President Donald Trump has been forced to shelve a plan to turn America’s banks into immigration enforcement tools, after a behind-the-scenes revolt from Wall Street and small community lenders, according to a new report.
The administration had reportedly been developing an executive order that would require banks to collect citizenship information on their customers—effectively conscripting the financial sector into Trump’s deportation machine.
The pushback was swift and came from the industry’s most powerful players, the Washington Post reported Friday, citing insiders with knowledge of high-level discussions. Wall Street executives and community lenders challenged administration officials directly, the Post reported, arguing the plan was an unworkable administrative burden.
The plan, first reported in February, would have forced banks to require customers to present passports to verify citizenship, on top of the standard documentation they already collect: name, date of birth, and address verified by a driver’s license. Data from the past few years indicate that roughly half of American citizens have a passport.
The order has since been shelved—though insiders, granted anonymity to speak freely, warned it could be revived in a watered-down form. One floated tweak would limit the passport requirement to new customers only, rather than requiring banks to audit existing customers retrospectively.
Even that compromise drew complaints from industry officials. About half of the U.S. population does not have a passport, meaning millions of Americans could find themselves frozen out of the traditional banking system entirely.
Industry representatives also warned of broader economic consequences. For example, a foreign national looking to do business in the U.S. who is confronted with a citizenship audit might simply walk away. Scaled to thousands or millions of individuals, the economic damage could be vast.
There are also practical enforcement questions. Industry representatives fear the plan could collapse if customers simply ignore correspondence from their banks, with no clear mechanism for what happens next.
The Comptroller of the Currency, Jonathan Gould, whose office is part of the Treasury Department and is reportedly deeply involved in developing the plan, has argued that the additional burden on banks and lenders “would be minor.”
Critics disagree. Jeremy Kress, associate professor of business law at the University of Michigan, said last month, “This is a way to weaponize the banking system to achieve political ends.”
The White House confirmed to the Post it was working on a draft, but suggested it never seriously considered forcing citizenship audits on existing customers.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
The reported plan is nothing new. During the presidential transition, officials discussed using the banking system as an immigration-enforcement tool, with supporters comparing it to E-Verify—the online service employers use to confirm workers’ eligibility. The comparison did not appear to persuade the banks.
