Trump Has Terrifying New Idea for Tracking Undocumented Immigrants

The Trump administration is considering requiring banks to track clients’ citizenship status in order to find more people to deport.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is looking at signing an executive order or some other means to compel financial institutions to gather the data. Banks would likely have to ask for identifying documents, such as passports, from both new and existing customers who want a bank account in the U.S.

Banks are reportedly alarmed at such an executive order, according to the Journal. They already have legal requirements to collect certain information for law enforcement to fight against financial crimes, including money laundering. But those requirements don’t specifically include gathering citizenship information, and there’s no law against noncitizens opening bank accounts in the U.S.

A White House official told the publication that the new requirement hasn’t been approved and is only being discussed within the Treasury. A division of the Treasury Department that enforces laws against money laundering and counterterrorism financing could be used to collect the information, an unnamed source told the Journal.

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security forced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to turn over the personal information of immigrants enrolled in Medicaid, and the U.S. Postal Service has also been enlisted to identify targets. The goal seems to be not only increasing the number of deportations but also to force all immigrants, even those with legal status, to the fringes of American society by making them afraid that basic services, government or otherwise, can be used against them.

The Department of Homeland Security is threatening to put legal observers monitoring ICE activity on a domestic terrorist watchlist, according to a new lawsuit. 

Politico, citing the lawsuit, reports that DHS agents used facial recognition technology and license plate readers to monitor observers in Maine who were keeping tabs on federal immigration agents. The federal law enforcement officers would then threaten protesters. 

The lawsuit against the department and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was filed Monday by two of those observers, Colleen Fagan and Elinor Hilton, who are hoping for an injunction that would stop the department from using the technology to threaten legal observers.

Hilton and Fagan allege that agents scanned their faces and license plates in two separate instances last month while they were recording ICE in Portland. In one occurrence, the lawsuit states that an agent told Hilton, “I hope you know that if you keep coming to things like this, you are going to be on a domestic terrorist watchlist. Then we’re going to come to your house later tonight.”

The lawsuit cited other Maine incidents documented in news articles, such as one ICE agent driving to a legal observer’s home and repeatedly honking their horn. Another time, a federal agent drove to the home of a protester and told her, “This is a warning. We know you live right here.”

The federal government is resorting to Orwellian means not just to identify people for deportation, but also to surveil protesters and legal observers who oppose the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Companies specializing in surveillance, such as Flock, are being used to gather data, and the recent purchase of TikTok by Trump-friendly owner Skydance has ensured that the social video platform’s data is now in government hands too. 

ICE is currently using an app developed by Palantir that provides agents with a digital map containing potential deportation targets. That company also happens to be creating a master database in order to collect data on every single American. It seems the Trump administration is not above creating a police state to accomplish its goals.  

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Monday against New Jersey Governor “Mikie Sherill”—only no such person actually exists.

In a 21-page filing, the government misspelled the newly elected Democrat’s name five times. The government spelled it correctly only thrice, with two of those times being in quotes from other sources.

Earlier this month, Sherrill, with two r’s, signed an executive order barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of state-owned property without first receiving a judicial warrant. Examples of nonpublic state property include government offices, childcare centers, residential medical facilities, and state university residence halls.

“Given ICE’s willingness to flout the Constitution and violently endanger communities—detaining children, arresting citizens, and even killing several innocent civilians—I will stand up for New Jerseyans’ right to be safe,” Sherrill said in a statement at the time.

In its lawsuit, the DOJ calls Sherrill’s executive order an “intolerable obstacle” to federal immigration enforcement, which “facially discriminates” against federal agents in violation of the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which prohibits a state from usurping Congress.

The mistake-laden filing is part of a wider trend of unprecedented prosecutorial missteps by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, undermining numerous civil and criminal cases.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is considering suing billionaire Elon Musk for his assertion that she is actually under the thumb of the cartels she’s fighting.

Musk made the comment Monday while responding to a post on Sheinbaum denouncing all-out war against the cartels.

“Returning to the war against the narco is not an option,” Sheinbaum said in the clip from last year. “First, because it is outside the framework of the law. All of the right wing that fill their mouths [with] the words ‘rule of law’ and defend the war against the narco, the war against the narco is outside the law, because as I said or have said on several occasions, it is permission to kill without any trial.”

“She’s a cartel plant right?” a user replied to the clip, without providing any information about when or where it was from.

“She’s just saying what her cartel bosses tell her to say,” Musk said to the user. “Let’s just say that their punishment for disobedience is a little worse than a ‘performance improvement plan.’”

Sheinbaum told reporters in a press conference Tuesday that she was “considering whether to take legal action.”

Musk is making a massive accusation all while pushing misinformation—on the massive platform that he owns.

“Context matters: the video being used is an old clip on legal theory, while yesterday’s operation was a massive strategic win,” the Mexican Embassy in the U.S. posted in response to the video. “Recycling outdated clips to distract from a major blow to organized crime is how misinformation spreads. Don’t let them spin a victory into a conspiracy.”

This comes as recent cartel violence in Mexico has slowed after government security forces killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho,” the country’s most wanted drug kingpin. Mexican Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla Trejo claimed on Monday that 80 percent of the nearly 25,000 weapons seized from cartels since October 2024 were from the United States—something Musk’s assertion completely ignores.

The president is expected to address economic growth, foreign policy, and immigration enforcement during his State of the Union address Tuesday evening—but his congressional allies are planning to tackle a whole lot more with the guests they’ve invited to witness the annual speech.

Republican lawmakers have so far invited:

• YouTuber Nick Shirley and independent journalist David Hoch

Both Shirley and Hoch worked on a YouTube video that inspired the conservative caucus to politically scapegoat Somali immigrants late last year.

In the widely circulated “investigation,” the pair visited a slew of Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota, arguing that closed sites had fraudulently accepted federal funding. It would later emerge that elements of Shirley’s report were incorrect or inadequately reported: At least two of the centers featured in his video had been closed for several years, according to Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families.

More than a dozen schemes have popped up in Minnesota’s safety net programs in recent years, many of them involving members of the state’s Somali population. But they haven’t gone unchecked: More than 90 Minnesotans were charged in federal fraud investigations that began under the Biden administration, at least 60 of which have resulted in convictions.

Regardless, the fallout of Shirley and Hoch’s work resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in child care funding, including a suspended $185 million from the Department of Health and Human Services. It also stirred a national services controversy in which predominantly blue states were accused of abusing federal funds for programs focused on child care and local poverty. In truth, states of all stripes across the nation have participated in benefits abuse, but not everyone shouldered the federal cuts. Instead, Donald Trump axed $10 billion from five Democratic states, including Minnesota.

• The entirety of the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team

Trump reportedly called House Leader Mike Johnson after the team’s incredible gold medal win on Sunday, urging the senior Republican to figure out how to squeeze the 25-player roster into the joint session of Congress.

Fascinatingly, the hockey players have already been involved in a MAGA world scandal in the two days since they won. Hours after they beat Canada, locker room videos leaked to ProPublica revealed that FBI Director Kash Patel participated in their post-game party, spurring questions about the ex-podcaster’s flagrant use of public funds.

Meanwhile, the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team—which similarly took home gold after a dominant tournament run—rejected a similar offer. (Probably because Trump and the entire men’s hockey team insulted them.) Instead, the women will be partying in Las Vegas with Flavor Flav.

In his invite to the men’s team, Trump commented that he would “probably be impeached” if he didn’t extend the same offer to the women’s team.

• Seven-year-old Dalilah Coleman

Coleman was critically injured in a six-car pileup in southern California on June 20, 2024. She was 5 years old when a commercial 18-wheeler crashed into the car she was in. Coleman suffered a fractured skull, a broken femur, and a severe traumatic brain injury that left her in a coma for nearly a month, her parents told Fox News.

But Coleman’s story has since been used by far-right conservatives to illustrate the supposedly unsafe presence of undocumented immigrants due to the fact that the man behind the wheel of the semi truck, Partap Singh, was undocumented at the time of the collision. However, Singh was on the road with a valid driver’s license, issued to him by the state of California.

Ultimately, it was not local authorities who charged Singh. ICE agents arrested him in Fresno on August 29, 2025, and have since held him in the agency’s custody.

Coleman will be at the State of the Union address Tuesday evening, reported CBS News, though she will not be able to speak for herself.

“She has a TBI [traumatic brain injury],” Ileana Krause, Dalilah’s mother, told Fox News in September. “She is now diagnosed with cerebral palsy and global developmental delay. She doesn’t walk. She receives nutrition through a G-tube.”

Other Republican guests include:

• Evalea and Gary Beckstrom, the parents of Sarah Beckstrom, the 20-year-old National Guard member killed in Washington in December
• Claire Lai, the daughter of pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai (invited by Republican Representative Chris Smith)
• Two sheriffs (from Alabama and Ohio)

Meanwhile, Democrats are planning to bring their own assortment of guests to the evening’s speech. In attendance with the liberal caucus will be:

• Numerous Epstein victims/survivors
• Jesse Jackson’s family
• Mubashir Hussen and Aliya Rahman, two Minneapolis residents who were brutalized by federal agents (invited by Representative Ilhan Omar)
• Rick Woldenberg, Billy Walkowiak, and Sandy Washington, three CEOs whose businesses have been severely affected by the tariffs. Woldenberg was also a plaintiff in the Supreme Court tariffs case.
• Vonetta Rougier, a 71-year-old mother of three, whom Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries invited to highlight the reality of the country’s economic woes