Comment on VA-2026-VHA-0166-0001 (Anonymous)

To Whom it may concern, I'm writing this to express my concern regarding the proposal to raise the immigration enforcement fee from $5,130 to $18,000. While I understand that the government wants to cover its costs, I believe raising the fine by 250% if unrealistic and wont work. Firstly, an $18,000 fine is too high for the vast majority of immigrants to ever pay. Instead of being helpful for the government, it's just trapping people in a massive amount of debt that they wont be able to escape. Additionally, there are a multitude of reasons someone may miss their court date, including changing addresses or mail being lost, though I understand looking into that on a case-by-case basis just raises the cost for the government even higher. Secondly, according to the government's own breakdown in this document, the actual arrests only cost $1,777. The rest of the $18,000 comes from the cost of keeping detainees in a facility. It doesn't make sense to charge a person thousands of dollars for the cost of their own, involuntary detention. What I suggest: Instead of the $18,000 fee, the government should limit the fine to $2,422 to cover the actual costs of identifying & arresting individuals. This way, the government can still cover a portion of its costs while not putting people in crippling debt. Thank you, A concerned student