Federal prosecutors are taking two Bay Area immigrants to court, seeking to collect more than $300,000 in fines issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for failing to leave the country after deportation orders.

According to lawsuits filed Monday in federal court, the Department of Justice is pursuing penalties against one man in San Francisco, who faces nearly $300,000 in fines, and another in San Bruno, who owes more than $40,000. Both had been ordered removed by immigration judges last year for missing scheduled hearings but remained in the United States. ICE sent notices of the fines in June, but the men have not paid, government attorneys allege.

The lawsuits mark a rare move by the Trump administration to enforce a little-used 1997 law allowing the government to impose financial penalties on undocumented immigrants who defy removal orders. In June, the administration announced new regulations to make it easier to issue such fines, which can reach $998 per day. Officials said more than 10,000 immigrants nationwide had already been fined under the program.

Immigration advocates say the lawsuits represent the first cases of their kind in Northern California and warn that more could follow. “We are expecting to see a tsunami of people being penalized under these laws,” said Merle Kahn, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) in San Francisco. The ILRC has filed objections to the regulations, calling the fines excessive, unconstitutional, and aimed at instilling fear in immigrant communities.

Kahn argued that many of those targeted lack the financial means to pay such penalties. “They don’t own property in places like Los Gatos or Saratoga—they clean the homes there,” she said. “The government is trying to collect hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, from people who have no assets.”

Bill Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco and director of the Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic, echoed that view. “That’s a fortune—more than a fortune to most people,” Hing said. While he doubts the government will succeed in collecting large sums, he believes the strategy is designed to pressure immigrants into self-deportation. “I know people who are giving up, forced to choose between returning to countries where they fear for their safety or living in the U.S. under constant fear.”

Advocates say the fines add another layer of risk to immigrants already fearful of showing up to court, where ICE agents have increasingly made arrests outside hearing rooms. Immigration judges have noted unusually high numbers of absent respondents since plainclothes officers began regularly appearing at hearings. Missing even a single hearing can lead to an automatic deportation order, and now, potentially, crushing financial penalties as well.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and local leaders have previously criticized the administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics. Kahn said the Trump administration has weaponized every possible provision of immigration law. “Someone spent the last four years combing through the Immigration and Nationality Act to find new ways to harm the immigrant community,” she said.

Hing agreed, describing the administration’s approach as “guns blazing—raids, enforcement, intimidation.”

For now, immigration attorneys like Kahn are training colleagues to defend clients against civil penalties, though she noted that only a constitutional challenge could overturn the law itself. “Whenever you feel something is deeply, deeply unfair,” she said, “you start looking for a constitutional violation.”