Inside DHS's $70,000 OPT Fee Rule: Schools Pay, Treasury Keeps It
DHS's own math charges even STEM extensions the full $70,000 in the rule's first year, and every dollar of the estimated $12.4 billion a year would go to the general Treasury, not ICE.
"An SEVP-certified educational institution must pay a one-time initial fee of $70,000 for each F–1 student the first time that the alien is recommended to participate in OPT under section 214.2(f)(10)(ii)." That sentence, in the regulatory text the Department of Homeland Security published on Thursday, Oct. 8, settles who gets the bill. It is the college, not the student, and the money is due before a campus official can even enter the recommendation that starts a student's work authorization.
The proposal, filed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in docket ICEB-2026-0100, would charge colleges $70,000 the first time they recommend an F-1 student for Optional Practical Training (OPT), the program that lets international students work in their field during or after their studies, and $30,000 for any later OPT, including the 24-month STEM extension. Comments close Nov. 9, nothing applies until 60 days after a final rule, and DHS estimates collections of $12.4 billion a year that would go to the general Treasury rather than to ICE.
Read as a document rather than a headline, this is a fee on a college's signature. The pen belongs to the Designated School Official, or DSO, the campus officer who signs off on OPT in SEVIS, the government's student database. Under the notice, "no DSO would be able to enter an OPT recommendation without the school having paid the applicable fee." DHS even assumes a DSO "may not have the authority" to send $70,000, so a higher-level administrator would sign off. Once paid, the fee follows the student, not the employer.
So the idea that students pay the fee is wrong on the text, though it may prove right in practice. DHS "acknowledges that the schools may pass the financial obligation of this proposed fee onto F–1 nonimmigrant students, all students, or employers," and the rule puts no limit on how a school raises the money. The immigration law firm WR Immigration notes that students may not know the cost until their school announces a policy.
Today the main cost is the Form I-765 filing fee of $470 to $520, according to the law firm Fragomen, as reported by Higher Ed Dive, and recommendations have never carried a fee. The new charge is roughly 135 to 149 times that, a sum DHS likens to a year or two of a foreign student's education costs.
Nobody owes anything yet; DHS must review comments and issue a final rule first. And the comment window is shorter than some early reports said. DHS calls it a 30-day period, and 30 days from Oct. 8 falls on Saturday, Nov. 7, so the deadline rolls to Monday.
A date stamp in SEVIS decides who pays
A final rule would take effect 60 days after publication, and the trigger is the date on the DSO's entry, not the graduation date or the job offer. The $70,000 applies to students "who will receive a DSO recommendation for any type of OPT that is dated on or after the effective date of the final rule." Schools will not pay for students already on approved OPT, already approved, or already recommended before that date. But any "subsequent request for OPT" made on or after it brings the fee back into play.
How soon? Even a final rule on Nov. 10, the day after comments close, would not take effect before Jan. 9, 2027, a theoretical floor. The immigration firm Reddy Neumann Brown says "an April or May 2027 effective date is therefore possible if DHS moves quickly," though the proposal names no target. Nor is a final rule the last word; Congress has its own tool for undoing agency rules after they are finalized.
A transition year that prices STEM extensions at $70,000
The subsequent-request clause hides the detail that matters most for students already working. The $30,000 rate applies only "if the alien has previously participated in OPT and paid the initial OPT fee of $70,000." A student on OPT today never paid that $70,000, because it did not exist.
DHS draws the conclusion itself. Its economic analysis models the first year assuming "all participants will pay $70,000, including those in STEM OPT," and describes "a transition year, when the initial fee of $70,000 must be paid for all F–1 nonimmigrants recommended for any type of OPT." Our arithmetic confirms it: DHS's first-year revenue equals 289,938 recommendations times $70,000, or $20.30 billion, which works only if every STEM extension pays the full rate.
As written, then, a graduate on OPT today whose STEM extension is recommended after the effective date would cost the school $70,000, not $30,000. WR Immigration calls it fair game: "Transition treatment for students already in the pipeline is one issue commenters can press."
| Student's situation (recommendation dated on or after the effective date) | School pays | OPT it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Non-STEM graduate, post-completion OPT only | $70,000 | Up to 12 months |
| Pre-completion OPT, then post-completion OPT | $70,000 + $30,000 = $100,000 | 12 months in total |
| STEM graduate: OPT, then 24-month STEM extension | $70,000 + $30,000 = $100,000 | Up to 36 months |
| Already on OPT before the effective date; STEM extension recommended after it | $70,000 in DHS's transition-year model (the $30,000 rate requires a prior $70,000 payment) | 24 months |
| Recommended or approved before the effective date | $0 | As approved |
| New degree level (e.g., master's after a bachelor's): alternative DHS is seeking comment on | Another $70,000 | Up to 12 months |
The second row is a quiet penalty. Splitting one 12-month allowance between work during studies and work after graduation takes two recommendations, so DHS "anticipates that institutions would encourage F–1 nonimmigrants to use only post-completion OPT." Refunds are narrow, available only before the student's employment authorization document is issued and "not subject to any administrative appeals."
DHS's reasons deserve their full weight. The notice says the goal is to combat fraud and protect U.S. workers, and it brings evidence: a 2020 conviction of a Chinese businesswoman who supplied false employment documents to at least 2,693 people, mostly Chinese F-1 students seeking OPT, and a 2021 news report of shell companies employing nearly 4,000 OPT students. Its biggest number comes from a Homeland Security Investigations probe that found more than 10,000 F-1 students on OPT working for "highly suspect employers," with "residential addresses listed as worksites with no employees present." One employer claimed over 150 student employees; only one student was there.
The program is growing, too: DHS counts 194,554 F-1 students on OPT who reported working in 2024, up 21.1% in a year by our math. (The Institute of International Education counts differently, about 294,000 participants in 2024-25, per IIE data compiled by Higher Ed Dive.) DHS set its price "comparable to the fee for H–1B visas" to make it harder for students and employers to use OPT to sidestep those fees, and it warns that without fees it "may shut down the program entirely."
"Optional Practical Training was never meant to be a back door into the American workforce, a subsidy for cheap labor, or a prize for those who game the system."
DHS spokesperson, Oct. 7 announcement
So this rule does not cancel OPT. But a department that writes about shutting the program down while pricing entry at $70,000 has made its preference plain.
Where $12.4 billion a year would go
DHS projects annual collections of $8.4 billion to $16.5 billion, with $12.4 billion as its primary estimate; its table checks out against its own inputs.
The low scenario shows who is most exposed. A non-STEM graduate's 12 months for $70,000 comes to about $5,833 a month, while a STEM graduate's 36 months for $100,000 comes to about $2,778. The non-STEM student costs a school about 2.1 times as much per month, which is why DHS's own low case assumes schools pay only for STEM-track students. Non-STEM graduates are first in line to lose out.
Small colleges face their own squeeze. Of 1,389 small affected institutions, DHS finds 98 would pay fees above 20% of annual revenue once the transition year is over. Add those between 10% and 20%, and 180 small schools, or 13%, would hand over more than a tenth of their revenue; in the first year the count is 201, or 14%. All this lands on a shrinking sector: AP reported that new international enrollment fell 17% last fall.
"I think this is the next level of attack, and I think it's a design to kill the program without killing the program. I don't see too many schools wanting to pay $70,000 for a student to get OPT."
Steven Brown, Houston-based immigration lawyer, to AP
Then there is the destination. The fees "would be deposited in the Treasury of the United States as a miscellaneous receipt," the notice says, and "ICE would not maintain or use the funding collected," because the statute gives it no authority to keep them. That admission sits uncomfortably close to the reasoning that sank the administration's last big immigration fee. On June 8, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston struck down the $100,000 H-1B fee, ruling it a tax Congress never authorized.
"Here, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called."
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, June 8 H-1B ruling
A charge that raises billions and funds nothing ICE does looks a lot like revenue, and the notice never addresses the tax question. DHS's answer is its power under 8 U.S.C. 1184(a) to set the "time and conditions" of a nonimmigrant's admission, the same power the D.C. Circuit relied on in 2022 when it upheld OPT itself in Washington Alliance of Technology Workers v. DHS.
One difference cuts in DHS's favor. The H-1B fee came by presidential proclamation, and Clark Hill's summary of Sorokin's ruling lists an Administrative Procedure Act violation among its grounds; this fee is going through the notice-and-comment process that law requires. Doug Rand, a former senior USCIS adviser under President Biden, predicted the OPT fee would be struck down; the White House says it expects the H-1B ruling to be reversed on appeal. Like the public charge change, it is a rule that turns on mechanics and effective dates, and the administration's recent student measures have ended up in court: a duration-of-status rule was blocked in September, and university groups sued on Oct. 5 over practical-training guidance.
What can be done before Nov. 9
For students, timing is the lever. Those finishing before any effective date are recommended under today's rules, which allow a post-completion OPT filing up to 90 days before the program ends. Students already on OPT who expect a STEM extension should know DHS's own model prices a post-effective-date extension at $70,000. The most useful step now is asking the international student office what the school plans to do.
Commenting matters because DHS must answer significant comments, and a court will later read that record. NAFSA says it will mobilize members to file.
- Go to docket ICEB-2026-0100 on Regulations.gov; emails and letters to DHS "will not be considered comments."
- Write in English or attach a translation, and cite the specific section and any supporting data.
- Leave out personal details you don't want public, since DHS posts comments as submitted.
- Submit by 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday, Nov. 9.
The full text is in the proposed rule published in the Federal Register, 35 pages long, and its central tension fits on one of them. DHS sells the fee as the tool to police shell companies and empty worksites, then writes that the money would go to the general Treasury, where ICE "would not maintain or use" a dollar of it to chase them.
