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Trump's latest tactic against immigrants is a $998 dollar a day fine [1]

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Date: 2025-04-08

The app for migrants to apply for asylum in the U.S. is no longer called CBP One, for the one thing they needed to do. It's been renamed CBP Home, as in "Go Home!"

On the first day of taking office, Trump canceled 30,000 appointments that had been made to be interviewed for an asylum claim, and left a hundred thousand others who had used the app, but hadn't been granted an appointment, left dangling in the wind.

The app was launched two years ago, but had a limit of arranging 1,450 appointments a day, far too few for the demand. But it was something.

Now the renamed CBP Home app has entirely different purposes.

"Aliens can now notify the U.S. government of their intent to depart the United States."

Check border wait times Apply for a provisional I-94 Entry Request an inspection of agricultural or biological products Submit travelers manifest for bus operators

Here's the I-94 application site which tells people right off that if you're from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela, go home, forget it. You'll never be allowed in. Anybody visiting the United States needs to fill one out. It's got nothing to do with staying in the United States, just visiting.

The CBP Home app no longer has anything to do with granting asylum. In fact it's nearly impossible to find anything about how that system is going to work now with the Trump administration. You can go to CBP.gov and search for asylum, and the first item us CBP Home. Pages of stuff, but nothing about how to apply for it, as if it no longer exists.

Today, the Trump administration announced that they would be charging undocumented immigrants $998 a day for each day in the U.S. illegally, going back 5 years retroactively. It stems from a 1996 law that was never enforced until 2018.

This could total up to fines of a million dollars. Refusal to pay could involve property seizure. The way to avoid this is to use CBP Home to self deport. The fines are planned for 1.4 million immigrants who have been ordered removed by an immigration judge.

Trump used the law in his first term to go after migrants that were seeking sanctuary in churches and fined them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then withdrew the penalties and charged smaller ones of $60,000.

Joe Biden stopped the leveling of the fines and the related actions when he took office in 2021.

Scott Shuchart, an ICE official under Biden, said migrants could challenge the fines in court, but "their point isn't really to enforce the law, it's to project fear into the communities."

Those that had used the CBP One app were were allowed to stay up to two years under presidential power called parole.

In response to questions, the Department of Homeland Security said, "Cancelling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security." I don't remember Trump ever being that specific. Just that he was going to close the border and do mass deportations. He didn't say how. Now we know the trick that probably Stephen Miller came up with, is to get them to leave the country voluntarily, under threat of financial fines they would never be able to pay.

There may be an unintended consequence that the Trump administration didn't think of. It will allow the cartels to make more money.

Ari Sawyer, a migration researcher said, "Any time it becomes more difficult to access asylum or cross the border, coyotes make money. And that means cartels make money. The Trump administration might say it wants to fight cartels --- but on the contrary, it's enriching them."

It would be like the Trump administration to do something that backfires on them.

It reminds me of the first days of Trump's presidency where the Spanish language version of Whitehouse.gov showed an Error 404 and the option was to "GO HOME" instead of "Go to Home Page."

Now they've got a government app that tells them to self-deport. Not much different.

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