GOP Bill Raises Immigration Fees To Fund Mass Deportation

A GOP reconciliation bill would raise immigration fees to fund deportation and discourage people from applying for asylum. The bill’s House Judiciary Committee section increases fees for asylum, parole, Temporary Protected Status and other forms of relief far above levels to recover costs. Much of the new revenue would go toward funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts to detain and deport long-time residents and others in the country without legal status.

Significant New Immigration Fees

To help fund the Trump administration’s priority of mass deportation, the House Judiciary Committee’s portion of the Republican reconciliation bill includes new fees. Many fees appear to cross over into policy by creating potentially prohibitive costs for people to apply for asylum, Temporary Protected Status, parole and other benefits. Republicans are using a process called reconciliation to avoid a filibuster in the Senate.

Applicants do not now pay a fee to apply for asylum. The bill would charge asylum applicants a minimum of $1,000 and $550 for employment authorization. These and other new fees in the bill are indexed to inflation. Asylum applicants would pay at least $100 for every calendar year their application is pending.

With some exceptions, individuals paroled into the country would pay a minimum of $1,000 and $550 for employment authorization.

Applicants for Temporary Protected Status would pay at least $500 and $550 for employment authorization.

Renewing or extending employment authorization for a parolee, an asylum applicant or an individual with Temporary Protected Status is a minimum of $550, and the renewal or extension is valid for six months or less.

The initial fee to sponsor an unaccompanied alien child is a likely prohibitive $3,500. The fee is at least $5,000 to release an unaccompanied alien child to a sponsor who fails to appear in immigration court. A Special Immigrant Juvenile Fee would be a minimum of $500.

The bill would establish a minimum $250 “visa integrity fee” paid by all applicants for temporary visas. The fee may be reimbursed to the alien after the visa expires if the individual “has not sought admission during such period of validity,” the alien did not accept unauthorized employment or overstay the visa by more than five days or “the alien filed to extend, change, or adjust such status within the nonimmigrant visa’s period of validity.”

The fee for being granted a continuance by an immigration judge is at least $100. The cost to apply to adjust to permanent resident with an immigration court is a minimum of $1,500. The fee for filing an appeal from an immigration judge’s decision is at least $900.

Aliens ordered removed in absentia would pay a minimum of $5,000 under the bill. “Any inadmissible alien who is apprehended between ports of entry” is at least $5,000.

The bill also imposes a $900 fee to file “an appeal from a decision of an officer of the Department of Homeland Security.” The fee for filing a motion to reopen or a motion to reconsider a decision of an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals is also $900.

Jonathan Grode of Green & Spiegel said the fees further marginalize access to humanitarian programs. He is less concerned about the $900 fee for an appeal within DHS. “It pales compared to the massive jumps during the Biden administration for processing nonimmigrant [temporary] visas,” he said. “There was a lot of outcry from clients when they not only raised the fees last year but also added the fee to fund asylum applications.” If faced with an adverse decision, “We either refile or file in federal court if the decision is egregious, as the appeals process is long and often fruitless.” He said an appeal is used more when the foreign national requires a way to maintain status, “such as an I-140 petition that has a pending I-485 application [to register permanent residence or adjust status] tied to it.”

The bill would impose a filing fee of at least $400 for filing a diversity visa immigrant application and a minimum of $250 “on any alien who registers for the diversity immigrant visa program.”

Registering for the diversity visa lottery is currently free, and approximately 20 million do so annually. “This new fee will have a chilling effect on those filing from such countries as those located on the African continent where GDP [Gross Domestic Product] is the lowest,” said Grode.

Immigration Fees And Other Funds Used To Fund Detention And Deportation

Money spent on immigrant detention would rise from $3.4 billion in FY 2024 to $45 billion for FY 2025 and remain available until September 30, 2029, for “family residential center capacity and single adult alien detention capacity.” That is an increase of 1,224% between FY 2024 and FY 2025. If $9 billion a year is used during the next five years, it would be a 265% increase from FY 2024 to FY 2025. The bill permits ICE to use the funds until FY 2029 but does not preclude additional appropriations for ICE over the next four to five years. (The House bill says the appropriation for detention is “in addition to amounts otherwise available.”)

Economist Mark Regets, a senior fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy, estimates $45 billion is enough funding to detain 5 million people or at least 1 million a year over five years. If ICE used its funds more quickly, it could potentially place 2 to 3 million people a year in detention. These estimates are based on the current average of 52 days that ICE holds individuals in detention before releasing or deporting them. Trump administration policies could change that average. The $45 billion in the bill translates into 260 million person-days based on the $172.88 average daily cost of detention for an adult noncitizen. (The average daily cost was $164.55 in 2024, but the American Immigration Lawyers Association notes an ICE memo citing a 5% increase in detention bed costs from 2024.)

The bill also includes funds to hire at least 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, agents and support staff between FY 2025 and FY 2029. Additional money is allotted for retention and signing bonuses for ICE personnel. The bill appropriates $14 billion between FY 2025 and FY 2029 for “transportation and removal operations.”

The bill has “language that would prevent judges from holding the government in contempt for violating court orders, unless plaintiffs posted a financial security,” notes Suzanne Monyak of Bloomberg Law. That measure is designed to protect administration officials from contempt citations.

The money in the bill for detention and deportation equals approximately $80 billion. “For the amount this bill would spend on mass deportation, you could build a new stadium for each of the 30 Major League Baseball teams,” according to Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America. “Actually, no: you could build two new stadiums for each team, both with retractable roofs like the one the Texas Rangers moved into in 2020.”

The Trump administration has set a goal of deporting, if possible, every person in the country without legal status, an enormous undertaking that economists say would carry significant negative consequences. In attempting to reach a high level of deportations, administration officials have downgraded due process and focused on arrest quotas and numbers rather than concentrating on removing individuals with criminal convictions.

A lack of immigration detention space has limited the Trump administration’s plan to house immigrants in large camps and enact other measures to achieve its deportation goals. The reconciliation bill aims to eliminate obstacles to deporting millions of people.