USCIS Biometric Fees Lawsuit Alleges Agency Pockets Extra Immigration Charges as Revenue

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A proposed class action alleges United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has illegally charged millions of immigrants inflated biometric fees to cover the costs of background checks and the capture of fingerprints, photos and signature samples. 

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The 33-page lawsuit contends that USCIS’s biometric fees violate the statute that requires the federal agency to set fees at only the level necessary to recover the costs of the corresponding services. The case claims that USCIS ultimately uses the allegedly unlawful biometric fees as a source of revenue. 

“Immigration applicants who are required to pay the biometric fee end up paying this $85 fee—often more than once—on top of the hundreds of dollars of other fees charged by USCIS,” the complaint says. “Despite USCIS’s repeated public statements that filing fees are not intended to generate general revenue, these inflated and unauthorized biometric fees generate millions of dollars in surplus revenue for the agency each year.” 

Per the case, the $85 USCIS biometric fee comes in addition to the fee immigrants pay for the application itself and must be submitted simultaneously. Given that the naturalization process typically requires applicants to submit a few different applications—e.g., for permanent residence, for renewal of permanent residence, and for naturalization—that each come with a biometric fee, most applicants pay the $85 charge multiple times, the suit relays. 

According to the lawsuit, when USCIS does not re-collect an applicant’s biometric information in connection with an application, the individual will receive a notice stating that their biometrics will not be captured again since the agency already has the data on file. However, the notice also specifies that the $85 fee will not be refunded, the case says. 

The filing contests that the $85 fee is “set well above the level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing the services allocated to the biometric fee” by USCIS. Though the fee has been set at $85 since 2010, in 2016, USCIS “confessed that it spends only $75 per applicant to process biometrics,” the lawsuit says, alleging the agency often “does not provide the services that the regulation requires it to provide to collect these fees.” 

“USCIS’s more recent disclosures indicate that when the millions of annual reuses are taken into account, setting the biometric fee at approximately $55 would be sufficient to recover the correlated costs actually incurred by USCIS,” the suit states. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all individuals and entities who have paid the $85 biometric fee in the past six years, including those from whom USCIS did not collect biometrics and those for whom USCIS did not order an FBI background check. 

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