{"id":55302,"date":"2025-11-29T03:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T03:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/55302\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T03:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T03:41:09","slug":"treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-moves-to-cut-off-illegal-migrants-from-tax-benefits-and-cross-border-money-transfers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/55302\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent moves to \u2018cut off\u2019 illegal migrants from tax benefits and cross-border money transfers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration is working toward cutting illegal migrants off<\/a> from federal tax benefits and money transfer services, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt [President Trump\u2019s] direction, we are working to cut off federal benefits to illegal aliens and preserve them for U.S. citizens,\u201d Bessent wrote on X<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of the effort, the Treasury Department will propose new regulations \u201cclarifying that the refunded portions of certain individual income tax benefits are no longer available to illegal and other non-qualified aliens, covering the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit, and the Saver\u2019s Match Credit,\u201d according to the the Trump administration official<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bessent fired off a pair of social media posts Friday aimed at demonstrating the Treasury Department\u2019s efforts to promote Trump\u2019s immigration agenda. AP<\/p>\n

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) ostensibly prohibits illegal immigrants from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, in a February executive order barring illegal immigrants<\/a> from access to federally funded benefits, Trump argued that in the decades since PRWORA\u2019s passage, \u201cnumerous administrations have acted to undermine the principles and limitations directed by the Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treasury aims to classify federal tax benefits as \u201cfederal public benefits\u201d within the meaning of PRWORA in its proposed rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The department noted last week that the Department of Justice\u2019s Office of Legal Counsel \u201crecently issued an opinion adopting this interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treasury\u2019s final regulations are expected to apply beginning in tax year 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bessent argued that cutting federal tax benefits to illegal migrants preserves them for US citizens. REUTERS<\/p>\n

In a separate social media post<\/a>, Bessent warned that illegal migrants \u201cuse our financial institutions to move their illicitly obtained funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing that practice as \u201cexploitation,\u201d the Treasury secretary vowed: \u201cIt will end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[President Trump] is right \u2014 if you\u2019re here illegally, there\u2019s no place for you in our financial system,\u201d Bessent wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The post came on the same day the Treasury\u2019s Financial Crimes Enforcement Bureau issued an alert to money services businesses \u2014 such as check cashers, remittance processors and digital payment processors \u2014 asking them to be \u201cvigilant in identifying suspicious financial activity involving illegal aliens who present significant threats to national security and public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treasury\u2019s Financial Crimes Bureau alerted money transfer providers Friday to flag cross-border transactions that they suspect involve illegally-obtained funds. Toby Canham for NY Post<\/p>\n

The alert noted that money services businesses (MSBs) are generally required to file a suspicious activity report for a transaction that involves at least $2,000 and may violate federal law, including a \u201ccross-border transfer of funds derived from unlawful employment or otherwise derived from funds the MSB knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect were illicitly obtained in the United States.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, City Journal<\/a> reported that millions of dollars in taxpayer money \u2014 stolen as part of a series of massive Minnesota welfare fraud schemes<\/a> \u2014 may have been funneled to Somalia-based terror group al-Shabab.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report, citing former state fraud investigators, state lawmakers and federal counterterrorism officials, noted that the vast majority of the defendants in several of the high-profile fraud scandals are Somali or Somali American, and that the money makes its way to the terror group, sometimes unintentionally, when the ill-gotten welfare funds are sent to Somalia by Somalis committing fraud in Minnesota.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration is working toward cutting illegal migrants off from federal tax benefits and money transfer services,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2345,3410,2301,9,11,10,87,16371,2780,18543,58],"class_list":["post-55302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-banking","tag-illegal-immigrants","tag-immigration","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-scott-bessent","tag-taxes","tag-treasury-department","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}