Trump Bank Immigration Order Delayed Amid Wall Street Pushback

The Trump administration has delayed an executive order that could have required banks to collect and report more information on the immigration status of their customers, after Wall Street and small community lenders pushed back on that plan, according to three people familiar with the internal deliberations.

In meetings with administration officials, representatives of the banking industry argued that requiring millions of existing customers to provide records verifying their citizenship status was not practical. The delay has not been previously reported, and such an order could still be revived, said the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions. But it is expected to be significantly narrowed from earlier drafts.

The original idea, reported earlier by The Washington Post, could have gone well beyond existing “know your customer” rules. Generally, banks collect a customer’s name, date of birth and address, verified with a driver’s license, to guard against money laundering and other financial crimes. The order could have required new forms of documentation, such as a passport, to verify citizenship, from both new and existing customers, the people said.

Any revived push may only apply to new accounts, rather than requiring banks to determine the immigration or citizenship status of existing customers. Such a change would substantially reduce the operational burden, though industry officials said it would still represent a major administrative undertaking.

A White House official acknowledged the administration is working on an order that could touch on immigration and banking but denied it ever seriously considered requiring citizenship audits of existing customers. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said new bank customers could be targeted under a coming order but disputed The Post’s characterization without elaborating.

The apparent delay adds the banking system to a list of fronts on which the administration’s immigration enforcement ambitions have met legal, logistical or political resistance. Courts have blocked or curtailed deportation-related initiatives, while a program to track undocumented immigrants through private contractors stalled after the lead contractor said in January that its contract was not being executed.

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