President Donald Trump’s deputies have drafted plans to spotlight illegal migrants’ use of the U.S. banking system.
The Wall Street Journal reported on February 24:
The Trump administration is weighing a possible executive order or other action that would require banks to collect citizenship information from customers, a new front in the administration’s crackdown on immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, according to people familiar with the matter.
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One avenue being considered is having the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which enforces the U.S.’s anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing laws, collect the information, the people said. Those laws require banks to flag large cash transactions or other transactions that appear suspicious to FinCEN.
The project could help ICE to quietly ramp up deportations of illegal migrants, outside the view of hostile media, and pro-migration gorups.
Trump’s deportation deputies have deported roughly 400,000 migrants and pressured perhaps one million more to self-deport.
But that plan is just a down payment in the large effort to deport at least 15 million illegal immigrants who help to push down Americans’ wages, to push up their rents, and to reduce high-tech workplace investment.
So far, ICE officials have done extensive I-9 reviews, where officers visit employers to check the legal status of workers. Those reviews often prompt employers to quietly fire illegals as the CEOs try to avoid a high-stakes ICE workplace raid.
However, there is no evidence that the Department of the Treasury has restarted sending “no-match” letters to employers when it detects fraudulent tax-identification data from migrant workers.
But multiple agencies are pushing forward with plans to impose heavy fines on illegal migrants. The fines are likely to persuade many migrants to quietly leave the United States.
