Edith Espinal spends her days praying, reading and, when feeling brave, taking short accompanied walks outside the Mennonite church in Columbus, Ohio, where she has been living for 21 months. Church leaders have been protecting Espinal, who crossed illegally into the United States more than two decades ago, while she fights a deportation order.
But earlier this week, the church secretary handed Espinal a letter from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that said she had "willfully" refused to leave the country, had "connived or conspired" to prevent her deportation and would owe the government nearly half a million dollars.
"We don't have this amount of money," Espinal, 42, said Wednesday of the $497,777 bill. "I never imagined they'd send it to us."
Espinal was among several migrants living in houses of worship who this week received similar notices, the latest measure taken by President Donald Trump's administration in its crackdown on illegal immigration.
Citing the Immigration and Nationality Act, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the agency has the right to impose civil fines, up to $799 a day, on people who have been ordered removed or who have failed to leave the country. Officials said the agency began issuing such notices in December, although it was not clear Thursday how many had been sent.
"[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is committed to using various enforcement methods -- including arrest; detention; technological monitoring; and financial penalties -- to enforce U.S. immigration law and maintain the integrity of legal orders issued by judges," said Carol Danko, an agency spokesman.
Earlier this week, Trump -- who signed an executive order shortly after his inauguration that called on the Department of Homeland Security to collect all fines and penalties from anyone who had entered the country illegally -- said that his administration would begin immigration raids after the Fourth of July holiday.
This week's batch of letters caught pastors and immigration activists by surprise, as houses of worship, like hospitals and schools, have generally been excluded from raids.
At St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, Hilda Ramirez Mendez also received a notice this week that she was under final order of removal and would be fined $303,620. She has been living for a while at the church with her 13-year-old son, whose special immigrant juvenile status application is pending. She was denied asylum in 2015, and although the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency initially allowed her to stay, her deferred status was not extended in March, said her lawyer, Stephanie Taylor.
"The Trump administration is trying to find a way to squeeze them out of the church, which is something I've never heard of before," said Taylor, who added that Ramirez does not have a criminal record. "She is terrified."
In Charlottesville, Va., at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, Maria Chavalan received notice that she would be fined $214,132. She has been living at the church since September, hoping to attain asylum as a member of a protected ethnic community in Guatemala.
The Rev. Isaac Collins, the church's pastor, said customs officials had recently been ramping up "psychological pressure" in an attempt to force Chavalan, who does not have a criminal record and was ordered deported after missing a court date, to leave the church. Collins said that Chavalan wears an ankle monitor that is buzzed late at night and that she frequently receives calls to ask her where she is, even though she is tracked by GPS.
"The idea is to make her feel unsafe, under surveillance," he said. "That's what the notice of intent to fine is meant to do."
The migrants have 30 days to respond to the letters. Lawyers and activists in about seven states, from Utah to Texas to Virginia, said they were scrambling to collaborate on a coordinated response and were working to confirm how many other migrants living in houses of worship had received notices. Across the country, more than 40 migrants are living in houses of worship, according to Church World Service, an organization that tracks the cases.
Some lawyers said they were worried that the fines were part of a strategy by the Trump administration to target migrant support systems. Earlier this year, a volunteer with No More Deaths, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, Ariz., faced felony conspiracy charges after offering migrants water and food. The case ended in a mistrial, but federal prosecutors announced this week that they plan to retry the case in November.
The deportation case against Espinal, whose asylum claim was denied in 2017, has been appealed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Cincinnati. When Espinal left Mexico with her father in 1995 as a teenager, she was fleeing violence and abuse, said her lawyer, Lizbeth Mateo.
Espinal said she is part of a group of women around the country living in houses of worship who check in regularly with one another, asking about their children and how they're faring as they remain confined. Espinal says she looks forward to weekends, when her children visit and spend the night and they watch movies together. Two of her three children are U.S. citizens, and her husband and third child also have asylum petitions pending, she said.
"We are ready to do everything we need to do to keep my family together," she said Wednesday, adding: "I don't know if I can do it by myself. When the community supports me, I feel stronger."
A Section on 07/06/2019