The Treasury Department has moved to expand bank data-sharing rules, allowing banks to rapidly share information about suspected customers and flag signs that one of their customers may be an illegal immigrant. This change is part of the administration’s push to remove illegal immigrants from the nation’s banking system without explicitly mandating that banks do so.
Background
The administration has framed these actions as a crackdown on fraud and crime, not explicitly about immigration. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the information in banks’ purview can help stop a cartel financier, disrupt a money laundering network, uncover labor exploitation, or protect taxpayers from fraud.
Bessent’s remarks and the Treasury Department’s new guidelines come from an executive order signed in May by President Trump that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers. The order directs bank regulators and government departments to look for signs that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans or credit cards.
Banking Industry Response
Banks have long been able to share information about their customers with other banks under the Patriot Act program when they suspect money laundering or fraud. The new guidelines widen this system, allowing banks to share such information in real-time and more freely. The Trump Administration is giving banks a wider variety of reasons to share information, which now include flags historically tied to immigration status, such as a customer having an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN), which are disproportionately used by illegal immigrants when applying for work.
Bankers have been wary about sharing customer information with the federal government as part of immigration enforcement. Bankers never collected citizenship information on their customers, so any effort to do so would require a massive effort by banks and significant amounts of paperwork.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
