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On Tuesday The Wall Street Journal claimed that the Trump administration is considering ordering banks to verify citizenship details with their customers, “according to people familiar with the matter.”
The theoretical move would be intended to aid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation. The White House pushed back on the report however, calling it “baseless speculation.”
”Any reporting about potential policymaking that has not been officially announced by the White House is baseless speculation,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement on Tuesday.
Financial industry groups (The American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute) as well as the U.S. Treasury Department declined to comment to Bloomberg on the matter.
It is already a legal requirement to provide government-issued identification to open bank accounts.
Due to illegal aliens being issued state IDs, forms of identification that can prove citizenship include passports, birth certificates, certificates of naturalization and certain military records, although some U.S. citizens don’t hold those – with 52% not holding a passport.
If enacted as reported by The WSJ, existing customers will need to provide citizenship status.
Previously President Trump issued an executive order requiring citizenship verification on national mail-in voter registration forms and his administration instituted regulations prohibiting certain immigrants from holding or renewing commercial drivers’ licenses.
While non-citizens are legally eligible to open bank accounts in the U.S. a move to require citizenship status could bar those here illegal from conducting financial transactions, thus pressuring them to go home.
Trump has used various means to remove the illegal alien menace from U.S. lands. These include on-the-ground deportation squads and a generous self-deportation program called Project Homecoming which provides free flights home plus free money to those who self-deport.
With those methods underway, the administration may be seeking new options for increasing the deportation rate, which may include squeezing the aliens financially. In December Raw Egg Nationalist reported for Infowars that:
President Trump is preparing to “explode” deportation numbers next year with a much-more aggressive approach, including workplace raids.
Reuters reports, “ICE and Border Patrol will get $170 billion in additional funds through September 2029 – a huge surge of funding over their existing annual budgets of about $19 billion after the Republican-controlled Congress passed a massive spending package in July.
“Administration officials say they plan to hire thousands more agents, open new detention centers, pick up more immigrants in local jails and partner with outside companies to track down people without legal status.”
Trump’s deportation agenda follows the wide open border policy of President Autopen, which Infowars reported on extensively at the time.
Democrat policies of granting state IDs to illegals made it unable to verify citizenship.
In 2022 Axios reported that President-via-autopen Joe Biden considered a plan to give IDs to illegal aliens.
A plan of that nature appears to have went operational, at least in New York City. In 2024 Jamie White reported on Infowars that:
Undercover video by citizen journalists caught a charity that caters to illegal aliens illegally filling out residency documents for a man with no form of identification.
Muckraker.com journalists teamed up with The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project to reveal the illegal alien fraud pipeline taking place in New York City.
…
“Do you have a first and last name? Nothing else? Only have Jose Rubiano?” the employee asked, which the Muckraker associate affirmed.
“I’m going to get this signed and then I’ll be right back,” the employee said before returning shortly after with documents bearing the name “Jose Rubiano” for both residency and the IDNYC card.
Rubin highlighted the national security and election integrity risks posed by the illegal residency and official identification card scheme.
“Anyone, from someone seeking unauthorized employment to spies, saboteurs, or even terrorists, could obtain a government issued ID by visiting La Jornada and acquiring fraudulent papers,” Rubin said. “This risk also includes those who enter this country legally and overstay their visa.”
