docket No. ICEB-2025-0034 — the effective date, the penalty provisions, the appeal procedure, the single change on late-filed appeals, the comment count, and the statements on collection and mitigation (primary source).
2. Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, Imposition and Collection of Civil Penalties for Certain Immigration-Related Violations, interim final rule, 90 FR 27439, published June 27, 2025 — the rule the final rule adopts, and the rule stayed by the Massachusetts court.
3. 8 U.S.C. 1324d, section 274D of the Immigration and Nationality Act — the statutory daily civil penalty for willful failure to depart.
4. 8 U.S.C. 1229c(d), section 240B(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act — the civil penalty for failure to depart within a voluntary departure period.
5. Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, Maria L. v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-13471 (D. Mass.) — the docket, the parties, the claims pleaded and the relief sought in the case in which the September 30, 2026 stay was entered.
6. Bloomberg Law, “Judge Blocks ICE Rule Imposing Civil Immigration Penalties” — the report of Judge O’Toole’s September 30, 2026 order staying the interim final rule and blocking enforcement of fines imposed under it.
7. Erickson Immigration Group, “DHS Finalizes Streamlined Immigration Civil Penalty Procedures”, October 9, 2026 — an independent account of the final rule, the penalty ranges, the elimination of the Notice of Intent to Fine, the 15-business-day appeal, the loss of Board of Immigration Appeals jurisdiction, and the departure-based rescission.
8. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, July 23, 2026 announcement on civil fines — the agency’s own figure for the number of fines issued and the total amount.