GoKawiilLast April, the Trump administration rolled out its latest tool in the fight against Mexican cartels: an aggressive crackdown on money transfers near the US-Mexico border.
The administration said that, in an effort to stop money laundering and other illicit activity, it would now require any business providing financial services in the region to report cash transactions over $200. Previously, the amount had been $10,000.
But rather than dealing a crushing blow to the cartels, business owners and legal experts say the policy has devastated small businesses across the region, and the largely immigrant communities who rely on them to pay rent and bills and send money to family.
One of those mom-and-pop businesses is Nachita’s, a grocery store in one of El Paso, Texas’s oldest neighborhoods that also provides small-scale financial services.
The family-run grocery has been a community lifeline for generations, says owner Evangelina Ornelas. In a working-class neighborhood near the US-Mexico border, where many people don’t have a bank account, these money services are a vital resource. For years, the predominantly Latino residents of numerous apartments surrounding Ornelas’s store used to regularly walk in to pay bills, pick up money orders for rent and wire money to families south of the border. The grocery store – along with its on-site kitchen – also benefited.
“People would come in to do a money transfer, and while they were here they’d get a burrito or purchase grocery items,” she recalled.
But last year, when a new policy from the US treasury department’s financial crimes enforcement network (FinCen) came into effect, it upended her operations. Now she had to report these low-level transactions, along with addresses, Social Security numbers and other personal identifying information.
View image in fullscreen Nachita’s Grocery in El Paso, Texas. For years, primarily Latino customers regularly paid bills, picked up money orders and wired money to family in Mexico.
With the changes, people became reluctant to make these transactions, Ornelas said, because they worry it will open them up for government surveillance or targeting by immigration authorities in the current intensified enforcement. Many elderly customers with limited mobility could no longer pay bills, and renters are unable to purchase money orders to pay for housing. The long lines of immigrants waiting to send money home have dwindled.
“I don’t think it was to prevent money laundering,” Ornelas said of the policy. “It didn’t look like it from what I was seeing. I was seeing a lot of people who were just not able to pay their bills or not able to send money to their families.”
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