Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Friday that the Trump administration has begun moving to cut illegal aliens off from federal tax benefits and money transfers.
Writing on the social media platform X, Bessent revealed that the administration is “working to cut off federal benefits to illegal aliens and preserve them for U.S. citizens.”
This will be achieved, according to the Treasury secretary, partly through the issuance of “regulations clarifying that the refunded portions of certain individual income tax benefits are no longer available to illegal and other non-qualified aliens.”
The other half of the plan calls for reclassifying the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit, and the Saver’s Match Credit as federal public benefits.
At @POTUS @realDonaldTrump‘s direction, we are working to cut off federal benefits to illegal aliens and preserve them for U.S. citizens.@USTreasury announced that it will issue proposed regulations clarifying that the refunded portions of certain individual income tax benefits… https://t.co/pn2MXoxDHC
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) November 28, 2025
According to The Hill, if these changes are implemented, aliens “with U.S. work authorization would no longer be able to benefit from these benefits despite paying into the tax system.”
“Those affected are likely to include Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] recipients and [aliens] with temporary protected status,” The Hill further notes.
Bessent’s announcement came on the same day that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) published an alert to money-processing companies (such as check cashiers and remittance processors) warning them to be “vigilant in identifying suspicious financial activity involving illegal aliens who present significant threats to national security and public safety.”
.@POTUS @realDonaldTrump is right—if you’re here illegally, there’s no place for you in our financial system.
Illegal aliens that use our financial institutions to move their illicitly obtained funds is exploitation, and it will end.https://t.co/mIy7fFWWNw.
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) November 28, 2025
Bessent’s plan was released two days after an Afghan refugee opened fire on National Guardsmen in D.C., killing one and critically injuring the other, and about a week after a report broke about how Somali immigrants in Minnesota funded terrorism abroad through fraud.
According to reporting from journalists Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo published at City Journal, the alleged fraud involved Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program.
The program was ostensibly designed “to help seniors, addicts, the disabled, and the mentally ill secure housing” by offering “low barriers for entry” and “minimal requirements for reimbursement.”
Though the program was estimated to cost only $2.6 million annually when it was launched in 2020, the cost surged to $104 million in 2024.
As Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz oversaw the biggest COVID fraud scheme in the nation.
A Somali crime syndicate stole $250M in COVID cash meant to feed kids. Walz did nothing and his state departments doled out the $.
Members of the fraud donated to Democrats.
DOJ later… pic.twitter.com/fmCWiFWMTy
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) September 5, 2024
Minnesota’s Department of Human Services is now finally moving to scrap the program after discovering numerous “credible allegations of fraud,” most of which involve Minnesota’s large Somali community.
“Most of these cases, unlike a lot of Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren’t just overbilling,” then-acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joe Thompson reportedly said at a September press conference.
“These are often just purely fictitious companies solely created to defraud the system, and that’s unique in the extent to which we have that here in Minnesota. What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending. I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away,” he added.
The fraud also involved the Feeding Our Future program that “sponsored daycares and after-school programs to enroll in the Federal Child Nutrition Program.”
“Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring [tied to Feeding Our Future] claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children,” Thorpe and Rufo reported. “In 2021, Feeding Our Future received nearly $200 million in funding.”
The most surprising aspect of this story is what eventually happened to all the stolen taxpayer money.
“The Somali fraud rings have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia,” Thorpe and Rufo reported. “According to reports, an estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad. In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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