For years, American workers have shouldered the load of a broken immigration system that lets in millions without a plan, while their hard-earned dollars flow into programs that reward lawbreakers. Now, with Scott Bessent at the helm of the Treasury Department, that era of unchecked spending is facing a reckoning.
Bessent, the Wall Street veteran who took over as the nation’s 79th Treasury secretary in January, has kicked off a direct assault on the loopholes allowing illegal aliens to tap into federal tax breaks and wire billions back home without a second thought.
Bessent’s office laid it out plain: The department is “reviewing the tax status of ITIN filers with a focus on preventing access to refundable credits such as the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.” Those Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers—ITINs—have long been a backdoor for non-citizens to file returns and snag refunds, even as they dodge the full weight of citizenship.
It’s a setup that’s funneled an estimated $4.2 billion in child tax credits alone to households with at least one illegal alien last year, according to Treasury data. And that’s just the start. Bessent’s team is also eyeing restrictions on remittances, those cross-border cash transfers that hit $96 billion from the U.S. to Latin America in 2024, per World Bank figures. “We’re looking at ways to limit or tax those outflows to keep more money circulating in the American economy,” a department insider told Fox Business on Friday.
This push comes straight from President Trump’s playbook, echoing his February executive order that slammed the door on “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens.” That order, which Bessent has called a “vital first step,” forced agencies to scour their books for any federal dollars propping up sanctuary cities or padding programs that indirectly aid those here unlawfully.