Trump Goes After the Money Trail
President Donald Trump says his new executive order is aimed at more than border speeches and angry headlines. The order, signed May 19 and promoted on Truth Social this week, tells Treasury and other federal regulators to review banking, lending, and customer identification rules that the administration says have been abused by illegal immigrants, money launderers, human traffickers, and cartel networks. In plain English, Trump is not just looking at who crosses the border. He is looking at how the bad guys get paid once they are here. That is the part Washington loves to ignore until the bills pile up and the cartels start smiling.
What Treasury Is Being Told to Do
The order directs Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to identify suspicious patterns tied to payroll tax evasion, labor trafficking, shell companies, off-the-books wages, and the use of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers to get financial services without verified legal presence. Treasury is also being pushed to work with banking regulators on changes to Bank Secrecy Act rules so banks can dig deeper when they see fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion, or other illegal activity. The White House says the current system has left holes big enough for criminal networks to drive a truck through, and for once that is not just campaign rhetoric. The administration argues that if the financial system is part of the problem, then the financial system should also be part of the fix.
Lenders Could Start Looking at Deportation Risk
The most controversial piece is about lending. Trump directed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to consider whether potential deportation and the wage loss that could follow may be factors lenders can use when judging whether someone can repay a loan. That is a sharp turn from the Biden years, when federal officials pulled back from guidance that discouraged using immigration status in some lending decisions. Legal analysts say the order could eventually force banks to treat immigration status as part of customer due diligence and underwriting, depending on how regulators write the rules. The left will no doubt call that mean, but banks have always cared about risk. Suddenly, pretending it does not matter was supposed to be a virtue.
The White House Points to Cartels and Chinese Networks
The White House fact sheet says the order targets real-world abuse, including Chinese money-laundering networks that have used U.S. accounts to move dirty money and financial activity tied to Mexican cartels involved in fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling. The administration says current identification and verification standards have created weak spots that criminals know how to exploit. Trump also used his post to slam what he called the Biden border mess and to warn anti-ICE rioters that their chaos only strengthens his resolve. Whether the bureaucracy likes it or not, the message is clear: if you want access to America’s financial system, you should have a legal right to be here and a lawful reason to be doing business.
https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2061875908772778213?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
WE’D LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS! PLEASE COMMENT BELOW.
JIMMY
Find more articles like this at steadfastandloyal.com.
Leave a Comment