The Trump Admin Wants Western Union and MoneyGram To Report on Immigrants
An obscure bureau of the U.S. Treasury is using USA PATRIOT Act powers to sniff out under-the-table employment.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is one of the more quietly powerful arms of the U.S. government. Created by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the 1990s to investigate money laundering and similar crimes, FinCEN was beefed up by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which made it an official Treasury bureau and required banks to secretly report on their customers to the bureau.
Now, the Trump administration is turning FinCEN against immigrants who want to send money to their home countries. The day after Thanksgiving, the bureau published a notice asking money services businesses (MSBs)—such as Western Union and MoneyGram—"to be vigilant in detecting, identifying, and reporting suspicious activity connected to cross-border funds transfers involving illegal aliens."
Although the notice says that "the vast majority of remittances from the United States are legitimate and can provide critical financial support to family members abroad," it lumps together "unlawful employment" by undocumented immigrants alongside terrorism and drug trafficking as a potential source of "illicitly obtained" funds that should be reported to the Treasury. In other words, the counterterrorism authorities are now looking for under-the-table jobs.
The notice is not technically a new law, just a friendly reminder from a government regulator. But in the past, FinCEN went after "big actors who were engaged in more serious illegal activity," not "retail clients," says Amir Fadavi, a lawyer with extensive experience in U.S. sanctions compliance. This new crackdown could change the way money transfers work for everyone.
MoneyGram currently asks money senders to show a valid ID, and Western Union also asks for proof of the source of funds, such as pay slips, for larger transfers. FinCEN's alert is essentially "deputizing MSBs to check the immigration documents of their clients," Fadavi says. "Now they have to think about what kind of documents they have to ask for, and how they're going to verify someone if getting paid on a non-expired visa."
Reason asked several popular remittance services whether they plan to implement changes in response to the FinCEN alert. None of them responded. According to U.S. government statistics, immigrants in America sent home over $72 billion in remittances to people in their home countries last year.
Along with issuing the FinCEN alert, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced over the weekend that the administration would cut off undocumented immigrants from certain tax credits. "If you're here illegally, there's no place for you in our financial system," he stated. "Illegal aliens that use our financial institutions to move their illicitly obtained funds is exploitation, and it will end."
But the administration has been snooping on legal immigrants and Americans sending money abroad, too. Over the past year, FinCEN has ordered money transfer businesses in certain counties bordering Mexico to report any transactions above $1,000, and money transfer businesses in other border counties to report any transactions above $200. (Normally, the threshold for automatic FinCEN reporting is $10,000.)
Earlier this year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Congress imposed a 1 percent tax on remittances sent by cash, a money order, or a cashier's check, starting in January 2026. Although Republicans claimed that the tax was meant to deter illegal immigration, they also expanded the target from immigrants sending money abroad to anyone in America sending money abroad, including U.S. citizens.
FinCEN's involvement expands the war on terror into the war on immigration. And like the war on terror, this new campaign is already expanding past its original targets, as the government uses its power to inconvenience ordinary Americans.
