New EOIR Filing Fees Start October 1, 2026: What an Appeal, a Motion to Reopen, and Cancellation of Removal Now Cost

If you are in removal proceedings, the price of every filing you have left goes up on October 1, 2026. And if you send in the old amount on a filing that arrives on or after that date, EOIR rejects it — which, on an appeal, can cost you the appeal itself.

The Department of Justice published the new schedule on August 21, 2026, in a final rule titled Inflation Adjustment for EOIR OBBBA Fees; Fiscal Year 2027. It amends the fee tables at 8 C.F.R. § 1103.7 and it took effect without notice and comment, because the Department is required to make the adjustment under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Pub. L. 119-21. The increase is 3.4 percent, tied to the change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers from July 2025 to July 2026.

Three-point-four percent is not the story. The filing-date rule is the story, and so is what these fees have become in absolute terms.

What does each EOIR filing cost on and after October 1, 2026?

Every EOIR filing now carries two components: the older fee collected under INA § 286(m), 8 U.S.C. § 1356(m), and the OBBBA fee on top of it. Only the OBBBA component was adjusted. These are the totals.

For comparison, the FY 2026 OBBBA components were $920 for appeals and motions, $610 for EOIR-42A and EOIR-40, $1,540 for EOIR-42B, and $1,355 for EOIR-45.

Look at the EOIR-42B line. A non-permanent resident applying for cancellation of removal — ten years of continuous physical presence, good moral character, exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a qualifying relative — pays $1,690 to file the application. That is before the biometrics fee, before any DHS filing, and before a dollar of legal representation.

The rule that actually decides whether your money matters

The rule states the operative date plainly: the FY 2027 amounts are required for any relevant filing filed on or after October 1, 2026. Not signed before then. Not mailed before then. Filed.

And EOIR will continue to reject any filing not accompanied by a proper filing fee or a request for an applicable fee waiver.

Put those two sentences next to each other and you have the trap.

Why is a rejected filing worse than an expensive one?

An appeal from an Immigration Judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals must be filed within 30 calendar days of the decision. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.38(b). Thirty calendar days. Not thirty business days, not thirty days from when the written decision reaches you in the mail.

A filing that is rejected for an insufficient fee was not filed. The clock does not stop while the rejection travels back to you. If you mail your Notice of Appeal on day 26 with a check for $1,030 — last year’s amount — and it reaches the Board on October 2, it comes back. By the time it is in your hands again, day 30 has passed and the removal order is administratively final.

I have seen the same mechanism take cases away from people over an unsigned form and a wrong address. The fee version of it is going to happen in October, and it will happen to people who did nothing wrong except use a number they looked up in September.

The same arithmetic applies to a motion to reconsider, which carries its own 30-day deadline, and with more room but the same logic to a motion to reopen, which generally must be filed within 90 days of the final administrative order. INA § 240(c)(7)(C)(i); 8 C.F.R. § 1003.23(b)(1).

What can still be waived, and what cannot?

The waiver picture is now uneven, and the distinctions matter.

An Immigration Judge may still waive a fee for a motion or an application for relief on a showing that the filing party is unable to pay. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.24(d). That authority survived OBBBA and it is the first thing to look at for a client who cannot raise $1,690.

Two motions carry no OBBBA fee at all. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1812(g)(3), the OBBBA fee does not apply to a motion to reopen an in absentia removal order filed under INA § 240(b)(5)(C)(ii), or to a motion to reopen an in absentia deportation order filed under former INA § 242B(c)(3)(B). If you were ordered removed in absentia and you are moving to reopen on that basis, do not let anyone tell you the $950 applies.

The asylum fees cannot be waived. The asylum application fee cannot be waived or reduced, 8 C.F.R. § 1208.3(a)(1), and neither can the annual asylum fee, 8 C.F.R. § 1103.7(b)(4)(iii). There is no inability-to-pay path around either one.

The annual asylum fee is being collected right now

This is separate from the October increase and it is catching people who assume the litigation stopped it.

The annual asylum fee — charged for each calendar year an asylum application remains pending — was paused by court order in late 2025. That stay was lifted on February 2, 2026. USCIS and EOIR have been collecting the fee since. The challenge, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project v. USCIS, is still pending in the District of Maryland on summary judgment briefing completed in August 2026, and a related case filed in July 2026 challenges the fee alongside the April 2026 work-permit rule. Nothing in either case currently stops the fee from being due.

One meaningful carve-out did land. On July 24, 2026, the Board agreed that the annual asylum fee does not reach applications for withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture. If your application is for withholding or CAT only, that fee is not yours to pay.

If you have an asylum application pending and you have not checked whether an annual fee is due, check this week. The consequences of missing it are not administrative housekeeping.

The mistakes that will cost people cases this fall

Using a fee amount you looked up before October. Every chart published before August 21 is now wrong. Confirm the amount on the EOIR Payment Portal on the day you pay.

Timing a filing around the fee instead of the deadline. The difference between the old and new amounts is $30 on an appeal and $50 on an EOIR-42B. Nobody should shave a filing deadline to save $50. File when the case is ready and the deadline requires, and pay whatever the schedule says on that date.

Assuming a fee waiver request buys time. It does not extend the deadline. Submit the waiver request with the filing, inside the deadline.

Treating the $950 as unavoidable on an in absentia reopening. It is not. See above.

Assuming the asylum fee litigation protects you. It does not, as of today.

What to do

If you have a decision from an Immigration Judge in hand, count 30 days from the date of the decision and work backward from that date, not from the fee change. If you are preparing an EOIR-42B, budget $1,690 and ask about § 1003.24(d) if that number is out of reach. If you have a pending asylum application, verify the annual fee status this week. And if you are holding a filing that could go in before October 1 without compromising the substance of it, there is no reason not to send it.

Removal cases are decided by deadlines far more often than they are decided by facts. A fee schedule is only dangerous because it interacts with a deadline, and the interaction is the part almost nobody reads about.

If you or a family member is in removal proceedings or detained, the timeline is short and it is already running. Call (562) 495-0554 or book a free consultation at blerner.timetap.com.

This article is general information about United States immigration law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Immigration outcomes depend on the specific facts of each case. Law Offices of Brian D. Lerner, A Professional Corporation, 3233 E. Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90803. Brian D. Lerner is a Certified Specialist in Immigration and Nationality Law, The State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.