Trump Strikes at Illegal Immigration’s Money Lifeline: Banks May Soon Verify Citizenship for Every Account
The Trump administration is gearing up for one of the most effective immigration enforcement moves yet—requiring U.S. banks to verify the citizenship status of **all** customers, including those with existing accounts. This isn’t speculation; it’s straight from CNN’s own reporting in late February 2026.
CNN anchor Omar Jimenez kicked off the segment: “Trump could soon force banks to take part in an immigration crackdown. What I mean by that is sources tell CNN the administration is considering requiring financial institutions to collect and verify their customers’ citizenship status—something banks aren’t currently required to do. One source says the new policy could come through an executive order.”
Handing off to reporter Matt Egan, Jimenez asked how banks are reacting. Egan laid it out plainly: “Yeah, well Omar, this does appear to be part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. Sources tell CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and I that the administration is considering new action that would require banks to check the citizenship status of their customers. Now, this would be something that would actually apply not just on a go-forward basis but it would be stunning when you think about just how many customers the banks already have.”
Egan continued: “Now this action could also require banks to check different categories of documents than what they normally look at, including passports. I do want to stress that nothing here has been announced or finalized. It’s not clear whether or not this will come in the form of an executive order or some other action. We reached out to the White House and a spokesperson said that any reporting on policy that hasn’t been officially announced is just speculation.”
He noted support from Sen. Tom Cotton, who posted on X: “I strongly support President Trump taking action to prevent illegal migrants from accessing our banking system.” Cotton had sent a letter to Treasury last fall pushing for this exact step.
The banking industry? They’re panicking. Egan reported: “Officially they’re not really saying much. Representatives from major banks, from bank trade groups—they haven’t commented on this.
However, sources do tell CNN that the industry is concerned here because they’re worried that it could almost compel them to be part of the administration’s immigration crackdown.
One financial industry source told me that verifying every bank customer’s citizenship status would be unworkable… it’s a bad idea. We are very alarmed.”
Banks currently follow anti-money laundering and know-your-customer rules, but citizenship isn’t tracked. Egan added: “So if this did become official, that would certainly be a significant change.
There’s also some questions about whether or not this could discourage immigrants—even undocumented immigrants—from keeping their money in the bank. They do play a significant role in this economy.
In 2023 alone, undocumented [immigrants] paid $90 billion in federal, state, and local taxes and they had spending power of nearly $300 billion.”