Immigration court filing fees are indexed to inflation, and the statute rounds the adjustment down, so every one of them rises by less than inflation
The rule runs to eleven pages and the argument is in one clause.
Congress told the Attorney General to raise immigration court filing fees every year in line with prices, and then told him to round the result down to the nearest ten dollars. The Executive Office for Immigration Review filed the fiscal 2027 adjustment on Thursday morning, effective 1 October, and it puts the July-over-July change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers at 3.4 percent, citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics release of 12 August. Every fee in the rule rises by less than 3.4 percent.
Take the notice of appeal. The fee created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was $920 for fiscal 2026, and 3.4 percent of $920 is $31.28. Rounded down to a multiple of ten, the adjustment is $30, so the fee becomes $950, a rise of 3.26 percent. Add the $110 the department already charged under section 286(m) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the total is $1,060.
The bigger the fee, the further it can fall short
The practitioner disciplinary appeal on Form EOIR-45 shows the effect at its widest. Its statutory fee was $1,355, and 3.4 percent of that is $46.07, which rounds down to $40. The new fee is $1,395, a rise of 2.95 percent, and with the $675 department fee on top the total reaches $2,070. Indexing it strictly would have produced $1,401.
The application fees move the same way. Form EOIR-40 for suspension of deportation and Form EOIR-42A for cancellation of removal for certain permanent residents both go from $610 to $630, or $730 with the department fee. Form EOIR-42B, cancellation of removal and adjustment of status for certain nonpermanent residents, goes from $1,540 to $1,590, or $1,690 in total. Motions to reopen or reconsider all sit at $950 before the department fee, which is $145 at an immigration judge and $110 at the Board, and nothing at all where the underlying application carried no fee.
None of this is discretionary, and the drift compounds. The statute calculates each year's rise from the fee required for the most recently concluded fiscal year, which is the rounded figure rather than the true indexed one, so a shortfall in one year becomes part of the base for the next.
No comment period, and a fee that is not here
The department published this as a final rule with no notice and comment and no thirty day wait before it takes effect. It relies on the good cause exceptions in the Administrative Procedure Act, on the ground that the adjustment is nondiscretionary and the arithmetic is fixed by statute, and it cites the District of Columbia Circuit's description of notice and comment on a nondiscretionary act as a futile gesture. The Office of Management and Budget did not review it, because the department did not treat it as a significant regulatory action.
One fee named in the rule does not appear anywhere in it. The formula paragraph carves out the Annual Asylum Fee, which is rounded down to the nearest dollar rather than the nearest ten, and the word asylum then occurs nowhere else in the document. The three fee tables do not list it. The rule explains why in a separate paragraph: EOIR's regulatory schedule does not carry amounts for forms published by the Department of Homeland Security, and the ones EOIR collects are to be updated on its website and payment portal.
