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."
