Trump Orders Banks to Flag Customers' Immigration Status in Anti-Money-Laundering Screening

Trump signed Executive Order 14406, "Restoring Integrity to America's Financial System," on May 19. It directs the Treasury Department to issue an advisory within 60 days identifying red flags of suspicious activity that include payroll-tax evasion patterns, use of foreign identity documents and use of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers without verified lawful status. Within 90 to 180 days, Treasury and the banking regulators must propose changes to customer due-diligence and customer identification rules so institutions can collect information relevant to "lawful immigration status and employment authorization." The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau must say within 60 days whether deportation risk and associated wage loss should factor into ability-to-repay assessments, and all financial regulators must issue guidance on credit risks posed by populations without work authorization.

The Bank Secrecy Act framework was built to detect money laundering and terrorist financing. Repurposing its suspicious-activity machinery to surface immigration status turns retail banks into a screening layer for immigration enforcement, and the CFPB directive would let lenders price deportation risk into credit decisions. ITIN holders include many people who file and pay federal taxes.

A companion order signed the same day, EO 14405, directs regulators to identify barriers to fintech-bank partnerships and charters. The implementation deadlines ran into the summer of 2026; no litigation challenging either order was reported in the sources reviewed.