{"id":348113,"date":"2026-06-05T15:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/348113\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T15:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:27:09","slug":"treasury-warns-banks-of-red-flags-tied-to-customers-in-us-illegally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/348113\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury warns banks of ‘red flags’ tied to customers in US illegally"},"content":{"rendered":"

By FATIMA HUSSEIN and KEN SWEET<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Treasury\u2019s financial crimes arm wants banks to help identify payroll schemes tied to people living in the country illegally, as part of the Trump administration\u2019s latest measure to clamp down on immigration.<\/p>\n

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network \u2014 also known a FinCEN \u2014 issued an advisory Friday to banks that tells them to watch out for identity theft, payroll tax fraud, and money laundering schemes tied to hiring unauthorized workers.<\/p>\n

This comes after President Donald Trump in May signed an executive order<\/a> that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers.<\/p>\n

The order<\/a> directs bank regulators and government departments to look for signs that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans or credit cards. However, the order is less aggressive than banks had previously expected, as earlier reports suggested the White House was drafting an order that would make collecting customers\u2019 citizenship information mandatory.<\/p>\n

\"TheFILE \u2013 The Treasury Department building is pictured at dusk in Washington, June 6, 2019. (AP Photo\/Patrick Semansky, File)<\/p>\n

Still, without encouraging a blanket debanking of broad segments of the population, the order and latest advisory acts to discourage people in the U.S. illegally from interacting with the larger U.S. financial system.<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that the Trump administration \u201cwill not allow illegal aliens to abuse financial institutions to steal billions of dollars from hardworking American taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSchemes to pay unlawful workers often rely upon access to the U.S. financial system, including U.S. banks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Since banks have never collected any information about their customers\u2019 citizenship or immigration status, there are no reliable public figures on how much risk these customers pose to the financial system.<\/p>\n

The banking industry had been aggressively lobbying for months to stop the White House from issuing an executive order that would have made collecting customers\u2019 citizenship status mandatory, arguing it would be expensive and require vast amounts of paperwork. Since the order only offered guidance to the banks instead of a mandate, it appears the banks were able to win over the White House.<\/p>\n

The advisory calls on financial institutions to be alert for more than a dozen so-called \u2018\u201dred flags\u201d that indicate an individual is in the U.S. illegally.<\/p>\n

Sweet reported from New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By FATIMA HUSSEIN and KEN SWEET WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Treasury\u2019s financial crimes arm wants banks to help identify…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[14,74,76,75,142613,24005,1695],"class_list":["post-348113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-immigration","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-treasury","tag-treasury-department","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}