A 43-year-old illegal alien from Mexico named Hector ‘Alessandro’ Negrete has received a fine of $1.820 million dollars from the United States Department of Homeland Security, CNN.com reports after contacting the subject of the story.
According to the news site, Negrete lived in California illegally from 1983, having arrived at just three months old with his family, until 2024. He then decided to relocate to his home country, Guadalajara, Mexico.
One day, however, he got a message from his former roommate back in California about an invoice being sent to his name at his old address. Negrete got on a video call with his roommate and asked him to open the envelope; that is when he found out about the enormous fine.
Negrete was penalized because he had ignored a final deportation order for 15 years after receiving it in 2009.
As per the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, the US government can fine illegal aliens $500 a day for ignoring lawful deportation orders. According to the CNN piece, the second Trump administration has issued such fines to more than 100,000 foreign nationals staying in the country illegally, for a combined amount of around $84 billion. The DHS has told CNN that they have collected around $1.2 million of that amount thus far.
The department is encouraging all people living in the US without a permit to choose to self-deport instead of trying to fight removal orders. Those who self-deport through the official CBP Home App will receive a $3,000 cash payment as well, instead of being fined.
‘The US government can fine illegal aliens $500 a day for ignoring lawful deportation orders’
In May 2025 a Honduran woman living in Miami, Florida, illegally since 2005 made the local news for the same reason Negrete did recently: for receiving a $1.8 million fine—almost the exact same amount as Negrete’s—from the DHS for defying a legally binding deportation order.
Negrete told CNN that he first thought the fine he had received was fraudulent. After he made sure of its authenticity, he thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna lose my money. I’m gonna lose my job,’ as he shared with the news site.
However, he is relatively safe from financial ruin in Mexico. The $1.8 million fine Negrete received is a civil penalty, not a criminal one. In order for the Trump administration to be able to collect on it, they need to get an order known as ‘homologation’ from the Mexican courts. That is a long, arduous process with a dubious outcome.
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