The Treasury Department took its first step this morning toward implementing an executive order that drafted banks to help crack down on undocumented immigrants.
The department’s illicit finance arm joined with other regulators to direct financial institutions to flag certain suspicious activity like identity theft and payroll fraud — as well as consider whether customers’ use of a taxpayer identification number, instead of a Social Security number or employment authorization document, might be a risk factor.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had already moved on the executive order, first reported by Semafor, which was initially expected to require banks to collect customers’ citizenship information.
House Financial Services Chair French Hill, R-Ark., questioned this week whether even the final version was “workable” for financial institutions, telling Puck: “The bank is not automatically on the hunt for people who are not in the country legally.”