Financial Assimilation

Immigrants’ lives are measured and debated along many axes: language acquisition, neighborhood choice, and even family formation. But another overlooked form of assimilation persists. I use “financial assimilation” to capture noncitizens’ inclusion within American financial markets, for better or for worse.

The law defines financial assimilation in different ways for different types of migrants. Federal law can tie migrant resettlement to private sponsorship—as Americans’ financial stature supports newcomers—or protect work-authorized noncitizens under financial antidiscrimination laws. Federal law can also deter, if not prohibit, financial assimilation when it limits lending in marquee markets like housing, even as state laws forge a different path. The law offers a far less glossy form of financial assimilation by conditioning detained immigrants’ freedom on financial bonds. Immigration law’s exclusive forces do not preempt financial assimilation.

Beyond defining and describing financial assimilation, this Article uncovers its risks. Financial assimilation generates visibility, and therefore surveillance and immigration enforcement, especially as legal safeguards falter in markets for money transmission and carcerality. I argue that a safer future for financial assimilation is possible, even amid heightened immigration enforcement. Noncitizens and their financial transactions will endure. I propose that private actors and state regulators can protect noncitizens, including by serving as financial guarantors in federal frameworks.

Table of Contents Show

Introduction

A Republican senator once argued: “We should be proud that so many want to come to America, that it is still seen as the land of opportunity. . . . Our land should be one of assimilation, not hiding in the shadows.”[1] The idea and audience seem familiar and simple enough—welcome eager newcomers into our fold so they may become one among our (consumers’) republic.[2] And when contrasted with the shadows, where immigrants supposedly hide, what harm could come from being financially seen?[3]

This Article answers that question by defining a phenomenon I call “financial assimilation,” as shaped by and outside American law.[4] At its core, financial assimilation charts noncitizens’ access to American financial products and markets. Financial assimilation is not exclusive to specific immigration statuses or language proficiencies. From the refugee stepping off the plane to the undocumented long-term resident, new Americans confront new markets, whether for credit cards or carceral bonds.

However strict American immigration law may be, our markets are more welcoming. But immigration status and markets intersect in a complex array. For example, some children who entered without inspection and began their lives in the United States undocumented may eventually become eligible for traditional mortgages securitized by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) by virtue of deferred action (prosecutorial discretion) programs.[5] But others who remain undocumented are shunted to specialized lenders for Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) mortgages.[6] Similarly, “fresh” humanitarian migrants might confront more favorable interest rates than more established peers.[7] Abstracting from the technicalities, the United States’ immigration system does not always speak for its financial system, and noncitizens straddle both.

Immigrants engage in financial assimilation regardless of their long-term interest in or ability to secure lawful status, much less citizenship. Financial markets are shared with the native-born, even for migrants increasingly at risk of detention and deportation.[8] Antidiscrimination law, including through Section 1981 and state statutes, can extend a form of financial citizenship to select noncitizens. Financial assimilation does not require linguistic, marital, or legal assimilation.

This Article seeks not to celebrate or bemoan financial assimilation but rather to describe its realities and underappreciated risks. For example, credit plays a central role in financial assimilation. Noncitizens seeking and using credit can create a positive financial-visibility feedback loop, whereby greater credit scores permit lower interest rates, longer repayment tenures, and higher loan limits.[9] More generally, since credit histories often determine access to housing, loans, and mobile phones, “newcomers must establish and develop their credit profiles to fully participate in civic life.”[10]

Even for nonimmigrants, the inclusion and visibility core to financial assimilation may be fraught. Agencies and scholars may center financial inclusion’s possibilities and promise, but critics take a less sanguine approach.[11] Credit, even from a bank, is still debt. For those at the margins, even low levels of debt may expose borrowers to financial isolation and exclusion rather than to financial health.[12] Others view lending to the poor as simply “a channel for wealth to leave economically vulnerable communities and travel upward toward the more affluent.”[13] Accordingly, critics may view debt as a poor (person’s) substitute for a stronger social safety net.[14] Financial inclusion can launder not only financial risk and uncertainty but also the absence of public provision.

For those with precarious presence in the United States, financial assimilation bears another dimension. Assimilation’s risks translate balance-sheet columns to detention-center bars. Noncitizens encounter unique financial systems, from illegal financial surveillance to the immigration detention bond system.[15]

This Article proceeds as follows. I begin in Part I by providing an overview of the concept of assimilation generally, from traditional metrics to immigrants’ symbolic consumer choices. I proceed to define financial assimilation as the processes through which noncitizens become embedded within American financial markets. Financial assimilation for noncitizens should not obscure how immigrants with different legal statuses or even nationalities might filter to different segments of society.

Part II traces financial assimilation’s beginnings within the process of migration itself, starting with refugees signing promissory notes for travel loans. However unique their purpose and source, these travel loans contain familiar provisions: principal amounts, repayment durations, loan modifications, and credit reporting. After arrival, migrants confront numerous immigration loan options offered by an array of institutions, with terms often dependent on the borrower’s immigration status in addition to loan purpose and traditional underwriting criteria. Here, a theme of this Article emerges: Financial assimilation reflects intra-migrant distinctions, as recently arrived refugees may face different terms than longer-residing and undocumented immigrants.

Part III moves beyond early experiences to financial assimilation’s day-to-day choreography—from consumer loans to small-business lending. I then focus on two significant facets of the law in financial assimilation: homebuying and credit discrimination. First, the federal GSEs do not purchase and securitize mortgages extended to undocumented noncitizens, leaving that population to pursue specialized lenders. But historical and emerging state proposals provide a more active role for state law and policy in immigrant homebuying. Second, litigants have successfully challenged financial institutions’ discriminatory lending practices targeting lawfully present noncitizens. As such, the judiciary has reconfigured financial assimilation as financial citizenry—demanding that select noncitizens be treated equivalently to citizens under financial, if not other, laws.

Part IV presents a more intimate manifestation of financial assimilation—private sponsorship’s tying of migrants’ financial lives to those of longer-residing Americans. After describing the longstanding role of sponsorship in the immigration system’s public charge exclusion, I focus on the recent growth of private sponsorship programs. Twenty-first-century programs—Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (P4CHNV); Uniting for Ukraine; and the Welcome Corps—provide American individuals and collectives the opportunity to sponsor migrants, either for temporary parole or for a more durable path to citizenship. While currently in abeyance (except for the P4CHNV program, which was terminated), these private sponsorship programs comport with international models, offloading responsibility for migrants from public systems onto private volunteers.

Lest we become too sanguine about financial assimilation, Part V sounds its alarms. Money transmitter companies have been co-opted into dragnet financial surveillance, resulting in legal challenges through both the courts and congressional inquiry. The realm of immigration detention bonds has similarly catalyzed consumer protection litigation. Detained noncitizens face a financial minefield for freedom, governed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s administrative framework. Financial assimilation means that noncitizens experience American consumer markets, including in their darkest forms.

Part VI concludes by conceptualizing a safer future for financial assimilation. Noncitizens’ financial lives will continue to shape our country, even or especially during periods of heightened federal immigration enforcement, and the law must continue to recognize and protect them. State agencies and private actors will prove pivotal in three ways. First, private actors can assert immigrant customers’ interests to resist federal exclusion and surveillance, including through regulatory processes. Second, states can utilize their own consumer protection agencies and laws to protect noncitizens from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices. Third and finally, states can operate as financial guarantors within existing federal frameworks, especially as those frameworks bear the weight of increased enforcement.

I. Defining Financial Assimilation

America remains a land of immigrants. The foreign-born account for 15 percent of the U.S. population.[16] While perhaps a small share in absolute terms, 15 percent far exceeds the global estimate of international migrants—over the past three decades, no more than 4 percent of people have moved their lives across a national border.[17] America is, comparatively, brimming with the foreign-born.

The perception is even more extreme. Americans believe immigrant prevalence to be more than three times the actual share.[18] Because of immigrants’ relative significance and salience in America, both scholars and the public question not only who immigrants are but who they become. This Part responds to that question through the vocabulary of “assimilation,” eventually tying that phenomenon to immigrants’ “financial assimilation.”[19]

A.   Assimilation

On entering a new society, migrants face an array of choices. Each choice brings them closer to the surrounding world—assimilating—or allows them to retain their distinctiveness.[20] Assimilation is not inherently desirable.[21] “Multiculturalism” connotes an alternative path.[22] If assimilation eliminates distinctions, multiculturalism preserves them,[23] often through diasporas.[24] The conceptual assimilation-multiculturalism binary has its critics, who instead view multiculturalism as offering immigrants “fairer terms” of assimilation.[25] Globalization also casts doubt on the neatness of assimilation as a category—modern transnational workers experience serial labor migration, not a single move to a permanent home.[26]

Researchers often define assimilation quantitatively, measuring if, how, and when immigrant communities resemble native communities.[27] Common metrics include spatial concentrations based on residential choices;[28] English-language fluency;[29] intermarriage rates;[30] or socioeconomic status, particularly educational attainment and earnings parity.[31] Some even study representation in national pastimes, like baseball.[32] Yet even if migrants meet quantitative measures of assimilation, studies of nonimmigrant perceptions reveal deeper boundaries.[33] Of course, native or more established communities are not a fixed baseline—they, like immigrants, also change. As one scholar describes the other side of assimilation,[34] immigration induces reactions and shifts among preexisting communities.[35]

The empirical history of assimilation suggests its persistence, uneven consequences, and mediation through community institutions. For example, economists have recently used digitized records on the arrival of Catholic clergy and churches across the United States to argue that Italian churches decreased Italian immigrants’ assimilation.[36] And yet this lack of assimilation at the turn of the twentieth century did not necessarily result in poorer economic outcomes.[37] More generally, researchers using data from millions of father-son pairs estimate that immigrants are moving into the middle class at roughly the same rates as a century ago, across nearly all countries of origin.[38]

In that sense, immigrants’ economic assimilation from the lower rungs is anti-assimilative relative to similarly disadvantaged native peers. Put differently, economic historians have found that “[i]n both the past and present, . . . the children of immigrants are more upwardly mobile than the children of the US-born.”[39]

Beyond regularly studied assimilation metrics, like income, lie cultural arenas, like naming.[40] A single person may change their name, as Jyoti becomes Jase and finally Jane.[41] Even while retaining one’s own name, an adult might choose differently for their children.[42] In the United States, immigrants continue this centuries-old practice of choosing “less foreign”–sounding names for their children.[43] Children may protest parents’ assimilative naming, and instead insist upon names from their perceived homelands.[44] A Rose by any other name—whether Radha or Roshna—might be as sweet, but not as assimilated.

Immigrants’ efforts to assimilate require complex choices in public spaces.[45] Some characterize such choices as “legal passing,” more a survival instinct or a temporary pressure than the more durable metamorphosis of assimilation.[46] For example, undocumented immigrants in Southern California revealed how they adapt both their automobiles and outfits to avoid deportation.[47] They may purchase a Mini Cooper because they believe (that society believes) “Mexicans never drive this kind of car,” thereby protecting the driver from being pulled over by law enforcement.[48] One spouse might pack the other “khakis and a dress shirt” and encourage the swapping of a “dirty landscaping uniform for the white-collar dress standard” to make the evening commute safer.[49] At the same time, for quinceañera dresses, Mexican-American immigrants may prefer more expensive Mexican-made alternatives to lower-cost Chinese-made dresses, even if the former require a loan.[50]

Beyond names and numbers, the law itself can reflect assimilation. Put differently, legal status is in itself a measure of immigrant assimilation, even beyond the ways in which it can facilitate further assimilation.[51] This includes the promise of citizenship, either through naturalization or through the (now-contested) principle of birthright citizenship.[52] A more legally tenuous immigration status that restricts travel, voting rights, or financial opportunities—the focus of this Article—renders the holder relatively unassimilated.

B.   Financial Assimilation

If “assimilation” refers to immigrant communities engaging with and potentially resembling native communities, I use “financial assimilation” to refer to immigrants’ engagement with American financial products and markets. In our modern economy, bank accounts and credit rule.[53] Indigenous communities were often literally reoriented towards private property and individual wages—“naturalization” processes for Native Americans included the receipt of a purse and a public oath recognizing the purse’s symbolism that “money you gain from your labor must be wisely kept.”[54] These processes, aimed to reshape Native American financial values, foreshadowed the immigrant financial assimilation I describe here.[55]

Some financial practices—like rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs); informal, community-based systems; and credit circles—persist in immigrant communities as a form of preliminary multiculturalism.[56] But noncitizens nevertheless engage our formal financial markets for residential mortgages, credit cards, money transmitters, and even (immigration) detention bonds.[57] The array of immigration and work authorization statuses means financial assimilation contains multiple processes, rather than only one.[58]

Credit plays a central, though not exclusive role, in financial assimilation and visibility. This can be seen on a literal level in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s 2015 report (corrected and updated in 2025).[59] Nearly a fifth of Americans were described as either “credit invisible,” lacking a credit history with any of the nationwide credit reporting agencies, or credit “unscorable,” meaning they had either “thin” files that lacked sufficient credit history or “stale” files that lacked more recent credit history.[60] Those lacking credit visibility were disproportionately low-income and non-White.[61] Federal law expressly permits “special purpose credit programs” to meet “social needs” and reach the “economically disadvantaged class[es],” potentially including those with limited credit history.[62]

Beyond visibility and possible financial stability,[63] credit brings status. Immigrants’ access to credit can be ethereal, signifying “dignity, respect, autonomy, and belonging.”[64] Accordingly, nonprofits focused on building community wealth must often emphasize that reducing debt, while valuable, will not alone build credit.[65] Where credit advocates embrace such optimism, critics see how credit not only generates additional debt but also sanitizes scarcity and inequality by exposing immigrants to further financial stresses.[66]

That brings us to two important themes. First, “segmented assimilation” rejects the assumption of a singular process of financial assimilation. Immigrants follow divergent trajectories vis-à-vis the heterogeneous native-born, whether that is to the middle class or to urban poverty.[67] Similarly, financial assimilation may be segmented.[68]

Some initial examples illustrate this point. For undocumented immigrants, financial assimilation may mean the uptake of financial products less often used by the native-born. For homebuying, undocumented immigrants seek Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) mortgages, which Fannie Mae cannot finance and securitize as it can the residential mortgages extended to citizens. These loans often accordingly contain less favorable terms, including higher interest rates.[69] For other immigrants, like green card holders or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, financial assimilation may encompass Fannie Mae–securitized loans unavailable to their undocumented peers.[70] And for immigrants of different nationalities, familiarity with and trust in financial institutions may vary across countries of origin.[71] Even among recent refugee waves, the vast majority of Ukrainians possess bank accounts, while very few Afghans do.[72]

Second, immigrants’ consumer finance carries weighty risks of surveillance and immigration enforcement. Financial assimilation may be a vise of exclusion rather than a vector of equality. Immigrants’ use of credit to avoid prison or purchase property does not guarantee increased prosperity, much less the same position as their native peers. The costs of financial assimilation can be measured not only in interest rates—but also in the risks of becoming a person of interest.

Alongside the usual private markets for financial data,[73] public-enforcement schemes target immigrants for financial surveillance.[74] “Information capitalism” refers to how finance and economic production have been “datafied” by profit-seeking enterprises.[75] The government also values this data, using financial surveillance for immigration enforcement among other things.[76] Financial assimilation’s risk of deportation provides new reasons to question the march toward “financial inclusion”[77] through data sharing and “open banking.”[78]

Financial assimilation’s segmented paths and risks surface in the markets discussed below. Some financial products are unique to immigrants. For example, Part II will discuss the financing of arrival flights and immigration-related fees. A birthright U.S. citizen typically begins their life here—they need not fly in from foreign lands. Yet this immigrant-specific consumption imports common financial precepts.

The second group of markets reflects financial activities immigrants share with the native-born: credit cards, student loans, and residential mortgages, for example.[79] To be clear, financial assimilation does not rely on linguistic assimilation, even as noncitizens navigate English-language financial institutions.[80] The language and terms of credit certainly differ, including among various classes of immigrants, but the fundamental transactions are similar. They too reveal how, as a descriptive matter, financial markets assimilate migrants.

With this definition of financial assimilation, I turn to financial assimilation’s granular practice.

II. Financing Migration

This Part focuses on two immigrant-specific markets—travel loans for humanitarian migrant arrivals and post-arrival immigration loans for various petitions and adjustments of status (beyond humanitarian migrants).[81] These loans begin financially assimilating immigrants. As will be discussed, however, migrants may confront different financial products and terms depending on their circumstances.

While these early credit extensions afford migrants financial visibility, not all should or will accept such visibility.[82] Those who pass between ports of entry without inspection or claims for asylum and remain “undocumented” may remain intentionally financially invisible. Beyond surveillance, migrants often go without debt—without car payments, credit cards, or even cable bills.[83] Even though they believe themselves to be fiscally “responsible” because they are not putting themselves into debt, their financial inactivity limits access to mortgages or loans.[84]

While the second Trump administration has issued an executive order to pause—“realign”—refugee admissions,[85] it is unlikely to be permanent. Rather, it echoes an earlier such pause in 2017.[86] Despite these political shifts, the multilateral Travel Loan Program described below has persisted for decades.

A.   Lending Before Arrival: Travel Loans

While the United States once generously funded “Freedom Flights” for refugees,[87] interest-free loans are the new norm.[88] Refugees often require loans because they face challenges to self-funding or self-financing their travel. Refugees interested in a travel loan must apply for one from the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Travel Loan Program, a program that pays for a family’s transportation in exchange for a promissory note.[89] IOM is a part of the United Nations System, and the IOM Constitution’s Preamble refers to “international financing of activities related to international migration.”[90] Even as IOM facilitates these financial products, the organization’s constitutional text only discusses financial regulation to the extent it governs the contributions of member states.[91]

The loan, while interest free, must be repaid, reflecting the United States Refugee Admissions Program’s “core belief . . . that refugees’ financial participation in making repayments . . . will strengthen their determination to make a success of their migration” and support loans to subsequent migrants.[92] The mechanics of these repayments have attracted criticism from immigration hawks.[93]

While refugees borrow now and pay it forward, they can negotiate bespoke terms. The IOM promissory note formalizes a six-month grace period before monthly payments are expected, with exceptions for financial hardship.[94] The repayment terms depend on the initial travel loan amount—monthly payments begin at $35 and usually top out at $160, with terms from three to ten years.[95] According to IOM’s self-proclaimed practice, terms are routinely adjusted and repayment histories are shared with TransUnion, a credit bureau.[96] The credit bureau reporting of the travel loans increases repayment’s significance and consequences: These loans are often immigrants’ first opportunity to start building their credit scores after they have moved to the United States.

Furthermore, refugee resettlement agencies help refugees integrate into not only local communities but also financial markets by serving as repayment intermediaries for these promissory notes.[97] In addition to explaining repayment procedures upon arrival, these agencies may have their own digital payment portals for immigrants to pay back their IOM promissory notes.[98] The intermediaries may also facilitate loan deferral requests, which are essentially amendments to the promissory note between the refugee and IOM.[99] These processes entrench immigrants in American financial markets, with travel loans serving as a seminal opportunity for immigrants to begin interacting and negotiating with financial intermediaries.

To conclude, U.S. refugees’ travel loan repayments—historically tens of millions of dollars per year[100]—represent not only “buy in” to their journey, but also the beginning of migrants’ formal U.S. credit history and avoidance of informal, “predatory” lending markets.[101] In providing debt reminders and credit renegotiation advice, resettlement agencies welcome refugees to their new financial lives.[102]

B.   Immigration Loans as Financial Bridges

After an immigrant’s arrival, many choose to take out additional loans to facilitate their ongoing immigration process and start building credit in America. Nonprofit organizations have ironically created a robust financial market for post-arrival immigrants by offering them opportunities to borrow and build credit through immigration-related loans.[103] One example is San Francisco’s Mission Asset Fund (MAF), a Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI).[104] MAF provides 0 percent loans to cover U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing fees—whether for citizenship, a green card, or even advance parole for deferred action recipients—which can exceed $1,000.[105] MAF reports payments to all three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.[106] Immigrants are thus given a preliminary method through which they can increment their credit scores to take out larger loans like mortgages.

Such financial programs have familiar documentation and identification requirements, but tailored to immigrants.[107] The usual government-issued identification requirement can be a driver’s license or passport but also a city ID or consular card.[108] Social Security numbers (SSNs) are not required.[109] And while these initial identification requirements may be flexible, the program-application forms mirror traditional financial information collection: Applicants are asked to provide information regarding their assets, liabilities, employment information, household formation details, and more.[110] Immigration loans thus bridge status-based flexibility with traditional underwriting criteria.

Other platforms provide immigration loans on similarly generous financial terms, but implicitly for more lawful immigrants. One Percent for America operates a similar but national program, providing 1 percent loans over a one-year repayment term for select USCIS fees.[111] The loans, however, are relevant only to immigrants with specific statuses, like green card holders seeking citizenship or DACA and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders seeking renewal.[112]

Some nonprofit organizations offer more inclusive lending for a greater number of services, but at significantly higher interest rates. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), through its Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), offers more market-rate interest rates, ranging from 4.99 to 6.99 percent, with a maximum five-year term.[113] Despite the less favorable terms, IRC CEO’s loans more expressly reach related non-USCIS fees, such as the fees for DNA testing or certified translations.[114]

Lawyers have also worked to make financing available for immigration-related legal services. Immigration lawyers themselves have noted how clients seeking to pay counsel “can’t access mainstream loan products.”[115] In response, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) joined with a CDFI to allow AILA member lawyers to offer clients loans that would cover immigration fees and lawyer costs—though at recent interest rates of 15.99 percent.[116]

The process of regularizing immigration status inherently begets a process of financial assimilation: Immigrants are asked to seek out financial information, build credit, and compare terms between American financial products that are often unique based on lending purpose. The relevant terms include not only the interest rate and repayment schedules, but what precisely the loan might cover—from USCIS fees to legal counsel. The market for immigration-services loans provides for immigrants’ entry into American finance—building both the practical repayment habits and formal credit reports that can support future mortgages and other loans.

III. The Process of Financial Assimilation

Migrants also need credit and financing for things that are not strictly migration related. They seek the same lives—with automobiles, homes, and everyday consumer goods—pursued by their citizen peers. This Part charts the process of financial assimilation through a focus on three legal arenas: everyday credit, from personal loans to credit cards; homebuying and the residential mortgage market; and financial antidiscrimination law.

A.   The Good(s) Life and Status Distinctions

America has embraced a “buy now, pay later” strategy,[117] with growing levels of household debt.[118] Immigrants not only face different terms of credit by endeavor or product, but also by immigration status.

Consider IRC’s interest rate preferences for “fresh” humanitarian migrants.[119] IRC offers small-dollar, zero-interest loans—a “credit building ladder”—created for the express purpose of facilitating successful repayment and credit score creation and improvement.[120] But, like traditional financial institutions, IRC offers more products. Rates are highest for personal loans, followed by auto loans, with education and training loans among the most affordable.[121]

IRC’s personal loans have a notable heterogeneity—interest rate discounts for two categories of immigrant applicants, despite the broader services and support IRC provides to immigrants of all statuses.[122] The first category is comprised of so-called “fresh starts,” which refers to applicants who entered the United States as humanitarian migrants (including refugees, asylees, parolees, or those with special immigrant visas) within the last two years, while the second category includes those who already have good credit, as demonstrated through favorable FICO scores.[123] The second category predictably allows IRC to offer discounts to more established immigrants who have non-stale credit files.[124] The first category’s preferencing of new humanitarian arrivals reflects IRC’s mission of supporting newcomers—but only some.[125]

IRC’s focus on recently arrived humanitarian migrants begs the question of how other immigrant groups are treated by various providers. Consider SoFi, a twenty-first-century financial services company specializing in student loan refinancing, which includes among its “core values” the platitude that “everyone should feel welcome.”[126] The for-profit SoFi nonetheless requires a showing of valid immigration status for student loan refinancing assistance,[127] even as undocumented immigrants attend higher education and are expressly offered “tuition equity” in dozens of states.[128] Beyond higher education, SoFi requires a Social Security number for its credit card offerings.[129]

In connection with these credit card offerings, SoFi perpetuates misunderstanding about its—and noncitizens’—legal obligations. It incorrectly claims on its FAQ page that “[a]ll financial institutions are required by federal law to collect a customer’s SSN to verify identity when opening an account.”[130] But there are non-SSN means of meeting financial institutions’ identity-verification requirements.[131]

SoFi’s focus on Social Security numbers is not universal. Many credit card issuers have at least some products expressly available for those with Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs), who are often presumed to have little or no credit history.[132] These products may be secured credit cards, as opposed to unsecured credit cards, but both types of products build credit histories.[133] While even immigrants with citizenship may be less likely to use credit cards than their native peers, some economists estimate that longer tenures in the United States predict greater credit card usage.[134]

Beyond consumption, immigrants’ business aspirations require financial products. Economists note immigrants’ disproportionate rate of entrepreneurship to argue that immigrants create, rather than “take,” jobs.[135] For humanitarian migrants, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) facilitates Refugee Microenterprise Development Grants, which range from larger business expansion loans to smaller “credit building” loans.[136] In a notice in the Federal Register, ORR reported that the grantees leveraged millions of dollars in ORR financing to receive even more money from other sources. This ultimately provided over ten thousand refugees with entrepreneurial skills and financial knowledge over the course of fifteen years.[137] ORR’s mandated progress reports for grantees expressly ask them to estimate the “average change in credit score” for individual loan recipients.[138] A loan repayment rate of close to 100 percent[139] begets community employment and knowledge as well as entrepreneurs’ improved credit.

Post-arrival credit markets reveal distinctions based not only on the credit applicant’s purpose but also on the applicant’s immigration status. The immigration status distinctions arise even more forcefully in high-profile markets like residential mortgages.

B.   At Home with the Financially Documented

The residential mortgage market for noncitizens partly responds to their unique travails as renters. Famously, one municipality sought to outright fine landlords who knowingly rented their properties to undocumented immigrants, though the restriction was ultimately struck down by the Third Circuit in Lozano v. City of Hazleton.[140] Despite its ability to limit aggressive market discrimination, federal law has excluded many classes of even lawfully present noncitizens from housing benefits through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).[141]

Thus, as federal statutes and aggressive municipalities limit noncitizen rental options, housing finance and homeownership offer permanency. But even the mortgages that immigrants take out may be stratified based on a given borrower’s immigration status.

Most citizen homebuyers seek residential mortgages implicitly backed by a publicly financed secondary market. The government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, purchase and securitize these eligible (which I also refer to as conventional or traditional) mortgages, creating financial support for retail underwriting.[142] That public backing provides benefits to borrowers. Citizenship is not an express requirement, though only certain lawful immigration statuses meet GSE requirements. For example, Fannie Mae expressly notes its willingness to purchase and securitize DACA recipients’ mortgages as part of its longstanding criteria for noncitizen eligibility.[143]

Relatively few noncitizens can access these securitized mortgages. For noncitizens ineligible for GSE-supported mortgages, the private market offers a few options, including in the form of Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) loans. These loans are so named because they do not require the Social Security numbers implicated in conventional loans. Rather, an ITIN—issued by the IRS to noncitizens without Social Security numbers who nonetheless have U.S. tax filing obligations—can suffice.[144]

Such ITIN loans, a growing market, are often offered on predictably worse terms than conventional mortgages.[145] For example, mortgage companies offer mortgage products for those in the United States with an ITIN,[146] but those products have credit score cutoffs higher than the mortgage companies’ conventional loan products.[147] Similarly, some banks expressly advertise “loans for borrowers without Social Security numbers” but with stricter credit score minimums than for conventional products.[148]

Even so-called ITIN mortgages can have eligibility requirements that exclude some immigrants or ITIN holders. For instance, one broker and lender licensed in multiple states offers an ITIN loan product yet nonetheless requires “legal residency.”[149] Since legal residency can inhere without a Social Security number, these products reach more immigrant borrowers than if a Social Security number were required, but they still exclude undocumented borrowers with ITINs.[150] ITIN loans thus expand the pool of mortgage borrowers while maintaining traditional underwriting tools like credit scores and income histories as well as traditional loan features, like loan-to-value (LTV) limits.[151]

State politics can shape the public’s role in ITIN lending and secondary financing. Wisconsin was once at the national vanguard when, in 2004, the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority began underwriting mortgages to undocumented immigrant borrowers who lacked Social Security numbers.[152] Even as Republican legislators moved to ban the loans, the Wisconsin Bankers Association joined the Madison City Council to support the program.[153]

Private actors involved in the ITIN loans have taken a variety of stances, from openly supporting to actively obscuring to carefully monitoring. Some lenders have defiantly stood against death threats, while “silent partner[s]” have obscured their loan holdings to avoid backlash, including depressed demand for their other financial offerings.[154] In the secondary market, while the GSEs securitize only traditional loans, private label ITIN mortgage-backed securities have emerged. These ITIN loan securitizers now disclose “deportation risk” in their residential mortgage-backed securities offerings based on presidential immigration politics.[155]

Whatever the federal politics, public grants and programs for migrants’ private asset building continue to percolate at the state level. While Midwestern states like Wisconsin and Illinois were once pioneers,[156] California has been the most prominent state considering expanding housing finance assistance to undocumented immigrants. California’s Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loans facilitate primary residence purchases for first-generation homebuyers subject to certain income limits.[157] Within those income limits, the amount of repayment due at the sale varies by income. Indeed, the percentage of appreciation claimed by the state increases based on the underwriting income.[158] While the program originally required the borrower to be a citizen or fall within a few categories of lawfully present immigrants,[159] California legislators have sought to expand the program to undocumented immigrants.[160]

Asset building as assimilation drives the legislative push. The lead sponsor of the California bill argued that “[h]omeownership has historically been the primary means of accumulating generational wealth in the United States [and] [t]he social and economic benefits of homeownership should be available to everyone.”[161] Realtors also supported expanding the program, but other politicians opposed the program in ambiguously nativist terms: “We have a huge housing crisis in California and anything we can do to get people into housing we should do. However, we should help our own first.”[162] Governor Newsom ultimately vetoed the bill by generically noting the “finite funding available” and expressing concern that “expanding program eligibility must be carefully considered within the broader context of the annual state budget.”[163]

As migrants seek homes, they confront intra-migrant distinctions in both primary and secondary financing. Inclusive products like ITIN loans offer flexible underwriting criteria but inferior terms. The housing market captures a form of immigration federalism whereby state inclusion of noncitizens can go beyond federal models.[164] States and localities continue to propose housing-finance assimilation.

C.   Financial Discrimination Against Noncitizens

From nonprofits offering humanitarian migrants personal loan discounts to mortgage companies offering ITIN loans, private actors shape noncitizens’ financial lives. Private actors may face statutory liability for discriminatory policies, while public policies may be subject only to select constitutional requirements like the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantees. This Section focuses on financial antidiscrimination law for noncitizens, particularly its emerging vitality under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and state statutes like California’s Unruh Act.

Section 1981 guarantees all persons within the United States the same right “to make and enforce contracts . . . and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by [W]hite citizens.”[165] In Runyon v. McCrary, the Supreme Court found that Section 1981 precludes private nonsectarian schools from racially discriminating against prospective students.[166] The Court’s finding that schools’ race-based selection violates the guarantee of contractual rights “enjoyed by [W]hite citizens” begs the question of whether financial institutions’ immigration status-based selection can raise similar concerns.[167]

Moreover, Section 1981 could provide redress for alienage discrimination throughout a financial transaction.[168] Consider class action lawsuits recently filed by immigrants with DACA, a status offering work authorization (and valid Social Security number) but not a pathway to permanent residency.[169] In one such case, the named plaintiff, a museum program administrator, had successfully opened a checking account with the defendant credit union but was nonetheless denied an auto loan—despite having a high credit score.[170] While the plaintiff had originally received a congratulatory email approval from a loan specialist at the credit union for a rate of 6.4 percent, an ultimate denial led the plaintiff to secure an inferior outside option at over 9 percent.[171] Accordingly, the plaintiff sued the credit union for alienage discrimination under Section 1981 for the lack of an equal and full review of their credit application.[172] The plaintiff’s legal immigration status did not insulate them from the credit union’s discrimination.

In addition to the federal law claims, the plaintiff brought parallel claims under state law, here California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.[173] The Unruh Act expressly prohibits business discrimination on the basis of national origin and “immigration status,” among other grounds,[174] and statutorily provides attorney’s fees and up to treble damages.[175] (A similar class action in New York brought discrimination claims under the New York State Human Rights Law.[176])

Class action litigation under Section 1981 and state statutes has pushed large corporations to lend to immigrants more equitably. For example, DACA recipients brought a class action lawsuit against Discover Bank, alleging illegal discrimination based on immigration status in violation of Section 1981 and California’s Unruh Act. In particular, the plaintiffs alleged that Discover Bank “den[ied] full access to student loans, loans consolidating and refinancing pre-existing student loans, and other loan and credit products, including mortgage refinancing and home equity credit lines” to applicants who were neither citizens nor lawful permanent residents.[177] Ultimately, Discover Bank settled, not only paying damages but also agreeing to “amend its lending practices to treat individuals with DACA status on terms comparable to U.S. citizens.”[178]

Section 1981 and state statutes reflect primary, but not the only, sources of financial antidiscrimination protection for immigrants. While the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) does not employ the same language of “citizen” as Section 1981, ECOA does prohibit credit discrimination based on “national origin.”[179] Accordingly, a joint statement by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice reminded creditors that, while consideration of immigration status is not prohibited outright, “a blanket policy of refusing to consider applications from certain groups of noncitizens regardless of the credit qualifications of individual borrowers within that group . . . may risk violating ECOA.”[180] Even as the joint letter was withdrawn (amidst a general withdrawal of guidance documents), immigrants remain protected under ECOA’s antidiscrimination umbrella.[181]

Noncitizens can, and continue to, use the courts and antidiscrimination law to advance a vision of financial assimilation as financial citizenry: being treated akin to citizens under financial, if not other, laws.

IV. Private Sponsorship as Intimate Financial Assimilation

Destination countries prefer financial assimilation to financial reliance. When migrants navigate credit and other markets, they preserve the public fisc. Financial assimilation potentially alleviates a common, if crude, concern that “poorly assimilated immigrants are a drag on the state.”[182] Even the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “supports self-sufficiency.”[183]

This Part begins by describing the evolving “public charge” tests in immigration law, a longstanding effort by public authorities to both emphasize immigrant self-sufficiency and offload failures therein to private sponsors. It then proceeds to discuss the more intensive roles for private sponsorship in modern parole and humanitarian migration programs, even as some are paused.[184] Private sponsorship has thus morphed from offering substitute safety nets to underwriting primary forms of migration.

A.   The Private Obligations Behind “Public Charge”

“Public charge” laws, reflecting disapproval of noncitizens’ use of public resources, evolved over time. Congress introduced the term in 1882, prohibiting immigration by “any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.”[185] The nineteenth-century federal law built on preexisting state-level exclusions, which reflected longstanding concerns about immigrants’ self-reliance and self-selection.[186] More than 150 years later, the term persists in federal law, rendering inadmissible any noncitizen who is “likely at any time to become a public charge.”[187] This inadmissibility ground arises throughout the migration process, from immigrants seeking visas in far-off consular offices to those lawfully in the United States but seeking adjustment of status to permanent residency.[188]

The regulatory process of defining “public charge” pitted recent presidential administrations against one another. Prior to the first Trump administration, administrative guidance defined a public charge as a noncitizen “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either (i) the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or (ii) institutionalization for long-term care at government expense.”[189] In contrast to this “cash assistance,” medical care or food and housing assistance would not adversely affect a noncitizen’s public charge determination.[190]

The first Trump administration sought to erect stricter “self-sufficiency” requirements, including through the use of credit histories.[191] The 2019 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) final rule described how “a lower credit score or negative credit history in the United States may indicate that a person[] . . . may not be self-sufficient.”[192] Taken literally, the government seemed unwilling to underwrite an immigrant’s future in America if they had trouble repaying in the past. The final rule also provided for the consideration of non-cash benefits in public charge determinations[193] and limited deference to statutorily required affidavits of support,[194] which historically allowed migrants to overcome adverse determinations.[195]

The first Trump administration also sought to revive a defunct statutory scheme for which USCIS had long lacked a process. Specifically, if immigrants were otherwise inadmissible, they might now be asked to post a “public charge bond” of a minimum $8,100.[196] These bonds could help noncitizens rectify poor credit histories and other negative factors. However, these credit history and high bond provisions did not fully materialize. After numerous lawsuits, USCIS, under the Biden administration, removed the regulations.[197]

That is not to say that the Biden administration, however concerned about the “chilling effects” of the 2019 DHS final rule, completely changed course.[198] The centrality of the statutorily required affidavit of support was restored, as was a more practical and sympathetic approach to some public benefits, viewing them as a potential conduit, as opposed to obstacle, to self-sufficiency.[199] But Biden-era rules remained concerned about cash benefits.[200] While literal Declarations of Self-Sufficiency are discontinued,[201] the public charge bond as a possible requirement for noncitizens persists, though the minimum bond amount is significantly lower than the $8,100 minimum introduced by the first Trump administration.[202] One of the second Trump administration’s first executive orders urged “the administration of all bonds that [immigration agencies] may lawfully require to administer the provisions of the INA.”[203]

The public charge laws have thus exacted considerable financial bonds and indicia of self-reliance. Even when assimilation with certain non-cash benefits programs is tolerated, and perhaps even encouraged, access to cash assistance seems out of favor.[204] Noncitizens may be asked to offer “downpayments” in the form of bonds, even as credit histories are largely ignored. If the public charge rules tell us anything about financial assimilation, it is that the government continues to seek detailed information about noncitizens’ finances and financial interactions with the state, nudging them away from public programs available to citizens and towards private resources.

B.   The Public Charge for Private Sponsorship

By limiting public reliance through the “public charge” statutory provision and rules, immigration law appears to embrace private alternatives. This approach reached an apex during the past decade, as the United States finally followed other countries’ lead for private sponsorship of immigrants.[205]

The new private-sponsorship approach was a hallmark of an early Biden administration executive order that sought to restore the United States’ legacy in refugee resettlement.[206] The President tasked cabinet members to enhance the United States Refugee Admissions Program through “community sponsorship and co-sponsorship models” as well as “new public-private partnerships.”[207] Shortly thereafter, three models for the private sponsorship of noncitizens were born: Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (P4CHNV); Uniting for Ukraine; and the Welcome Corps. The former two programs focus specifically on providing temporary parole for sponsored migrants, while the latter acts as a pathway for refugees already approved for permanent resettlement. Given their lack of express statutory authorization, these programs face discontinuity as administrations change.[208]

These private sponsorship models sought to bridge the partisan divide.[209] Specifically, the United States introduced these private sponsorship programs to expand parole (a temporary legal status) while restricting access to asylum and reducing the number of migrants appearing at the southern border.[210] Conservative commentators and think tanks accordingly praised the Democratic president’s expansion of parole programs as “the most remarkable immigration policy success story we’ve witnessed in decades” and a model for future immigration law.[211]

The sponsorship programs—whether for temporary parole or permanent resettlement—leverage private resources to reduce economic barriers to migration, beyond filing fees.[212] But they do so by connecting the finances and lives of noncitizens with longer-residing hosts, assimilating them intimately.

Parole programs like P4CHNV and Uniting for Ukraine have facilitated hundreds of thousands of arrivals in only a few years.[213] Nonetheless, their temporality manifests in two ways. First, as discretionary exercises of executive authority, subsequent presidents may try to terminate their predecessors’ program: for example, the first Trump administration tried to undo the Obama administration’s introduction of a parole program for Central American minors, which was then later revived by the Biden administration.[214] More recently, most of the parole programs have been put in abeyance via executive order.[215] Second, parole itself only provides a temporary lawful status and work authorization in the United States with no pathway to permanent residency, much less citizenship. As USCIS emphasizes, “Parole is not intended to be used solely to avoid normal visa processing procedures and timelines, to bypass inadmissibility waiver processing, or to replace established refugee processing channels.”[216] Beneficiaries of parole thus must eventually reckon with how to maintain lawful status.[217]

P4CHNV and Uniting for Ukraine (announced in 2022 after Russia’s invasion) share unique features.[218] They allowed nationals from the relevant five countries (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and separately, Ukraine) outside the United States to benefit from a two-year parole into the country, so long as they had U.S. “supporters” who knew them.[219] A U.S. supporter must meet a lawful status requirement (though citizenship is not required) and demonstrate the ability to financially support beneficiaries.[220]

These demonstrations of financial support require more than affidavits—they must share intimate financial information reminiscent of underwriting. Through the Form I-134A, supporters must submit (collective) information pertaining to current employment, other income sources, and non-employment-based assets.[221] Supporters must also briefly answer questions as to how they intend “to ensure the beneficiary has adequate financial support to cover their basic living needs” and “housing needs,” as well as to help in “securing employment opportunities once authorized to work.”[222]

Legal scholars have generally viewed these new sponsor-based parole programs as helpful supplements for an ailing humanitarian immigration system. Conservative legal scholars have characterized them as “valuable potential models for future immigration policy.”[223] Despite the quick and significant uptake of these programs, some refugee advocates have noted the inequitable singling out of particular nationalities and the “arbitrary” nature of two-year limits on humanitarian parole.[224] Other immigration law scholars, while conceding temporality, have nonetheless described the programs as “outstanding.”[225]

Beyond the time and nationality limits of temporary parole lies the Welcome Corps’s approach of permanent resettlement. The Welcome Corps offers longer-term solutions for humanitarian migrants but also imposes greater financial requirements on sponsors.

Founded in 2023, the program diverges from P4CHNV and Uniting for Ukraine along five primary axes. First, the Welcome Corps requires collective action among supporters—of at least five U.S. residents—as opposed to permitting individual sponsors.[226] Second, it focuses on refugees more generally, rather than those fleeing armed conflict. Beneficiaries must possess official refugee or asylum-seeking documents from either the UNHCR or the government under which they currently live.[227]

The third difference is central to understanding the Welcome Corps’s role in financial assimilation: more stringent and explicit financial sponsorship thresholds and duties. Supporters must again utilize the same Form I-134A, but unlike the more holistic financial evaluation in P4CHNV and Uniting for Ukraine, the Welcome Corps requires a minimum of $2,425 per refugee (with some financial subsidies available) and a set of defined duties for the refugees’ first ninety days.[228] Some “[s]ponsorship [d]uties” focus on the rental housing market, including “fees, such as security deposits,” as well as “credit scores[] or proof of income.”[229] Sponsors share more information with the government to participate in noncitizens’ resettlement, but they also share tailored financial guidance and knowledge with the noncitizens themselves.[230]

The fourth and fifth differences—openness to nationality and a smaller scale—also contribute to stronger financial ties. Unmoored from nationality-specific restrictions, the more universalist Welcome Corps scale is nonetheless intentionally small: The Department of State hoped, in the first year, to encourage ten thousand Americans to step forward as private sponsors to about five thousand refugees.[231]

As the second Trump administration has sought to end humanitarian parole programs, sponsors have taken on a new role: seeking to protect the programs and the migrants that they had sponsored. The primary lawsuit challenging the termination of P4CHNV, Uniting for Ukraine, and similar programs brings together migrant plaintiffs with their sponsors, arguing that the terminations were arbitrary and capricious.[232]

This form of financial assimilation—tying the finances and fates of noncitizens to willing, longer-residing individuals—has the potential to attract bipartisan support for humanitarian pathways.[233] Despite pauses, sponsorship models incorporate the private sector and volunteerism into immigration policy and are likely to reemerge.

V. The Cautions of Financial Assimilation

The promise of financial assimilation should not distract from its perils. Sponsored migration and mortgages create paper (and digital) trails that expose noncitizens to surveillance. Moreover, immigrants’ financial lives assimilate to familiar forms of policing and confinement that nonetheless harm them through novel methods. This Part offers two examples of the risks of mainstream financial assimilation. The first Section discusses public authorities’ bulk financial surveillance of money transmitter companies, which has resulted in both consumer protection lawsuits and congressional inquiries. The second Section focuses on the use of financial assimilation as a carceral tool: the markets and legal frameworks for immigration detention bonds, which permit detained noncitizens temporary freedom. Both examples remind us that financial assimilation is not inherently a normatively desirable phenomenon.

A.   Surveilling Assimilation

As immigrants formalize financial participation, they make their mark, regardless of legal status. That has its risks: The creation of detailed financial histories has led to federal immigration authorities and state law enforcement illegally accessing those histories. This bulk surveillance and dissemination has led to criminal charges against some of the surveilled individuals and may have been the catalyst for immigration arrests. Financial surveillance reminds us that immigrants’ financial assimilation generates valuable and dangerous data.

This Section examines one facet of assimilation that has led to surveillance: utilization of well-known money transmitters as opposed to informal channels. For decades, the resulting transactions data has fed a law enforcement database, creating legal problems for individual remittance senders and money transmitter companies. Federal remittance surveillance long predates the impending federal remittance tax.[234] Neither congressional inquiry nor consumer litigation have fully ended this surveillance, but they have garnered public awareness and at least temporary federal disentanglement.

1.   Surveilling Money Transmitters

The dragnet surveillance of money transmitters began in Arizona but has stretched far beyond. In 2006, the Arizona Attorney General (AG) requested the financial transactions data from Western Union under a state anti-racketeering statute governing financial institutions.[235] Specifically, the Arizona AG sought data on wire transfers made for “$300 or more to any location in Sonora, Mexico from any Western Union location worldwide for a three-year period.”[236] Western Union successfully challenged the effort as overbroad. While the court agreed with the state that the subpoena power is not limited to investigating “[s]pecific [c]riminal [i]ncidents”[237] and appreciated that “law-enforcement agencies may want to ‘keep ahead’ of the traffickers,” the court vacated a lower court’s order enforcing the request, noting that the statutory power was not “limitless.”[238] As state law enforcement continued to push overbroad requests for immigrants’ financial information, the courts kept them in check.

Stymied by the courts, Arizona changed course: It included data-collection provisions in a settlement with Western Union concerning alleged insufficiencies in its anti-money laundering efforts.[239] Beyond the monetary damages,[240] the settlement also vindicated Arizona’s 2006 transaction data request. Under the 2010 settlement, Western Union agreed to provide “full transaction data relating to all person-to-person transactions sent to or from authorized delegate/Agent locations within the Southwest Border Area from January l, 2005, to the present and throughout the term of this Engagement involving transactions in amounts of $500 or more.”[241] So began a decade of sharing individual financial histories, often of unsuspecting immigrants sending routine remittances.[242]

Even beyond its breadth, the data collection and sharing was done through a non-governmental third party, raising concerns about whether the third party’s privacy protections abided by internal agency regulations.[243] The data itself became formalized through a repository created in 2014—the Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC).[244] That obscure database, while created at the behest of Arizona law enforcement, ultimately allowed access to hundreds of federal, state, and local U.S. law enforcement agencies across the country, with little judicial oversight.[245] Beyond Western Union, other money transfer companies also shared their transaction data, resulting in over 100 million records.[246]

When the settlement agreement expired in 2019, the Arizona Attorney General convinced the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to use its federal authority to continue collecting and sharing data.[247] The Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Phoenix Field Office abused an obscure statutory provision, 19 U.S.C. § 1509, to issue administrative summonses to the transmitters.[248] Never mind that this statutory provision is generally used for a much narrower and niche purpose—to procure records for customs disputes.[249] The financial transaction histories of a large group of immigrants became virtually public knowledge among the hundreds of law enforcement agencies nationwide with unfettered access.[250]

2.   The Legal Challenges and Remedies to Financial Surveillance

Section 1509 does not contemplate administrative summons as a tool for broad, prospective gathering of bulk financial data on untold numbers of unidentified individuals. For example, in 2017, the Office of the Inspector General for DHS published a report in response to other incidents of CBP abusing its authority under 19 U.S.C. § 1509.[251] In doing so, the Inspector General emphasized “the limited contexts in which Section 1509 Summonses may properly be used.”[252] (TRAC’s data collection falls outside those limited contexts.[253]) Alongside the limits on Section 1509, both federal and state laws purport to protect consumers’ financial privacy, even if the limits of law-enforcement snooping are ill-defined.[254]

In 2022, a U.S. senator wrote to the Inspector General of DHS about TRAC’s new abuse of Section 1509 authority.[255] Despite DHS’s significant facilitation, it is unclear who beyond a small cadre at HSI knew of, much less approved, the bulk surveillance and the third-party hosting. DHS leadership, including at the Office of the General Counsel, had apparently little awareness before the legislative inquiry.[256] Moreover, while this sort of bulk surveillance has placed many agencies under legal fire for exceeding their statutory authority, the financial transactions data here reaches another order of magnitude. Upon the legislative inquiry, HSI terminated its involvement with the program in January 2022.[257]

But the damage had been done for over a decade, leading to a federal lawsuit. Defying skeptical commentary on remittance senders’ financial privacy claims,[258] the immigrant consumers cleared a substantive hurdle when the district court found that plaintiffs had alleged violations of the California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), for which they could seek relief under the “unlawful” prong of California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL).[259] Because the consumers “would not have paid Western Union to process the transactions, and would instead have searched for alternative ways of sending their money,” they had alleged an injury from the transmitters’ alleged violations—and therefore had a cause of action to enforce FIPA.[260] The court delayed its analysis of Western Union’s effort to cloak itself in absolute civil immunity “because its disclosures were pursuant to Arizona court orders.”[261] Because those orders were pursuant to a settlement into which Western Union had voluntarily entered, the transmitter could not automatically establish immunity.[262]

It is not clear when—or if—that delayed analysis will come. Having lost on substance, the transmitters erected a procedural roadblock, arguing that Arizona was a necessary party to resolve the case.[263] They argued that “Money Transfer Defendants would be stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place of either refusing to comply with Arizona’s subpoenas or violating . . . FIPA.”[264] Because Arizona (even under newly elected Democratic leadership) refused to waive its sovereign immunity to defend its actions, the court dismissed the lawsuit “in equity and good conscience.”[265]

Immigrant consumers may still be vindicated. The district court dismissed the claims without prejudice, recognizing that plaintiffs may obtain relief in a different venue.[266] However, one casualty of the stalled civil litigation is that the full effects of the TRAC database remain uncertain. Several criminal charges expressly relied on the data illegally procured and posted in TRAC, but many others likely used TRAC as part of the investigatory process.[267] DHS’s use of the remittance data further suggests that it may have led to immigration enforcement and removal.

Revelation of the use of TRAC may offer some relief to criminal defendants and migrants facing removal. While violations of statutory requirements—here 19 U.S.C. § 1509—do not automatically offer the suppression remedies attendant to violations of the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court (in a case involving a noncitizen defendant) has reaffirmed that statutory violations can, in certain limited circumstances, be the basis for such suppression.[268] More recently, the Ninth Circuit has gone further, reaffirming suppression as a remedy in removal hearings for violations of immigration regulations.[269]

Financial surveillance reminds us of how immigrants’ financial transactions may be illegally collected and used against them, creating liabilities for money transmitters and unsuspecting immigrants alike.

B.   Carceral Bonds

Criminal charges often result in pretrial detention, with one’s freedom partly predicated on one’s finances.[270] But a similar system has emerged in the purportedly civil arena of immigration[271]—at any moment, nearly forty thousand people are in ICE custody across over one hundred detention facilities nationally.[272] These individuals, if even eligible for release, must navigate the submarket for immigration detention bonds.[273]

1.   Immigration Detention Bonds

According to ICE, immigration bonds fundamentally allow the agency to save on the costs of detaining noncitizens by facilitating their release.[274] After apprehension, either DHS or the immigration courts may offer a migrant an opportunity for release, contingent on provision of bond.[275] Deportation proceedings may move forward, regardless of any bond determinations or detention of the migrant.[276]

The robustness of judicial review of immigrant detention and the underlying presumption of liberty remain tenuous.[277] In extreme cases, the Supreme Court has reminded agencies and lower courts that the length of detention may raise constitutional or statutory questions under the INA.[278] However, in Jennings v. Rodriguez, the Court found that a federal court of appeals “erroneously concluded that periodic bond hearings are required under the immigration provisions,” refusing to provide constitutional safeguards for mandatorily detained immigrants.[279] The absence of periodic bond hearings for mandatory, longer-term detainees elucidates freedom in immigration detention.[280] As the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) expands the classes of immigrants subject to mandatory detention, the absence of bond hearings further confines and silences immigrants.[281]

For non-mandatory detention, ICE may parole immigrants from detention for free (similar to being released on one’s own recognizance and distinct from USCIS granting parole into the United States on humanitarian grounds).[282] Absent parole, ICE reviews the noncitizen’s flight risk and danger to the community to determine bond eligibility.[283] As such, unlike in the criminal bail setting, administrative (ICE) officers, rather than judges, govern detention.[284] After a DHS official formalizes the officer’s decision,[285] a noncitizen may request a “bond hearing,” in which an immigration judge may reconsider the bond amount set by DHS.[286] While the Ninth Circuit has made express the need to consider financial ability to pay and alternative conditions of release in setting immigration detention bond amounts, other circuits have not followed suit.[287]

For noncitizens, liberty’s faltering place comes at a high—and often unaffordable—price. Noncitizens are released from detention upon an eligible party (“obligor”) posting bond.[288] In addition to citizens or lawfully present noncitizens, obligors might include the agents of certified surety companies, who need not post cash and who charge a nonrefundable percentage of the bond amount.[289] According to ICE data, from October 2016 to December 2023, a quarter of a million immigration bonds were posted to the tune of $2 billion.[290]

ICE financially benefits regardless of the outcome. If the immigrant appears upon ICE’s demand, or the case is otherwise terminated, then the bond is terminated and funds returned.[291] Yet return of the bond payment is rarely automatic, instead requiring multiple affirmative steps by the obligor. As a consequence, hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed bonds remain in DHS accounts.[292] If the bonded noncitizen does not appear, then the bond is breached, and the amount becomes due, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for ICE.[293] The detention of noncitizens operates as both a deprivation of individual liberty and as a lucrative financial resource for immigration enforcement agencies.[294]

2.   Consuming Detention

Noncitizens eligible for and financially able to post bond also confront surveillance—by intermediaries who assure financial obligors of noncitizens’ appearance in immigration proceedings. The for-profit Libre by Nexus (now known as Libre) is a significant immigration-bond market actor, controversially adopting the tagline “Reuniting Families. Defending Immigrant Rights.”[295] Libre by Nexus is not the actual obligor, but rather a surveillance intermediary between the immigrant and the bond-company obligor. Libre customers ultimately pay hundreds of dollars monthly to rent a GPS-enabled shackle over many years, though many do not understand the purpose of these fees.[296]

The CFPB successfully brought a lawsuit with partner states against Libre by Nexus, alleging deceptive and abusive acts or practices, such as falsely promising legal representation; inaccurately stating the purpose of migrants’ monthly fees; offering only English-language contracts to non-English speakers; and threatening debt collection, harm to detainees’ credit, and even deportation for nonpayment of GPS-enabled shackle fees.[297]

Libre by Nexus’s consumer financial misconduct cost it a nearly billion-dollar judgment as well as an end to its practices.[298] In 2024, after findings of civil contempt and a default judgment, the district court ordered Libre by Nexus, its parent company, and principals to collectively pay $200 million in redress to the CFPB for affected consumers and the states, as well as state and federal penalties.[299] Beyond damages, the court offered broad injunctive relief, including prohibitions on misrepresentation pertaining to the payments’ purpose (which went to the GPS-enabled shackle, not the immigration bond) and limitations on the provision of legal services, debt collection actions, and interactions with credit reporting agencies.[300] Ironically, the demise of Libre’s consumer abuses has come alongside increased GPS surveillance of immigrants by the government itself.[301]

Immigrant detention is also a system of immigrant finance.[302] Courts and consumer protection law protect noncitizens from deceptive and abusive financial practices in the immigration-bond system. Assimilating immigrants into America’s carceral state means assimilating them into the punishing market for carceral bonds.

VI. The Future of Financial Assimilation

Fortified borders can ebb, but not extinguish, a land of immigrants.[303] As one constitutional law scholar observed at the end of the twentieth century, “a nation as large as the United States cannot put walls around its perimeter. No matter how much money it invests in border control, [noncitizens] will be able to enter illegally.”[304] Financial assimilation is a descriptive reality, weaving noncitizens’ lives into a web of federal regulators, state laws, and private actors. Federal immigration enforcement may sever threads, but, as history shows us, it cannot destroy the web, much less noncitizens’ existence among us.[305] Rather, enforcement reconfigures the web and may even lead to increases in certain types of financial activity.[306]

While constitutional law will often take center stage as an authority for liberal resistance,[307] the protectors of financial assimilation may lie elsewhere, particularly in the states and in private actors. The markets and facets of financial assimilation described in this Article suggest three normative insights for the future.

First, private sector actors, protective of their customer base and profits, may challenge federal exclusions and financial surveillance. For one, financial institutions can emphasize, and have emphasized, noncitizen financial inclusion. The Department of the Treasury invited public comment on a national strategy for financial inclusion, as required by the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act.[308] While the invitation noted “immigrants” generally as a population of interest,[309] a national network of credit unions submitted a letter pointing to financial products for undocumented immigrants specifically.[310] By enumerating “mortgage loans, including for ITIN holders” as among the “[k]ey products and services that everyone should have ready and affordable access to,” the network leveraged its financial experiences to advance those of its noncitizen customers.[311] The letter reflected a broad, collective, though admittedly low-stakes mechanism for influencing federal policy.

Consider also a narrower but more forceful intervention: how fintech remittance providers challenge federal anti-money laundering (AML) obligations to maintain their noncitizens’ customer trust. In a comment letter opposing a lower proposed threshold for the Bank Secrecy Act Funds Recordkeeping and Transfer Rule,[312] the online remittance service provider Remitly argued that its digital-only, no-cash-accepted model already “provide[d] an additional layer of security” against money-laundering risk.[313] Since refusing cash minimizes what the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) describes as “placement” risk—that is, the placement of illegally obtained money into our financial system[314]—Remitly emphasized its extant ability to provide noncitizens’ financial services while remaining a “registered and regulated partner of FinCEN, with a strong risk-based AML program that is dedicated to detecting and deterring criminal activity on [its] platform.”[315]

Remitly’s position was predicated on its noncitizen customers’ concerns about information sharing. Remitly reported pilot evidence to warn regulators that increased requirements to collect identification numbers—like SSNs and ITINs—would deplete consumer trust and consumer choice. Arguing that its average transaction size meant that many would surpass a lowered $250 threshold, Remitly provided evidence of customer concerns from efforts to collect even the last four digits of a customer’s SSN or ITIN as an optional field.[316] As a relatively new competitor, Remitly contrasted itself with legacy, highly trusted firms, which could more easily collect such sensitive personal information.[317] Requiring noncitizens’ financial identifiers for a greater number of smaller transactions would thus hamper competition.[318]

To be clear, these identification numbers may be a source of noncitizen pride, not only fear. Some report feeling dignity and pride upon acquiring an ITIN, a technical method for tax compliance that also offers acknowledgment, an opportunity to contribute, and visibility.[319] But even this desire for belonging is not unbounded; a financial institution’s collection of information would prompt fear of redisclosure and surveillance. Financial companies are well positioned to convey privacy concerns to agencies tasked with addressing money laundering and related risks.[320] In fact, each of the market participants described above, from immigration services lenders to immigration bond companies, has similar market insights. Those insights can inform proposed regulation and stymie federal overreach.

Second, states can assert their noncitizens’ interests through state law enforcement and regulation, even under federal abdication.

As mentioned earlier, states have historically created, and continue to contemplate, secondary markets for residential mortgages issued to noncitizens.[321] For those confronting deportation-related foreclosures, states could, as other scholars have suggested, modify or delay such processes.[322] Beyond housing, they may also provide income tax credits that the federal government has long since rescinded.[323]

Alongside new statutory provisions, states can use existing authority to provide stronger consumer financial protections. For example, with the CFPB’s significance waning, states must embrace their enforcement mandates and powers.[324] Under the Trump administration, the CFPB is abandoning its legal defense of rulemaking and withdrawing from enforcement actions,[325] including against licensed money transmitters like MoneyGram.[326] In April 2025, the CFPB’s Chief Legal Officer expressly deprioritized enforcement with respect to remittances.[327] Yet states like New York are continuing on as plaintiffs in these coenforcement actions.[328] That statutory authority persists under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, allowing state attorneys to continue despite federal reversals.[329]

Beyond coenforcement, the CFPB has also spawned state institutional analogs. The 2020 creation of the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) granted it, akin to the federal CFPB, broad authority to enforce financial laws.[330] Given estimates of California’s immigrant population of ten million (two million of whom are potentially undocumented), DFPI’s division dedicated to the licensing and regulation of money transmitters must embrace its authority.[331] Just as the state of Arizona exacted legally challenged dragnet surveillance in its settlement with Western Union, California can utilize its state licensing and enforcement powers to shape money transmitter companies’ behavior. DFPI has also created immigrant-specific consumer alerts to educate consumers about particularized risks in the market.[332] State agencies and laws can, alongside private rights of action, fill federal enforcement gaps and vindicate their residents’ interests.

Third and finally, states can adapt to the federal government’s financial guarantor frameworks. Many states have adopted noncooperation policies (often called “sanctuary” policies) to limit the use of their personnel, facilities, and data for immigration enforcement. By engaging and adapting to federal detention frameworks, states and localities may better help facilitate freedom than those noncooperation policies alone.[333]

The federal laws governing affidavits of support, public charge bonds, and immigration detention bonds all reflect structures of financial guarantee. Yet while guarantors are often natural persons, they need not be. Immigration federalism contemplates a role for states in immigration law, even as questions of conflict, preemption, and presidential power test our courts.[334] States can thus serve as financial guarantors, especially if federal authorities begin to strengthen and enforce those guarantees.[335]

For affidavits of support, states would likely need to take a more indirect role. Under the relevant statute, the sponsor who submits an Affidavit of Support for a noncitizen must be a relation, and therefore a natural person, specifically a U.S. citizen, national, or lawful permanent resident (LPR).[336] Because potential sponsors may have limited means and be increasingly concerned about the federal government enforcing an affidavit of support, sympathetic states could indemnify or at least offer preferential financing to sponsors.[337] In that sense, the state could respond to a stricter federal immigration framework by making it easier for its residents—U.S. citizens and select noncitizens—to sponsor immigrating family members.

For public charge and immigration detention bonds, states can act as, or facilitate, obligors.[338] Nonprofits have already entered the market, identifying detained immigrants with pressing factors or social ties for whom they not only post bond, but provide other supportive services.[339] State and local governments (in welcoming states) could facilitate growth in such nongovernmental organizations directly or create their own supports and parallels.

Such financial support or outright guarantorship need not happen as a matter of course, but rather upon application and inspection. National “revolving” bail fund models could be adapted to public immigration detention bond models—where approved and screened noncitizens could be offered (1) bond from an initial capital fund, (2) court notifications, and (3) free transportation to court, with returned bonds then supporting other detainees.[340] States would also need to decide how, and if, to use credit checks for bond support, and those choices might diverge between public charge bonds and immigration detention bonds. States’ financial interests in immigration—including through family preservation—can be advanced by assimilating their own finances with the finances of select noncitizens.[341]

Conclusion

However hostile our borders, markets are often more welcoming. Recognizing noncitizens’ financial assimilation reveals how migrants not only engage and reshape financial markets but also spur new ones. These interactions, whether abiding by statutes and regulations or lying outside them, challenge our understanding and definition of “immigrant” and “legality,” as well as their joinder. Noncitizens’ financial vitality persists amid stricter immigration control, presenting opportunities to protect immigrants—or to exploit economic activity for even more aggressive enforcement.[342]

For now, certain financial surveillance and transactions may call into doubt our respect for the law—beyond immigration—as well as for noncitizens’ humanity. Assimilation into financial inequity and misconduct reveals as much about America itself as it does about new Americans.

Copyright © 2026 Shayak Sarkar, Professor, University of California, Davis, School of Law. The author thanks Mehrsa Baradaran, Raúl Carrillo, Sharon Cornelissen, Kate Elengold, Adam Feibelman, Anna Gelpern, David Horton, John Hunt, Jeremy Kress, Francisco Lara-Garcia, Nathalie Martin, Josh Rosenthal, David Wishnick, Yesha Yadav, David Zaring, as well as audiences at Boston University (Consumer Law Scholars Conference), Wharton (Financial Regulation), University of Michigan (AALS Financial Regulation), and NYU (Law and Macroeconomics) for helpful comments and conversations. I owe special thanks to the California Law Review editors, particularly Navdeep Bal, Shreya Kareti, and Manushri Desai, whose critical engagement enriched this Article.

       [1]. David Weigel, Rand Paul Endorses “Probationary Period” for Illegal Immigrants, Poetry of Pablo Neruda, Slate (Mar. 19, 2013), https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/03/rand-paul-give-immigrants-probationary-period-to-gain-citizenship.html [https://perma.cc/AMD5-KJZW].

       [2]. See, e.g., Robert E. Park & Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology 735 (3d ed. 1969) (“The ideal of assimilation was conceived to be that of feeling, thinking, and acting alike.”); cf. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America 330 (2003) (arguing that “Madison Avenue remains convinced that carving up the nation into distinctive racial and ethnic subcultures still pays”).

       [3]. See Roberto G. Gonzales & Steven Raphael, Illegality: A Contemporary Portrait of Immigration, 3 RSF: Russell Sage Found. J. Soc. Scis. 1, 2 (2017) (arguing that Congress’s failure to pass legislative immigration reform “has kept a large segment of settled immigrants in the shadows, cut off from the very institutions and services that have historically benefited immigrant families”).

       [4]. The term “financial assimilation” appears unused in Westlaw, but it is referenced in an empirical economics paper. See Anna Paulson & Sherrie L. W. Rhine, The Financial Assimilation of an Immigrant Group: Evidence on the Use of Checking and Savings Accounts and Currency Exchanges, 29 J. Fam. Econ. Issues 264, 264 (2008). Paulson and Rhine’s thought-provoking empirical study of Hmong refugees focuses on conventional but narrow financial metrics, including the use of savings accounts and credit cards. My law review Article, instead, uses both these conventional metrics and more niche American financial products—from carceral bonds in immigration detention to nonprofits offering credit interest rate differentials based on immigration status distinctions. I also focus on the role of the substantive law and legal institutions in shaping financial assimilation and protecting noncitizens.

       [5]. See infra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 142–143.

       [6]. Infra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 146–151.

       [7]. Infra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 123–125. Two primary forms of “humanitarian” immigration relief are asylum and statutory withholding of removal, both of which “revolve around persecution, not poverty or prosperity per se.” Shayak Sarkar, Capital Migration, 57 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 2077, 2127 (2024). See generally Humanitarian, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian [https://perma.cc/E4V5-GRF9].

       [8]. See, e.g., Camilo Montoya-Galvez, ICE Releases Some Migrant Detainees as Its Detention Facilities Reach 109% Capacity, CBS News (Feb. 5, 2025), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-releases-some-migrant-detainees-detention-facilities-reach-109-percent-capacity/ [https://perma.cc/F7A9-ZXL3] (“ICE acknowledged that its ‘enhanced’ operations have yielded ‘a significant number of arrests of criminal aliens that require greater detention capacity.’”).

       [9]. Other scholars have suggested less technologically intensive ways to bring marginalized people into the financial system—for example, through postal banking. See, e.g., Mehrsa Baradaran, It’s Time for Postal Banking, 127 Harv. L. Rev. F. 165, 166 (2014) (arguing that “the Post Office can offer credit at lower rates than fringe lenders by taking advantage of economies of scale[,] . . . its position in the federal bureaucracy,” its existing branches in low-income neighborhoods, and the public’s comfort with the Post Office).

     [10]. Ting Zhang, Often Shut Out of the Financial System, Refugees and Other Migrants Face Economic Integration Challenges, Migration Pol’y Inst. (Dec. 6, 2023), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/refugees-migrants-financial-inclusion [https://perma.cc/3GZP-BAG7]. See generally Nakita Q. Cuttino, Presumption of Creditworthiness, 124 Mich. L. Rev. 449 (2025) (arguing that the United States should extend a presumption of creditworthiness to currently unscored consumers). In making this argument, Cuttino draws upon Asian and European models, including Germany’s use of introductory “perfect” scores for those with no credit data and the Japanese and French foci on “[r]elational [u]nderwriting,” where creditworthiness can differ at the financial institution level and be improved by savings-based banking relationships. Id. at 494, 496.

     [11]. See, e.g., Off. of the Comptroller of the Currency, Policy Statement On Financial Technology Companies’ Eligibility to Apply for National Bank Charters 3 (2018), https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2018/pub-other-occ-policy-statement-fintech.pdf [https://perma.cc/3W9L-KYVX] (“The OCC also expects a fintech company that receives a national bank charter to demonstrate a commitment to financial inclusion.”); Mehrsa Baradaran, How the Poor Got Cut Out of Banking, 62 Emory L.J. 483, 548 (2013) (arguing that “mainstream banks have been unable to offer productive products” to “meet the needs of the poor” “because of their unwillingness and inability to reduce profits”); Michael S. Barr, Banking the Poor, 21 Yale J. on Reg. 121, 124 (2004) (arguing that while the “mainstream financial system works extraordinarily well for most Americans, many low- and moderate-income individuals face a number of barriers” to these mainstream financial services); cf. Yesha Yadav, Jose Fernandez da Ponte & Amy Davine Kim, The Evolving Role of Digital Currencies in the Global Economy, 87 L. & Contemp. Probs. 31, 57–58 (2025) (arguing that Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) “have attracted enthusiasm from policymakers for their potential to increase financial inclusion” and describing, for example, the ability to “open a Bahamian CBDC account irrespective of age, nationality, or immigration status”).

     [12]. See, e.g., Raphaël Charron-Chénier & Louise Seamster, Racialized Debts: Racial Exclusion from Credit Tools and Information Networks, 47 Critical Socio. 977, 989 (2021) (arguing that “[s]eparating ‘good’ from ‘bad’ loan products is increasingly difficult” due to the rise of fintech and nonbank mortgage lenders).

     [13]. Abbye Atkinson, Rethinking Credit as Social Provision, 71 Stan. L. Rev. 1093, 1154 (2019); see also Anne Fleming, The Rise and Fall of Unconscionability as the “Law of the Poor,” 102 Geo. L.J. 1383, 1395 (2014) (describing early-twentieth-century America’s “two-tiered credit economy”).

     [14]. Atkinson, supra note 13, at 1152 (“In a nutshell, low-income Americans have an exceedingly difficult time making ends meet, and that is often the reason they are likely to use credit. . . . [C]redit is their safety net.”); cf. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years 3 (2011) (“[T]he remarkable thing about the statement ‘one has to pay one’s debts’ is that even according to standard economic theory, it isn’t true. A lender is supposed to accept a certain degree of risk. If all loans, no matter how idiotic, were still retrievable . . . the results would be disastrous.”).

     [15]. A few scholars have at least fleetingly described financial surveillance of immigrants. See, e.g., Barr, supra note 11, at 184 (arguing that immigrants may fear that financial institutions and “depositories will police immigration laws”); infra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 73–74.

     [16]. Stephanie Kramer & Jeffrey S. Passel, What the Data Says About Immigrants in the U.S., Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Aug. 21, 2025), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/ [https://perma.cc/JK6C-ZL6A].

     [17]. See Kramer & Passel, supra note 16; Int’l Org. for Migration, World Migration Report 2022 201 (finding that from 1995 to 2020, “the proportion of international migrants has only slightly increased, rising from 2.8 to 3.6 per cent of the global population over the intervening years”).

     [18]. Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano & Stefanie Stantcheva, Immigration and Redistribution, 90 Rev. of Econ. Stud. 1, 2 (2023) (arguing that “in the US, the actual number of documented immigrants is 10% of the population, but the average perception is 36%”).

     [19]. See, e.g., Cristina M. Rodríguez, Guest Workers and Integration: Toward a Theory of What Immigrants and Americans Owe One Another, 2007 U. Chi. Legal F. 219, 222 (2007) (arguing that migrants’ “intent to remain”—even if they enter or stay without legal or work authorization—implies our country’s “long-term interest in ensuring the assimilation of immigrants and their children into American society”).

     [20]. Scholars use “assimilation” interchangeably with synonyms like “acculturation,” “integration,” and “incorporation.” See, e.g., Rodriguez, supra note 19, at 222 n.9 (arguing that “[t]he term ‘assimilation’ carries a lot of freight” and therefore choosing synonyms); Susan K. Brown & Frank D. Bean, Assimilation Models, Old and New: Explaining a Long-Term Process, Migration Info. Source (Oct. 1, 2006), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/assimilation-models-old-and-new-explaining-long-term-process [https://perma.cc/4H2V-A35R] (characterizing “assimilation” as “sometimes known as integration or incorporation”).

     [21]. The traditional view of assimilation as a desirable phenomenon has been extensively critiqued by modern scholars. See, e.g., Kenji Yoshino, Covering, 111 Yale L.J. 769, 930 (2002) (“I am not arguing that all forms of assimilation are per se bad. Rather, I am arguing against the countervailing presumption in both law and culture that all forms of assimilation are per se good.”); Nathan Glazer, Is Assimilation Dead?, 530 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 122, 123 (1993) (arguing that “[a]ssimilation is not today a popular term” and anecdotally recalling that a “large majority [of students in a class on race and ethnicity] had a negative reaction to it”).

              Resistance to assimilation, often intertwined with conceptions of indigeneity, surfaces in movements throughout American and European history. W. Michael Reisman, Autonomy, Interdependence, and Responsibility, 103 Yale L.J. 401, 413 (1993) (asking “how a purportedly liberal host society . . . should relate to groups with autonomous legal and political systems operating in its midst”); Anthony V. Alfieri, (Un)covering Identity in Civil Rights and Poverty Law, 121 Harv. L. Rev. 805, 815 (2008) (“The struggle of difference-based identity groups (for example, the gay rights and immigrant rights movements) to resist identity-denying assimilation points to the shared costs of covering and the benefits of collective acts of uncovering.”); K-Sue Park, The History Wars and Property Law: Conquest and Slavery As Foundational to the Field, 131 Yale L.J. 1062, 1133 (2022) (critiquing the theory of possession in property law, arguing that it should highlight “the stories of how people resisted enslavement and conquest, to understand better how they shaped the laws against and through which they fought for their lives”).

     [22]. See, e.g., Paul Collier, Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World 264 (2013) (“The rate at which diasporas are absorbed depends in part upon the choice between multiculturalism and assimilation.”); Thomas Roland Johansson, In Defence of Multiculturalism – Theoretical Challenges, 34 Int’l Rev. Socio. 75, 75 (2024) (noting how multiculturalism can “symbolize[] the emergence of isolated societies . . . and a failure to assimilate immigrants”); Richard Alba, Immigration and the American Realities of Assimilation and Multiculturalism, 14 Socio. F. 3, 7 (1999) (describing the “polarity” of assimilation and multiculturalism).

     [23]. Sarah Song, Multiculturalism, in Stan. Encyclopedia Phil. (Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman eds., 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiculturalism/ [https://perma.cc/Q2JX-Q9YQ] (arguing that “[t]he term ‘multicultural’ is often used as a descriptive term to characterize the fact of diversity in a society” and that “proponents of multiculturalism find common ground in rejecting the ideal of the ‘melting pot’ in which members of minority groups are expected to assimilate into the dominant culture”).

     [24]. Sunil Bhatia & Anjali Ram, Theorizing Identity in Transnational and Diaspora Cultures: A Critical Approach to Acculturation, 33 Int’l J. Intercultural Rels. 140, 141 (2009) (defining diaspora as “immigrant communities who distinctly attempt to maintain . . . connections and commitments to their homeland and recognize themselves and act as a collective community,” whereby “people who simply live outside their ancestral homeland cannot automatically be considered diasporas”).

     [25]. See, e.g., Song, supra note 23 (arguing that “multicultural theorists need to continue to make the case that the ideal of multicultural citizenship stands for fairer terms of integration, not separation and division”).

     [26]. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States 145–46 (2021).

     [27]. See, e.g., Brown & Bean, supra note 20 (presenting several different models for evaluating “successful” and “unsuccessful” assimilation); Pew Hispanic Ctr., Assimilation and Attitudes, in Hispanics: A People in Motion 17, 17–19 (2005), https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/reports/40.pdf [https://perma.cc/8ANX-RQUF] (using a series of surveys to explore how “the acquisition of English plays a central role in assimilation”).

     [28]. See, e.g., Kenneth L. Karst, Paths to Belonging: The Constitution and Cultural Identity, 64 N.C. L. Rev. 303, 333 (1986) (characterizing “educational integration, occupational dispersal, [and] residential dispersal” as “some measures of assimilation on which observers can agree”).

     [29]. See, e.g., Pew Hispanic Ctr., Survey Brief: Assimilation and Language 1 (2004), https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2011/10/11.pdf [https://perma.cc/HT8D-CVX8] (“[W]hile not perfect, language acquisition—in this case the acquisition of English—is a reasonable proxy to measure acculturation and assimilation.”); cf. Cristina M. Rodríguez, Language and Participation, 94 Calif. L. Rev. 687, 695–96 (2006) (arguing that “language rights debates” tend to center around how language diversity is fundamentally “inconsistent with an assimilationist national identity”).

     [30]. See, e.g., Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America 102 (1990) (characterizing intermarriage as a “very important indicator of the degree of ethnic assimilation”).

     [31]. See, e.g., Mary C. Waters & Tomás R. Jiménez, Assessing Immigrant Assimilation: New Empirical and Theoretical Challenges, 31 Ann. Rev. Socio. 105, 106 (2005) (“The core measurable aspects of assimilation formulated to study European immigrants are still the starting points for understanding immigrant assimilation today: How different or similar to other Americans are immigrants and their children in terms of socioeconomic standing, residential segregation, language use, and intermarriage?”).

     [32]. See, e.g., Charles Hirschman, The Contributions of Immigrants to American Culture, 142 Daedalus 26, 34 (2013) (noting how “[a]nother sign of immigrant striving is the recent increase in foreign-born players in the national pastime of baseball, including in the major leagues”).

     [33]. See, e.g., Ariela Schachter, From “Different” to “Similar”: An Experimental Approach to Understanding Assimilation, 81 Am. Socio. Rev. 981, 1007 (2016) (using a survey experiment to find that “speaking fluent English, calling oneself an American, and other positive characteristics often hailed as central to assimilation cannot overcome the symbolic boundaries that reinforce [W]hite individuals’ perceptions of dissimilarity with others based on racial group membership”); Lucas G. Drouhot & Victor Nee, Assimilation and the Second Generation in Europe and America: Blending and Segregating Social Dynamics Between Immigrants and Natives, 45 Ann. Rev. Socio. 177, 180–81 (2019) (describing “negative externalities of public perception of high-volume illegal migration that spill over to legal immigrants and natives of the same ethnicity” and arguing that “public perception of high educational and socioeconomic attainment of legal Asian immigrants and the second generation spill over to benefit undocumented Asian immigrants”).

     [34]. Tomás R. Jiménez, The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants Are Changing American Life 11 (2017) (“My examination of that process leads to the conclusion that assimilation is relational: it involves back-and-forth adjustments in daily life by both newcomers and established individuals as they come into contact with one another.”).

     [35]. See, e.g., Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri & Walter Steingress, The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States, 14 Am. Econ. J.: Applied Econ. 358, 386–87 (2022) (using county-level administrative data to “find that an increase in high-skilled immigrants decreases the share of Republican votes, while an inflow of low-skilled immigrants increases it”); see also Maureen A. Eger, Jeffrey Mitchell & Mikael Hjerm, When I Was Growing Up: The Lasting Impact of Immigrant Presence on Native-Born American Attitudes Towards Immigrants and Immigration, 38 Eur. Socio. Rev. 169, 179–80 (2022) (using geocoded administrative data to estimate that “only the proportion of the state population that is born abroad during adolescence correlates with our [immigration attitude] dependent variables” but “[t]he [contemporaneous] size of the foreign-born population in the survey year has no effect” (emphasis added)).

     [36]. Assimilation here was measured by both intermarriage and residential integration, defined as living close to a native parentage. Stefano Gagliarducci & Marco Tabellini, Faith and Assimilation: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 135 Econ. J. 1814, 1815–16 (2025).

     [37]. Id. at 1816–18 (focusing on the period from 1890 to 1920).

     [38]. Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, Elisa Jácome & Santiago Pérez, Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the United States over Two Centuries, 111 Am. Econ. Rev. 580, 582 (2021) (“[D]espite all the changes that have occurred over the last century (more restricted borders, a shift to poorer sending countries relative to the United States, the growing importance of services relative to manufacturing) children of immigrants today achieve strikingly similar rates of upward mobility to those of the past.”); see also Randall Akee, Jimmy Chin & Daniel L. Crown, Immigrant Earnings Assimilation, 1981–2021 2 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Rsch., Working Paper No. 35582, 2026) (estimating “that the earnings of permanent migrants from all cohorts grow at a faster rate than the earnings of native-born people, illustrating a catch-up process”).

     [39]. Abramitzky et al., supra note 38, at 582.

     [40]. See, e.g., Lucas G. Drouhot, Assimilation Theories in the 21st Century: Appraising Accomplishments and Future Challenges, 58 Int’l Migration Rev. 1974, 1995–96 (2024) (worrying that, since “contemporary scholarship explicitly centered on assimilation overwhelmingly tends to be survey-based and quantitative,” “future scholarship is at a risk of fraction into separate epistemic communities, each too focused on discrete empirical aspects to make unified theoretical progress”).

     [41]. Bhatia & Ram, supra note 24, at 140 (describing the plot of Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine (1989)).

     [42]. See Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work 174 (2d ed. 2015) (describing migrant domestic workers’ naming choices to make their children’s assimilation easier); see also Stanley Lieberson, A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashion, and Culture Change 175 (2000) (describing the reasons for and practices through which “the names immigrants give to their American-born children often differ from those preferred in the homeland”). Parents may also choose such assimilative practices in their current destination as an alternative to moving yet again. Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization, supra note 42, at 11 (characterizing interviewed migrants in Los Angeles and Rome as “more likely to choose a path of assimilation and integration instead of serial or step migration to another destination”).

     [43]. See Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan & Katherine Eriksson, Do Immigrants Assimilate More Slowly Today than in the Past?, 2 Am. Econ. Rev.: Insights 125, 126–27, 135–37 (2020) (using birth certificate records to find that the name-based assimilation was similar in both the age of European migration (1850–1913) and the age of Asian and Latin American migration (since 1965)).

     [44]. See, e.g., Hewan Girma, Respecting Names: Ethiopian Transnational Adoptee Name Changes, Retention and Reclamation, 47 Ethnic & Racial Stud. 191, 198–203 (2024) (discussing Ethiopian adoptees’ resistance to assimilative naming conventions).

     [45]. See Amada Armenta, Book Review, 53 L. & Soc’y Rev. 1390, 1392 (2019) (reviewing Angela S. García, Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law (2019)); see also Anne Bohnert, Importance of Improved Privacy and Security Regulations Regarding Telehealth in Order to Better Ensure the Safety of Information Given from Undocumented Hispanic Immigrants to Healthcare Professionals, 30 Annals Health L.: Advance Directive 111, 117 (2021) (describing how Chicago hospitals post “brochures and posters stating that they are not affiliated with law enforcement in order to limit the anxiety of immigrants who fear they will be deported if healthcare workers discover they are undocumented”).

     [46]. García, supra note 45, at 160; see Alba, supra note 22, at 8 (arguing that “[a]ssimilation can occur as the often unintended cumulative by-product of choices” (emphasis added)); cf. Rose Cuison Villazor, The Undocumented Closet, 92 N.C. L. Rev. 1, 60 (2013) (arguing that “DREAMers engage in ‘passing’ through the performance of traits that are associated with being an American,” but listing traits that seem to be more permanent and associated with assimilation like gaining English fluency, pursuing education in U.S. schools, and creating social networks with citizens).

     [47]. Armenta, supra note 45, at 1392–93 (reviewing García, supra note 45); cf. Eisha Jain, The Interior Structure of Immigration Enforcement, 167 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1463, 1468 (2019) (describing how undocumented migrants “are not merely aware of the possibility that one day ICE may come knocking at their door” but “perceive routine interactions with key institutions . . . as potential triggers for detention, deportation, or other penalties”).

     [48]. García, supra note 45, at 150–51.

     [49]. Id. at 148.

     [50]. See Rachel Valentina González, Quinceañera Style: Social Belonging and Latinx Consumer Identities 79–80 (2019) (“Quinceañera dresses are not everyday purchases . . . . [S]pending on the dresses takes on a singular importance, distinct from expenditures on other, more banal goods, and becomes part of a network of strategic purchases.”); id. at 138 (“[P]arents are the sources of financial support who offer their credit cards and their trust to the professionals crafting their quinceañera girls’ enduring styles.”).

     [51]. Cecilia Menjívar & Sarah M. Lakhani, Transformative Effects of Immigration Law: Immigrants’ Personal and Social Metamorphoses Through Regularization, 121 Am. J. Socio. 1818, 1841 (2016) (describing how “metamorphoses vis-à-vis the law may also affect the assimilation trajectories of . . . immigrant-origin descendants”).

     [52]. See Hiroshi Motomura, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States 165 (2006) (characterizing modern naturalization as “more like voluntary [rather than] coercive assimilation”); Panel on the Integration of Immigrants into Am. Soc’y., Legal Status and Immigrant Integration, in The Integration of Immigrants into American Society 93, 93 (Mary C. Waters & Marisa Gerstein Pineau eds., 2015) (“In areas that are fundamental for integration, such as employment, access to higher education, social services, and health care, legal status plays a significant role . . . [and] cuts across generations, with parents’ undocumented status in particular affecting the development of children, even when the children are U.S. citizens.”). But see Asad L. Asad, Latinos’ Deportation Fears by Citizenship and Legal Status, 2007 to 2018, 117 PNAS 8836, 8841 (2020) (describing how “[u]ncertainty since the 2016 presidential election with respect to deportation policy and practice, including rare but nascent efforts at denaturalization, may have reversed [Latino naturalized citizens’] optimism”).

              Presidential efforts to end birthright citizenship suggest that legal assimilation may be less unassailable than long presumed. See Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, Exec. Order No. 14160, 90 Fed. Reg. 8449 (Jan. 20, 2025) (demanding that since “[t]he Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” the latter phrase should be newly extended to broad categories of even documented immigrants who are subject to the laws). Still, the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship has been repeatedly affirmed. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”); Trump v. Barbara, No. 25-365, 2026 WL 1870543, at 11, 15 (U.S. June 30, 2026) (reaffirming United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), and that “[t]he Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended [citizenship’s] promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’” (quoting Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 600 (1866) (statement of Sen. Trumbull))).

     [53]. See Bd. of Governors of the Fed. Rsrv. Sys., Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023 35, 40 (2024), https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2024-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202505.pdf [https://perma.cc/492L-2V38] (estimating that only six percent of adults were “unbanked” and eighty-two percent had credit cards); see also Abbye Atkinson, Borrowing and Belonging, 111 Calif. L. Rev. 1369, 1397 (2023) (arguing that “credit/debt-based consumption is also indicative of ‘substantive citizenship’” (quoting Ming Hsu Chen, Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era 5 (2020))).

     [54]. Alexandra Witkin, To Silence a Drum: The Imposition of United States Citizenship on Native Peoples, 21 Hist. Reflections 353, 361–62 (1995) (citing Vine Deloria, Jr., Of Utmost Good Faith (1971)).

     [55]. See, e.g., Cristina Stanciu, The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879–1924 46–52 (2023) (arguing that “[t]he Native and new immigrant subjects who were part of the pageants of Americanization had little say in the orchestration of these public performances,” whether sponsored by the federal government or by the Ford Motor Company).

     [56]. See generally Frederick F. Wherry, Kristin S. Seefeldt & Anthony S. Alvarez, Credit Where It’s Due: Rethinking Financial Citizenship 75 (2019) (describing how some immigrants to the United States “spoke about past experiences with ROSCAs [rotating savings and credit associations] at times when they had been unbanked and unbankable”). ROSCAs and credit circles are neither “inconsequential” nor “sentimental” building blocks, but serious economic phenomena. See Viviana A. Zelizer, Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy 386–87 (2011).

     [57]. In contrast to my use of financial assimilation, some scholars use the term “market citizenship” to make the converse point—for people with lawful status, “access to rights depends on economic power,” including through refugee resettlement’s primary goal of employment. See Breanne L. Grace, Stephanie J. Nawyn & Betty Okwako, The Right to Belong (If You Can Afford It): Market-based Restrictions on Social Citizenship in Refugee Resettlement, 31 J. Refugee Stud. 42, 43, 48 (2017) (arguing that market citizenship’s “result is that producers—able-bodied, non-elderly, non-caregiver, educated adults—become ideal refugees”); see also Janine Brodie, Meso‐Discourses, State Forms and the Gendering of Liberal‐Democratic Citizenship, 1 Citizenship Stud. 223, 237 (1997) (describing “the relentless movement away from the postwar conception of an inclusive social citizenship to an exclusive market-based one”).

     [58]. See also Paulson & Rhine, supra note 4, at 277 (testing whether early cohorts of Hmong refugees, “[b]ecause of their particularly close ties to US. Forces fighting in Vietnam and Laos,” might assimilate more quickly than later cohorts).

     [59]. See Kenneth P. Brevoort, Philipp Grimm & Michelle Kambara, Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, Data Point: Credit Invisibles (2015), https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201505_cfpb_data-point-credit-invisibles.pdf [https://perma.cc/65AG-ALKC]; Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, Technical Correction and Update to the CFPB’s Credit Invisibles Estimate (2025), https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_update-credit-invisibles-estimate_2025-06.pdf [https://perma.cc/RZC4-8G83].

     [60]. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, Who are The Credit Invisibles? How to Help People with Limited Credit Histories 2 (2016), https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/201612_cfpb_credit_invisible_policy_report.pdf [https://perma.cc/6NDQ-4REM] (reporting in a 2016 supplement that 10 percent of Americans were “credit invisible” and an additional 7 percent were credit “unscorable”); Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, Technical Correction, supra note 59, at 3–4(correcting and updating the earlier report and estimating that 5.8 percent of Americans were “credit invisible” and an additional 12.7 percent were credit “unscored”); cf. Free Credit Reports, Fed. Trade Comm’n Consumer Advice (July 2022), https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports [https://perma.cc/RL8R-2PAG] (“Three nationwide credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) collect and update this information [for credit reports].”).

     [61]. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, Who are The Credit Invisibles?, supra note 60, at 3–4; see Cassandra Jones Havard, Digital Footprints: Technology, Race, and Justice, 45 Cardozo L. Rev. 1177, 1198–99 (2024) (arguing that lending disparities have persisted through the Equal Credit Opportunity Act); see also Cuttino, supra note 10, at 453 (locating recent immigrants among the unscored).

              Some have argued that fintech companies may fill some of these gaps through alternative data and algorithmic lending practices, reaching the “invisible prime,” the group of credit applicants with a low propensity to default, even as they are excluded by traditional lending algorithms. See Marco Di Maggio, Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara & Don Carmichael, Invisible Primes: Fintech Lending with Alternative Data 5 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Rsch., Working Paper No. 29840, 2022) (using one fintech platform’s administrative data to find that lending decisions particularly benefited “invisible primes”); see also Richard Cordray, Prepared Remarks of CFPB Director Richard Cordray at the Alternative Data Field Hearing, Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau (Feb. 16, 2017), https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-cfpb-director-richard-cordray-alternative-data-field-hearing/ [https://perma.cc/F8J7-VBQ5] (arguing that “alternative data” “may allow them to build a credit history and gain access to credit” and defining such data to include “sources such as rent or utility payments [that] may not qualify under more traditional definitions of ‘credit’” as well as data on “electronic transactions such as deposits, withdrawals, or transfers from a checking account”).

     [62]. See, e.g., 15 U.S.C. § 1691(c) (“It is not a violation of this section for a creditor to refuse to extend credit offered pursuant to . . . (3) any special purpose credit program offered by a profit-making organization to meet special social needs which meets standards prescribed in regulations by the Bureau.”); 12 C.F.R. § 202.8 (2026) (permitting both for-profit and non-profit creditors to offer such programs, under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act’s statutory authority). Bank of America, for example, uses these provisions to offer loans with bank-provided down payments and no closing costs “for properties in Black/African American and Hispanic-Latino communities, as defined by the U.S. census, in Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami.” Bank of America Introduces Community Affordable Loan Solution™ to Expand Homeownership Opportunities in Black/African American and Hispanic-Latino Communities, Bank of Am. Newsroom (Aug. 30, 2022), https://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/content/newsroom/press-releases/2022/08/bank-of-america-introduces-community-affordable-loan-solution--t.html [https://perma.cc/B7QX-3DQT]. See generally 12 C.F.R. pt. 1002 (2021) (describing how Congress “permit[ted] the consideration of a prohibited basis such as race, national origin, or sex in connection with a special purpose credit program” to improve credit access and financial inclusion).

     [63]. See Wherry, Seefeldt & Alvarez, supra note 56, at 5.

     [64]. See id. at 101; see also id. at 28 (noting a nonprofit’s development of a Financial Health Checklist including the question, “Do the loan company employees treat you with respect?” (emphasis added)).

     [65]. See, e.g., What We Do, The Resurrection Project, https://resurrectionproject.org/what-we-do/#financial-wellness [https://perma.cc/X4H3-CN5Y] (describing how to “help families build financial security” with a first bullet of “build credit and reduce debt” (emphasis added)).

     [66]. Supra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 11–14.

     [67]. Even though the middle-class White existence is typically what American citizens imagine immigrants assimilating towards, immigrants may gravitate towards many different benchmarks in practice. For example, scholars have described how some immigrants experience “downward mobility and assimilation into the inner-city underclass.” Rubén G. Rumbaut, Paradoxes (and Orthodoxies) of Assimilation, 40 Socio. Persps. 483, 500 (1997); see also Alejandro Portes, Patricia Fernández-Kelly & William Haller, Segmented Assimilation on the Ground: The New Second Generation in Early Adulthood, 28 Ethnic & Racial Stud. 1000, 1022–24 (2005) (using data on second-generation immigrant youth in South Florida with roots in Cuba, Colombia, Haiti, and Jamaica to argue that nationality is a factor shaping segmented assimilation); Min Zhou, Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies, and Recent Research on the New Second Generation, 31 Int’l Migration Rev. 975, 979–81 (1997) (perturbing the idea that there is a “unified core of American society” to which immigrants can assimilate).

     [68]. The segmented assimilation framework itself faces compelling critiques from neoassimilationists, who highlight the upward, intergenerational mobility of immigrants. See, e.g., Drouhot, supra note 40, at 1975 (arguing that “there is now an emerging empirical consensus about the second generation in the US and Western Europe primarily experiencing upward mobility and intergenerational progress in socioeconomic terms, which is broadly aligned with neoassimilation rather than stagnation or downward assimilation as envisioned by segmented assimilation perspectives”). Neoassimilation “identifies immigrant mobility” from “ethnically segmented neighborhoods and labor markets,” though the link between intergenerational progress on “hard” socioeconomic indicators and broader belonging remains contested, especially in Western Europe. Id. at 1989.

     [69]. Infra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 146–148.

     [70]. See, e.g., Kevin R. Johnson, Lessons About the Future of Immigration Law from the Rise and Fall of DACA, 52 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 343, 388 (2018) (arguing that “[t]he failure of Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that regularizes the status of undocumented immigrants . . . has required the Executive Branch to search for answers” through temporary programs like DACA).

     [71]. In 2021, the World Bank estimated, using a somewhat broader definition of financial inclusion, that 76 percent of adults “had an account at a bank or regulated institution such as a credit union, microfinance institution, or a mobile money service provider.” Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Leora Klapper, Dorothe Singer & Saniya Ansar, The Global Findex Database 2021: Financial Inclusion, Digital Payments, and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19 2 (2021), https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/globalfindex/Report [https://perma.cc/E9VD-R73N]. “Among the 123 surveyed economies, account ownership ranges from just 6 percent in South Sudan to universal ownership in high-income economies such as Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.” Id. at 15; see also Leora Klapper, Dorothe Singer, Laura Starita & Alexandra Norris, The Global Findex Database 2025: Connectivity and Financial Inclusion in the Digital Economy xxi (2025), https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/globalfindex [https://perma.cc/9L8T-CGGK] (estimating that 79 percent of adults “have an account at a bank or similar financial institution, with a mobile money provider, or both”).

     [72]. Zhang, supra note 10.

     [73]. See, e.g., Raúl Carrillo, Platform Money, 41 Yale J. Regul. 894, 901 (2024) (discussing how a “dominant financial data broker, Plaid[,] gives both Plaid and its partners access to a user’s identity information, including name, address, email, and phone number; entire transaction and balance history, including a geolocation and category for each purchase made . . . [and] additional data regarding consumer debt, savings, public benefits receipt, tax payments, property, investments, and other data it reserves the right to use”).

     [74]. Some scholars have at least acknowledged the intersection of immigration issues and financial surveillance, often through statutes like the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and financial transactions like remittances. See, e.g., Asad L. Asad, Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life 235 (2023) (characterizing financial institutions as “surveilling institutions”); Shayak Sarkar, Capital Controls as Migrant Controls, 109 Calif. L. Rev. 799, 829–35 (2021) (discussing the BSA as part of a suite of anti-money laundering laws affecting immigrants); Raúl Carrillo, Seeing Through Money: Democracy, Data Governance, and the Digital Dollar, 57 Ga. L. Rev. 1207, 1271 (2023) (noting how “BSA/AML surveillance makes sending remittances—a focus of many advocates of financial inclusion—a more dangerous activity”).

     [75]. See, e.g., Julie E. Cohen, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism 16 (2019) (arguing that “the basic factors of industrial production identified by [anthropologist Karl] Polanyi—labor, land, and money—are becoming dematerialized and datafied to facilitate their more efficient exploitation”). Consumer data and information is particularly valuable. Amy Kapczynski, The Law of Informational Capitalism, 129 Yale L.J. 1460, 1467 (2020) (citing Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power 29–30 (2019)) (summarizing an account of surveillance capitalism, whereby companies like Google combine “digitization and capitalism” to sell behaviorally-targeted ads).

     [76]. See infra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 235–240.

     [77]. See, e.g., Steven L. Schwarcz & Theodore L. Leonhardt, Scoping and Defining Financial Inclusion, Access to Credit, and Sustainable Finance, 84 L. & Contemp. Probs. 1, 1 (2021) (describing how “legal and regulatory proposals to achieve these goals [of combatting inequality and providing economic opportunities] invoke the terms ‘financial inclusion,’ ‘access to credit,’ and ‘sustainable finance’”). Schwarcz and Leonhardt define financial inclusion “as expanding account ownership to provide basic banking services, namely, deposit accounts and funds transfers.” Id. at 5.

     [78]. See, e.g., Cesare Fracassi & William Magnuson, Data Autonomy, 74 Vand. L. Rev. 327, 353 (2021) (arguing that “regulatory pressure to improve and increase data sharing within the financial industry is both desirable and necessary”); Carrillo, supra note 73, at 901 (noting how data brokers’ focus on data maximization or amplification undergirds the infrastructure of the “open banking” sector).

     [79]. See, e.g., Shayak Sarkar, Consumer Expectations and Consumer Protection, 88 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 949, 954 (2020) (describing the “state’s power to entrench public beliefs . . . [in] marquee markets for higher education [and] homeownership”).

     [80]. See, e.g., Statement Regarding the Provision of Financial Products and Services to Consumers With Limited English Proficiency, 86 Fed. Reg. 6306, 6306 (Jan. 21, 2021) (“[F]inancial disclosures and written documents are generally not available in languages other than English and some financial institutions do not have bilingual employees or access to interpretation services.”); id. at 6310 (“If the translation of documents is not legally mandated, financial institutions may assess whether and to what extent to provide translated documents to consumers.”).

              Financial institutions’ legal translation obligations often hinge on whether they themselves “advertise, solicit, or market” services in those languages. See 12 C.F.R. § 1005.31(g) (2026) (discussing foreign language disclosures for remittance services). California similarly requires document translation based on the language of negotiation. Cal. Civ. Code § 1632(b) (West 2026) (requiring that “[a] person engaged in a trade or business who negotiates primarily in Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, or Korean, orally or in writing, . . . shall deliver to the other party to the contract or agreement . . . a translation of the contract or agreement” in the language of the negotiation across a number of credit, housing, and other contracts).

     [81]. See, e.g., E. Tendayi Achiume, Migration as Decolonization, 71 Stan. L. Rev. 1509, 1513 (2019) (contrasting the general use of the term “refugee, whose international flight is by definition a last resort” with that of “economic migrant”).

     [82]. See, e.g., Cuison Villazor, supra note 46, at 6 (“[U]ndocumented immigrants openly reside, study, or work amongst documented citizens, they also have to be ‘closeted’ and pass for people who have the right to remain in the United States. In other words, law compels undocumented immigrants to be invisible.”); Asad, supra note 74, at 150 (2023) (describing how “legal status, whether permanent residence or DACA, conferred a newfound visibility to immigration officials that [immigrants] saw as raising the stakes of their future engagement with regulatory and service institutions in daily life”).

     [83]. See, e.g., Nathalie Martin, Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: What We Can Learn from the Banking and Credit Habits of Undocumented Immigrants, 2015 Mich. St. L. Rev. 989, 1029 n.178 (2015) (using fifty interviews of undocumented immigrants in New Mexico to find that 88 percent, or forty-four participants, did not use credit cards, including four participants who said they did not want one). The undocumented respondents in Martin’s survey also preferred borrowing from family members to borrowing from depository institutions, whose reporting could help build credit. Id. at 1038.

     [84]. Aydali Campa, Buying A Home Is Hard. It’s Even More Difficult When You’re Undocumented., Borderless (July 2, 2024), https://borderlessmag.org/2024/07/02/chicago-home-ownership-noncitizens-itin-holders-homebuying-loans-undocumented/ [https://perma.cc/QM8N-LBEA] (describing these beliefs in immigrant interview subjects).

     [85]. Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program, Exec. Order No. 14163, 90 Fed. Reg. 8459 (Jan. 20, 2025).

     [86]. Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, Exec. Order No. 13769, 82 Fed. Reg. 8977 (Jan. 27, 2017); see also U.S. Annual Refugee Resettlement Ceilings and Number of Refugees Admitted, 1980–Present, Migration Pol’y Inst. (2026), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/us-refugee-resettlement [https://perma.cc/JKT4-L7YA] (using data from the State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration to chart changes in refugee admissions and resettlement ceilings over the past fifty years).

     [87]. Jorge Duany, Cuban Migration: A Postrevolution Exodus Ebbs and Flows, Migration Pol’y Inst. (July 6, 2017), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/cuban-migration-postrevolution-exodus-ebbs-and-flows [https://perma.cc/V7NF-HPVQ] (noting how the “Freedom Flights became the largest and longest refugee resettlement initiative in U.S. history, with twice-daily flights funded by the U.S. government transporting between 3,000 and 4,000 refugees per month, for a total of about 260,600 persons”).

     [88]. See, e.g., U.S. Dep’t of State, 9 Foreign Affairs Manual § 203.6-15(e)(3) (2025) (“Refugees . . . may receive interest-free loans from the U.S. Government through IOM for the cost of their transportation.”).

     [89]. Id.; Travel Loans, Int’l Org. for Migration, https://www.iom.int/travel-loans [https://perma.cc/M78K-NS66].

     [90]. IOM Constitution, Int’l Org. for Migration, https://www.iom.int/iom-constitution [https://perma.cc/BG9T-WNP7].

     [91]. Id. at ch. VII, arts. 19–21. These contributions included, in 1965, member states’ capitalization of a Refugee Loan Fund, which would then be replenished by refugee repayments. Council of the Intergovernmental Comm. for Eur. Migration, Resolution No. 353 (XXIV): Refugee Loan Fund 1, https://governingbodies.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl1421/files/council_document/353%20-%20Refugee%20Loan%20Fund.pdf [https://perma.cc/ET3W-CXMQ]. The Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) was born in 1952, from the post-World War II Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME). IOM History, Int’l Org. for Migration, https://www.iom.int/iom-history [https://perma.cc/BBJ5-BE2Q]. ICEM would become IOM in 1989. Id.

     [92]. Lucy Westcott, A Brief History of Refugees Paying Back the U.S. Government for Their Travel, Newsweek (May 6, 2016), https://www.newsweek.com/brief-history-refugees-paying-back-us-government-their-travel-403241 [https://perma.cc/GC23-G3VM] (“The State Department says that by taking out a loan, ‘a refugee embarks on resettlement with a sense of his or her own responsibility for success in the United States and in repaying that loan contributes to the success of other refugees embarking on that same journey.’”).

     [93]. See, e.g., Letter from Rep. Jim Banks to Hon. Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, 2 (Mar. 8, 2024) (on file with author) (expressing concern about the Department of State’s involvement in the Travel Loan Program and requesting information on “how many travel loan repayments have been forgiven, deferred, or reduced”).

     [94]. Int’l Org. for Migration, Anatomy of the Promissory Note 3, https://web.archive.org/web/20240308155224/https://usrap.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl2236/files/documents/travel_loans/anatomyofthepromissorynote.pdf [https://perma.cc/JBD4-ZXYU].

     [95]. Id. at 17.

     [96]. Id. at 3, 8.

     [97]. Off. of Refugee Resettlement, Resettlement Agencies, Admin. for Child. & Fams. (Mar. 14, 2024), https://web.archive.org/web/20250208220849/https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/grant-funding/resettlement-agencies [https://perma.cc/Q4BM-FWDJ]; U.S. Dep’t of State, 9 Foreign Affairs Manual § 203.6-15(e)(3)(b) (2025) (noting that, in 2024, “[r]esettlement agency sponsors explain the repayment procedures to refugees during orientation after arrival in the United States”).

     [98]. See, e.g., Welcome to Online Billpay, World Relief, https://www.billerpayments.com/app/cust/login.do?bsn=worldrelief [https://perma.cc/D6F9-KKD7]; Travel Loans, Glob. Refuge Connect, https://globalrefugeconnect.org/travel_loans [https://perma.cc/449J-B34L] (providing options to both “mak[e] a payment using mobile phone” as well as to “enroll in direct debit program”).

     [99]. See, e.g., Deferral Request Form, Glob. Refuge Connect, https://globalrefugeconnect.org/travel_loans/travel_loans_forms/deferral_request [https://perma.cc/9B7Q-YB8M] (providing the request form to postpone payments for four months without being “reported as delinquent to credit reporting agencies” upon an approved amendment to the IOM travel loan).

   [100]. See, e.g., U.S. Dep’t of State, U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. & U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2023 44, tbl. IX n.3, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/FY-2023-USRAP-Report-to-Congress_FINAL_7-Sep-2022.pdf [https://perma.cc/2Z2E-EV9W] (noting “35.9 million in projected IOM loan collections/carryover”).

   [101]. Travel Loans, supra note 89 (“Furthermore, repayments are utilized by IOM and other receiving agencies to help establish the credit worthiness of the newly arriving refugees. Not only does that help refugees better integrate and contribute to the US economy, it also serves as a protection tool against abusive and predatory lending markets for those without credit worthiness.”).

   [102]. Perhaps because of the cash and logistical constraints refugees often face, they have also been targets for experimental and innovative financial products to fund their travel. One recent example has been the introduction of blockchain payment products to Ukrainian refugees. See UNHCR Launches Pilot Cash-Based Intervention Using Blockchain Technology for Humanitarian Payments to People Displaced and Impacted by the War in Ukraine, UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency (Dec. 15, 2022), https://www.unhcr.org/ua/en/news/unhcr-launches-pilot-cash-based-intervention-using-blockchain-technology-humanitarian-payments [https://perma.cc/Z56J-WQK9] (announcing “the launch of a pilot first-of-its-kind blockchain payment solution for digital cash distribution to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other war-affected people in Ukraine”). According to the press release, “UNHCR confirms eligibility and distributes assistance in Circle Internet Financial’s USD Coin (USDC) — a stablecoin where one USDC is equal to one US Dollar — directly into a recipient’s Vibrant digital wallet which they can download onto a smartphone.” Id.; see also Joel Khalili, In Ukraine, Crypto Finds a Purpose, Wired (Mar. 15, 2023), https://www.wired.com/story/ukraine-crypto-refugee-aid/ [https://perma.cc/HQ57-B6Z4] (describing how blockchain technologies can overcome some of the challenges of hard cash, whether “shipped physically by the pallet-load into war zones and disaster areas, creating logistical and security headaches, or delivered electronically via the traditional banking system, the rigidity of which can pose problems for people whose documentation has been lost”); Michael Heger, How Blockchain Technology Is Making Humanitarian Cash Transfers Faster and Safer, SwissInfo (Jan. 24, 2025), https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/international-geneva/how-blockchain-technology-is-making-humanitarian-cash-transfers-faster-and-safer/88750157 [https://perma.cc/J3XX-XNKY] (arguing that the “pilot project run by UNHCR [alongside the Stellar Development Foundation] in Ukraine shows how blockchain technology can be used in practice . . . . for the distribution of digital cash to internally displaced people and refugees”).

   [103]. These are relevant for immigrants who might be ineligible for USCIS’s existing fee waiver program. See, e.g., U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., Request for Fee Waiver, Form I-912, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-912.pdf [https://perma.cc/ZVP5-R84W] (requiring either (1) receipt of a means-tested benefit, (2) a household income at or below 150 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, or (3) attestation of “financial hardship,” requiring a detailed account of cash, assets, and monthly expenses and liabilities).

   [104]. CDFIs are financial institutions increasing access to financial products and services for low-income communities that traditionally have found it difficult to access formal financial markets. See generally What Does the CDFI Fund Do?, U.S. Dep’t of Treasury, https://www.cdfifund.gov/ [https://perma.cc/XU9F-JEEJ] (describing the “1,000 CDFIs operating nationwide”).

   [105]. Need Help Financing Your USCIS Application Fee?, Mission Asset Fund https://www.missionassetfund.org/immigration-programs/ [https://perma.cc/4TQE-99AH]. See generally U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., Fee Schedule: Form G-1055 (2025), https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/g-1055.pdf [https://perma.cc/4RS4-5K42].

   [106]. Need Help Financing Your USCIS Application Fee?, supra note 105. Beyond immigrants, Mission Asset Fund operates Lending Circles for citizens and similarly reports to the three bureaus on those Circles. Lending Circles, Mission Asset Fund, https://www.missionassetfund.org/lending-circles/ [https://perma.cc/SN3S-M7R8].

   [107]. See, e.g., Michael S. Barr, No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans 5 (2012) (noting that “immigrant households often face documentation barriers” to accessing financial services).

   [108]. Wherry, Seefeldt & Alvarez, supra note 56, at 71; Sarkar, supra note 74, at 832–35 (describing the use of various forms of identification, including municipality- and foreign-government-issued documents, in American financial services).

   [109]. Wherry, Seefeldt & Alvarez, supra note 56, at 71.

   [110]. See, e.g., id. at 125–31 (Appendix B) (providing a copy of the Mission Asset Fund Programs Application, which asks about personal, medical, and student loan debts as well as the values of, and debts attendant to, automobile, home, and business ownership); Pre-Application: DACA Fee Assistance, Mission Asset Fund, https://maf.my.site.com/lendingcircles/PreApplicationDACACVD19 [https://perma.cc/32BH-JHNC] (asking about household finances, including whether there are “family members who depend on you financially”).

   [111]. Citizenship for All, One Percent for Am., https://www.onepercentforamerica.org/about [https://perma.cc/95HV-JS9N] (encompassing borrowers in thirty states).

   [112]. Id.

   [113]. Immigration Loans, Int’l Rescue Comm., https://support.irc.org/hc/en-us/articles/25451981647636-Immigration-Loans [https://perma.cc/A58E-RAWU].

   [114]. Id.

   [115]. Capital Good Fund & Am. Immigr. Laws. Ass’n, Capital Good Fund and AILA Partnership Brings Financial Support to Immigrant Communities 1, https://www.aila.org/aila-files/6316EAE4-3479-4D7E-935A-74F38719585E/22013109.pdf?1697590092 [https://perma.cc/BTE3-S8MY]; see also Angélica Cházaro, Due Process Deportations, 98 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 407, 420 (2023) (describing financial challenges and tradeoffs in providing immigration representation to indigent petitioners in removal proceedings).

   [116]. Immigration Loans, Capital Good Fund, https://capitalgoodfund.org/loans/immigration/ [https://perma.cc/J3JT-5S7C].

   [117]. See, e.g., Buy Now, Pay Later: A History of Personal Credit, Harv. Bus. Sch. Hist. Collections, https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/credit/credit4d.html [https://perma.cc/9EZT-6MLL] (describing the shift from the nineteenth-century conception of cars as luxuries purchased in cash to the growth of the auto finance industry, whose approximately one trillion dollars in outstanding loans roughly parallels Americans’ aggregate credit card debt); Household Debt and Credit Report (Q4 2025), Fed. Rsrv. Bank of N.Y. Ctr. for Microeconomic Data, https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc [https://perma.cc/9BS2-LNKY] (approximating credit card debt at $1.28 trillion); see also FICO Unveils Groundbreaking Credit Scores That Incorporate Buy Now, Pay Later Data, FICO (June 23, 2025), https://www.fico.com/en/newsroom/fico-unveils-groundbreaking-credit-scores-incorporate-buy-now-pay-later-data [https://perma.cc/W33E-V6VF] (announcing “the first credit scores from a leading credit scoring provider to incorporate Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) data” and noting that “‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ loans are playing an increasingly important role in consumers’ financial lives”).

   [118]. See, e.g., Household Debt and Credit Report, supra note 117 (documenting growth in household debt over the past two decades, across both housing and non-housing subcomponents).

   [119]. The CEO Team, Application FAQ: How Does CEO Determine Interest Rates?, Int’l Rescue Comm.’s CEO Help Ctr., https://support.irc-ceo.org/hc/en-us/articles/25564869381140-How-does-CEO-determine-interest-rates [https://perma.cc/8VKF-9Z2D].

   [120]. See, e.g., id. (describing a “credit building ladder” with loans from $100 to $1,000).

   [121]. Id.

   [122]. Immigration, Int’l Rescue Comm., https://www.rescue.org/topic/immigration [https://perma.cc/2M44-CSBB] (providing services to not only refugees and lawful permanent residents but also undocumented immigrants pursuing a range of statuses, including deferred action, TPS, and even visa lottery applications).

   [123]. The CEO Team, supra note 119.

   [124]. Supra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 60–61.

   [125]. See Help Newcomers Today, Int’l Rescue Comm., https://www.rescue.org/HelpNorCalsNewcomers [https://perma.cc/P58Y-5RN4] (focusing on the “newest neighbors and their families” and asking the Trump Administration to “reconsider recent executive actions that target refugees, asylum seekers, and others in need of humanitarian protection” without mention of economic migrants).

   [126]. The CEO Team, supra note 119.

   [127]. Eligibility Criteria: Student Loan Refinancing Eligibility, SoFi (Dec. 2025), https://www.sofi.com/eligibility-criteria/ [https:perma.cc/L8E2-UDWM].

   [128]. Tanya Broder, Basic Facts About In-State Tuition for Undocumented Immigrant Students, Nat’l Immigr. L. Ctr. (Sep. 8, 2025), https://www.nilc.org/issues/education/basic-facts-instate/ [https://perma.cc/7AQM-7GRY].

   [129]. How Can I Be Considered for a SoFi Credit Card Offer?, SoFi (2025), https://support.sofi.com/hc/en-us/articles/4415781536397-How-do-I-apply-for-a-SoFi-Credit-Card [https://perma.cc/GR3A-HEH6].

   [130]. Why Do You Need My Social Security Number (SSN)?, SoFi (2020), https://support.sofi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038912852-Why-do-you-need-my-Social-Security-Number-SSN [https://perma.cc/79Z9-G9HH].

   [131]. Supra sources cited in and text accompanying note 74.

   [132]. See, e.g., Applying for a Credit Card as a New Immigrant to the US, Capital One, https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/credit-cards-for-immigrants/ [https://perma.cc/T5WA-68J9] (explaining that “[i]f you don’t have an SSN or a credit history in the U.S., some credit card issuers let you apply for a credit card using an ITIN”); Can New Immigrants Get a Credit Card?, Discover (Apr. 16, 2025), https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/card-smarts/credit-cards-for-immigrants/ [https://perma.cc/WP69-7NU4] (describing how “[a] credit card company may instead request an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), which the IRS (not the Social Security Administration) may issue”).

   [133]. What Is a Secured Credit Card and Does It Build Credit?, Equifax, https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit-cards/articles/-/learn/what-is-a-secured-credit-card-do-they-build-credit/ [https://perma.cc/3PK9-QC26] (“Provided your lenders report your payment history to the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies, a secured credit card can be a powerful tool for building and improving credit.”).

   [134]. Paulson & Rhine, supra note 4, at 266–69.

   [135]. Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin F. Jones, J. Daniel Kim & Javier Miranda, Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States, 4 Am. Econ. Rev.: Insights 71, 71 (2022) (using U.S. administrative data to empirically investigate immigrant entrepreneurship).

   [136]. Off. of Refugee Resettlement, Refugee Microenterprise Development, Admin. for Child. & Fams. (Nov. 6, 2023), https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/programs/refugees/microenterprise-development [https://perma.cc/8VX7-RWTX]. Grantees include both resettlement agencies as well as Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI). Id. (listing grantees, including Opening Doors Inc.); see, e.g., Programs: Expanding Economic Opportunity, Opening Doors, https://openingdoorsinc.org/programs/expanding-economic-opportunity/ [https://perma.cc/XR79-747Q] (noting that Opening Doors is “Sacramento’s only Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) specializing in microlending to newcomer communities”).

   [137]. Office of Refugee Resettlement; Discretionary Funds for Refugee Microenterprise Development Projects, 70 Fed. Reg. 23216, 23216 (May 4, 2005) (reporting data from 1991 to 2005).

   [138]. Off. of Mgmt. and Budget, Microenterprise Development (MED) Program Indicators, OMB 0970-0490, OMB.report, https://omb.report/icr/202604-0970-006/doc/168108501 [https://perma.cc/7RN2-2KWN].

   [139]. Office of Refugee Resettlement; Discretionary Funds for Refugee Microenterprise Development Projects, 70 Fed. Reg. at 23216.

   [140]. 724 F.3d 297, 323 (3d Cir. 2013) (finding such municipal restrictions preempted by federal law, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)); see also Eisha Jain, Policing the Polity, 131 Yale L.J. 1794, 1832 (2022) (arguing that the Hazleton court’s assumption of “an immigration-control purpose . . . precluded full consideration of whether and how these laws affected people racially stereotyped as noncitizens”).

   [141]. 8 U.S.C. §§ 1601–1646. The application of these restrictions to emergency shelter and short-term housing assistance is disputed. Compare Joint Letter from U.S. Dep’t of Just., U.S. Dep’t of Health and Hum. Servs. & U.S. Dep’t of Hous. and Urb. Dev. to Recipients of Federal Financial Assistance (Aug. 5, 2016), https://acf.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fysb/doj_hhs_hud_letter.pdf [https://perma.cc/4BBV-QGX7] (elaborating agency’s reminder that recipients of federal financial assistance “should not withhold certain services based on immigration status when the services are necessary to protect life or safety”), with New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 804 F. Supp. 3d 294, 308–09, 334 (D.R.I. 2025), appeal dismissed, No. 25-2099, 2025 WL 4717710 (1st Cir. Dec. 11, 2025) (describing and enjoining agency notices that sought to designate certain aid as subject to PRWORA).

   [142]. By volume, the U.S. single-family mortgage market is agency securitized (as opposed to being privately securitized or unsecuritized). Urb. Inst., Housing Finance at a Glance: A Monthly Chartbook, January 2026 (2026), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2026-02/January%20v4.pdf [https://perma.cc/2EGE-N7HR] (disaggregating the over $14 trillion U.S. single-family mortgage market, including through $9.5 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities).

   [143]. See Fannie Mae, Non-Citizen Borrower Eligibility 2 (2019), https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/media/files/Editorial/Documents/non-citizen-borrower-eligibility.pdf [https://perma.cc/TS63-KEEY] (describing an eligibility scenario involving “Samuel” who “has current, unexpired DACA . . . status”). In contrast, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently shifted away from DACA eligibility to require permanent residency for FHA-insured mortgages, purportedly reflecting “the prioritization of federal resources to protect the financial interests of American citizens.” U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urb. Dev., Mortgagee Letter 2025-09 1 (Mar. 26, 2025), https://www.hud.gov/sites/default/files/OCHCO/documents/2025-09hsgml.pdf [https://perma.cc/K8UQ-7HVV].

   [144]. Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), IRS (Jan. 29, 2025) https://www.irs.gov/individuals/individual-taxpayer-identification-number [https://perma.cc/K3VJ-YJSW]; see Shayak Sarkar, Internal Revenue’s External Borders, 112 Calif. L. Rev. 1645, 1664–69 (2024) (describing how ITIN-based filing rates reflect trust and compliance, which can be undermined by the creep of the IRS’s mission toward immigration enforcement and resulting violations of taxpayer privacy safeguards).

   [145]. Laurie Goodman, Aniket Mehrotra & Amalie Zinn, ITIN Mortgages: Barriers and Opportunities to Advance Latino Homeownership 2 (2024), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/ITIN%20Mortgages.pdf?utm_campaign=ice-raids-itin-loans-a-mortgage-market-on-edge&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=www.themortgagescoop.com [https://perma.cc/2MN7-EAVH] (estimating “that 5,000 to 6,000 ITIN mortgages were made in 2023, but this could be up to 73,000 to 88,000 if market barriers were removed”).

   [146]. See, e.g., ITIN Mortgage Program, Guild Mortgage, https://www.guildmortgage.com/mortgage-loans/itin-mortgage-program/ [https://perma.cc/JQK2-E4NM] (offering loan amounts up to $1.25 million and down payments of at least 15 percent of the purchase price for those with credit scores of at least 660).

   [147]. Compare id. (requiring a credit score of at least 660), with Conventional Loans, Guild Mortgage, https://www.guildmortgage.com/mortgage-loans/conventional-mortgage/ [https://perma.cc/PYV8-MKNA] (requiring a credit score of only 620).

   [148]. See, e.g., Community Lending and Home Loan Programs, Flagstar, https://www.flagstar.com/personal/borrow/home-loans/community-loans.html [https://perma.cc/46HU-E3BQ] (advertising a 600-minimum credit score for Destination Home Mortgage compared to a 620-minimum credit score for “[l]oans for borrowers without Social Security numbers”).

   [149]. Buying a Home Without a SSN? Discover How with Our ITIN Loan Program, Fed. Hill Mortgage (Dec. 13, 2023), https://federalhillmortgage.com/learn/itin-loans-guide/ [https://perma.cc/5GVH-W54P].

   [150]. When offered at similar interest rates to traditional loans, such loans may appeal to immigrants who are looking to refinance from higher-interest loans and now have legal residency, if not also a work-authorized Social Security number. Id.

   [151]. While requiring a minimum credit score and income verification, mortgage providers may expressly allow for written verification of employment, instead of more formal W-2 tax forms or paystubs. See, e.g., ITIN, Acra Lending, https://acralending.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/BrokerFlyers/acra-itin-broker1.pdf [https://perma.cc/4ZPP-LWEP] (requiring a minimum credit score of 640). The features may parallel conventional loans, such as a 25 percent down payment (or 75 percent LTV purchase maximum). Id.

   [152]. Wisconsin, Illinois Accept Alternative Documentation to Underwrite Mortgage Loans, 33 No. CD-16 HDR Current Devs. 10 (2005). See generally Shayak Sarkar, Financial Immigration Federalism, 107 Geo. L.J. 1561, 1579–80 (2019) (detailing Wisconsin’s program).

   [153]. Dan Simmons, From Home Ownership to Foreclosure: Latinos Hit Hard by Mortgage Crisis, Wis. St. J. (May 22, 2011), https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/from-home-ownership-to-foreclosure-latinos-hit-hard-by-mortgage/article_78d9f7e6-82d3-11e0-be22-001cc4c002e0.html [https://perma.cc/LZB4-6A8P].

   [154]. Suzy Khimm, The American Dream, Undocumented, MSNBC (Aug. 28, 2014), http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/american-dream-undocumented [https://perma.cc/B4JL-GE46].

   [155]. See, e.g., John S. Hintze, Hildene’s New CROSS Deal Includes Deportation Risk, Asset Securitization Rep. (Dec. 11, 2024), https://asreport.americanbanker.com/news/hildenes-new-cross-deal-includes-deportation-risk [https://perma.cc/837T-CQHT] (describing a residential mortgage-backed security confronting a “new risk: borrower deportations”); SCI In Focus: Vanishing Borrowers the ‘Unpriced Risk’ in Securitisation, SCI (Nov. 10, 2025), https://www.structuredcreditinvestor.com/news-analysis/asset-backed-finance/84367/sci-in-focus:-vanishing-borrowers-the-unpriced-risk-in-securitisation [https://perma.cc/YK9P-A2T4] (arguing that “[m]ass deportations and due diligence gaps are exposing cracks in the US consumer ABS [asset-backed securities] market”).

   [156]. Supra sources cited in and text accompanying note 152.

   [157]. Borrower Eligibility Requirements, Cal. Hous. Fin. Agency, https://www.calhfa.ca.gov/homebuyer/borrower.htm#first-generation [https://perma.cc/3KHP-LAME]. As described in the lender handbook, “The Dream For All Shared Appreciation Loan (Shared Appreciation Loan) may only be used with a Dream For All Conventional first mortgage, providing first-time homebuyers with up to 20% of the home purchase price to be used for down payment and/or closing costs.” Cal. Hous. Fin. Agency, Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loan Program Handbook 1 (2024), https://www.calhfa.ca.gov/homeownership/programs/loans-cadfa.pdf [https://perma.cc/R6PF-LYN7].

   [158]. Cal. Hous. Fin. Agency, Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loan Program Handbook 4–5 (2024), https://www.calhfa.ca.gov/dream/index.htm#FAQ [https://perma.cc/2AJJ-5HJG] (providing example diagrams whereby those with 80 to 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) pay greater than those with less than 80 percent of AMI). The AMI calculations are updated and publicized annually. See Memorandum from Megan Kirkeby, Deputy Dir. Div. of Hous. Pol’y Dev. (May 9, 2024), https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/grants-and-funding/income-limits-2024.pdf [https://perma.cc/4KDR-HDF9], on 2024 State Income Limits.

   [159]. Cal. Hous. Fin. Agency, supra note 158, at 2 (requiring the borrower to “be either a citizen or other National of the United States, or a ‘Qualified Alien’ as defined at 8 U.S.C. § 1641”).

   [160]. Assemb. B. 1840, 2023–2024 Reg. Sess. (Cal. 2024).

   [161]. Karen Garcia, Undocumented Immigrants in California Could Have a New Path to Homeownership, L.A. Times (Feb. 27, 2024), https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-02-27/undocumented-immigrants-in-california-could-have-a-new-path-to-homeownership [https://perma.cc/K6PY-PMKM] (quoting Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno)).

   [162]. Kelvin Henry, First-time Calif. Homebuyer Program Could Expand to Include Undocumented People, NBC S.D. (Mar. 4, 2024) (emphasis added), https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/first-time-california-homebuyer-program-could-soon-expand-to-include-undocumented-people/3451865/ [https://perma.cc/WTL3-4LU7] (quoting San Diego County Supervisor, District 5, Jim Desmond).

   [163]. Letter from Gavin Newsom, Cal. Governor, to Members of the California State Assembly (Sep. 6, 2024), https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AB-1840-Veto-Message.pdf [https://perma.cc/Q4HX-YU3B].

   [164]. Cristina M. Rodríguez, The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation, 106 Mich. L. Rev. 567, 571 (2008) (arguing that “the federal government, the states, and localities form part of an integrated regulatory structure that helps the country as a whole to absorb immigration flows and manage the social and cultural change that immigration inevitably engenders”); Pratheepan Gulasekaram & S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, The President and Immigration Federalism, 68 Fla. L. Rev. 101, 115 (2016) (“Most commentary on immigration federalism typically portrays the federal government as a singular locus of power engaged in a turf battle with state and local authorities.”); cf. Jennifer M. Chacón, Immigration Federalism in the Weeds, 66 UCLA L. Rev. 1330, 1333–34 (2019) (arguing that “[t]he real driver behind increasing state and local power in the immigration sphere is the significant transformation in the structure of immigration enforcement [whereby] state and local law enforcement officers have become the most numerous frontline agents”).

   [165]. 42 U.S.C. § 1981(a).

   [166]. 427 U.S. 160, 167–68, 175–79 (1976) (rejecting the schools’ constitutional association, parental autonomy, and privacy claims).

   [167]. Id. at 170 (quoting Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27).

   [168]. 42 U.S.C. § 1981(b) (“For purposes of this section, the term ‘make and enforce contracts’ includes the making, performance, modification, and termination of contracts, and the enjoyment of all benefits, privileges, terms, and conditions of the contractual relationship.”).

   [169]. See, e.g., Complaint at 1, Ortiz v. Univ. Credit Union, No. CV 24-06013 DDP (JCx), 2025 WL 1039510 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 4, 2025), Dkt. No. 1; Complaint at 11–12, Alcocer v. Credit Union of Ga., No. 25-cv-01760 (N.D. Ga. Apr. 3, 2025), Dkt. No. 1.

   [170]. Complaint at 2, 4, Ortiz, 2025 WL 1039510 (mentioning a credit score of 759); see also Complaint at 5, Alcocer, No. 25-cv-01760 (mentioning the plaintiff’s credit score of 699 and describing the credit union’s refusal to consider plaintiff for an auto loan).

   [171]. Complaint at 3–4, Ortiz, 2025 WL 1039510; see also Complaint at 5–6, Alcocer, No. 25-cv-01760 (describing the plaintiff’s ultimate securing of financing outside the credit union at 8.89 percent).

   [172]. Complaint at 9, Ortiz, 2025 WL 1039510; see also Complaint at 11–12, Alcocer, No. 1:25-cv-01760.

   [173]. Complaint at 10, Ortiz, 2025 WL 1039510. Ultimately, Ortiz’s case was sent to arbitration. Ortiz v. Univ. Credit Union, No. 25-2207, 2025 WL 3765497, at *3 (9th Cir. Dec. 30, 2025).

   [174]. Cal. Civ. Code § 51(b) (West 2026).

   [175]. Id. § 52(a).

   [176]. Complaint at 5–6, Perez Fernandez v. Mun. Credit Union, No. 25-cv-06970 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 22, 2025), Dkt. No. 1.

   [177]. Perez v. Discover Bank, No. 20-CV-06896, 2024 WL 4340397, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Sep. 23, 2024).

   [178]. Id. at *2.

   [179]. 15 U.S.C. § 1691(a)(1).

   [180]. Joint Statement on Fair Lending and Credit Opportunities for Noncitizen Borrowers Under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 88 Fed. Reg. 71845, 71846 (Oct. 18, 2023).

   [181]. Withdrawal of Joint Statement on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Noncitizen Borrowers, 91 Fed. Reg. 1138 (Jan. 12, 2026).

   [182]. Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment 171 (2018).

   [183]. Settlement and Shelter, Off. of the United Nations High Comm’r for Refugees, https://www.unhcr.org/what-we-do/respond-emergencies/settlement-and-shelter [https://perma.cc/8W3Z-XWND].

   [184]. See, e.g., Securing Our Borders, Exec. Order No. 14165, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467, 8468, § 7(b) (Jan. 20, 2025) (ending parole programs, including for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans).

   [185]. Immigration Act of Aug. 3, 1882, ch. 376, § 2, 22 Stat. 214, 214.

   [186]. See, e.g., Gerald L. Neuman, The Lost Century of American Immigration Law (1776–1875), 93 Colum. L. Rev. 1833, 1848–50 (1993) (discussing state-level exclusions).

   [187]. 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(4)(A).

   [188]. Id.

   [189]. See Field Guidance on Deportability and Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, 64 Fed. Reg. 28689, 28689 (proposed May 26, 1999). While the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) proposed formalizing this definition, the agency never promulgated a final rule. Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, 83 Fed. Reg. 51114, 51133 (Oct. 10, 2018) (“Ultimately, however, INS did not publish a final rule conclusively.”).

   [190]. Shayak Sarkar, Crediting Migrants, 71 Stan. L. Rev. Online 281, 284 (2019); see also Joseph Daval, Note, The Problem with Public Charge, 130 Yale L.J. 998, 1006 (2021) (arguing that “the 1999 guidance provided the first comprehensive account of what ‘public charge’ means, how to apply it, and which benefits would ‘count’ against a noncitizen or instead be ignored by immigration officers”).

   [191]. Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, 83 Fed. Reg. 51114, 51122–23 (Oct. 10, 2018).

   [192]. Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, 84 Fed. Reg. 41292, 41425 (Aug. 14, 2019).

   [193]. Id. at 41349 (justifying new consideration of “non-cash benefits for basic living needs such as food and nutrition, housing, and healthcare, that account for significant public expenditures on non-cash benefits”).

   [194]. 8 U.S.C. § 1183a.

   [195]. Compare Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, 84 Fed. Reg. 41292, 41320 (Aug. 14, 2019) (“Had Congress intended enforcement of Form I-864 to be the sole mechanism by which DHS could ensure that an alien does not become a public charge after admission or adjustment of status, Congress would have included it as the sole mandatory factor to be considered when making public charge inadmissibility determinations. . . . Simply put, the affidavit of support is not a substitute for the assessment of the mandatory factors.”), with U.S. Dep’t of State, 9 Foreign Affairs Manual § 302.8-2(B)(3) (2024) (“[A] properly filed, non-fraudulent Form I-864 in those cases where it is required, is normally sufficient to meet the INA 212(a)(4) requirements and satisfy the ‘totality of the circumstances’ analysis.”).

   [196]. 8 U.S.C. § 1183 (providing the Attorney General authority to admit a migrant found otherwise inadmissible on the public charge ground on receipt of a “suitable and proper bond”); Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, 84 Fed. Reg. 41292, 41300 (Aug. 14, 2019) (noting how “the rule will impose new costs associated with the new public charge bond process”). Public charge bonds, like immigration detention bonds, may be in the form of a surety bond. 8 C.F.R. § 213.1(a) (2026); infra sources cited in and text accompanying note 289.

   [197]. Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds; Implementation of Vacatur, 86 Fed. Reg. 14221, 14221 (Mar. 15, 2021).

   [198]. Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility, 87 Fed. Reg. 55472, 55538 (Sep. 9, 2022) (“While DHS is concerned about chilling effects that might have resulted from the 2019 Final Rule and has taken considerable efforts to reduce or reverse such chilling effects, DHS believes that the policy contained in this final rule faithfully administers the public charge ground of inadmissibility while taking care to avoid potential chilling effects.”).

   [199]. The current rule expressly refuses to consider “non-cash benefits, including healthcare coverage . . . , with the narrow exception of long-term institutionalization.” Id.; see also Jennifer Lee Koh, Downsizing the Deportation State, 16 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 85, 87 (2021) (describing this policy change as consonant with the “litigation over controversial Trump-era policies such as the public charge rule . . . and the withholding of federal funds to sanctuary cities”).

   [200]. Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility, 87 Fed. Reg. 55472, 55500 (Sep. 9, 2022) (“DHS believes that the rule draws reasonable distinctions consistent with Congressional intent between cash benefits intended for income maintenance and special-purpose and supplemental benefits intended to help recipients remain self-sufficient.”); id. at 55525 (“[I]f the program provides a combination of non-cash and cash benefits, DHS would only consider the cash portion of the benefit in the totality of the circumstances, and such receipt would never alone be outcome determinative.”).

   [201]. I-944, Declaration of Self-Sufficiency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigr. Servs., https://www.uscis.gov/i-944 [https://perma.cc/ZD8K-VCTL] (“The Form I-944 has been discontinued.”).

   [202]. Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility, 87 Fed. Reg. 55472, 55578 (Sep. 9, 2022); 8 C.F.R. § 213.1(c) (2026) (setting the minimum bond amount at $1,000).

   [203]. Protecting the American People Against Invasion, Exec. Order No. 14159, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443, 8446 (Jan. 20, 2025).

   [204]. As this Article approached publication, the Trump administration tried (again) to revive the centrality of non-cash benefits in public charge determinations. Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility, 91 Fed. Reg. 45324, 45343 (July 20, 2026).

   [205]. See, e.g., Jennifer Hyndman, William Payne & Shauna Jimenez, Private Refugee Sponsorship in Canada, 54 Forced Migration Rev. 56, 56 (2017) (noting that “[u]ntil recently, Canada has been the only country that offers private sponsorship to refugees”); Janine Prantl, Community Sponsorships for Refugees and Other Forced Migrants: Learning from Outside and Inside the United States, 37 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 401, 413–24 (2023) (focusing on the Canadian model but also describing sponsorship systems in Australia, Argentina, Germany, New Zealand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom).

   [206]. Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration, Exec. Order No. 14013, 86 Fed. Reg. 8839, 8839 (Feb. 4, 2021) (describing how “[t]he long tradition of the United States as a leader in refugee resettlement provides a beacon of hope for persecuted people around the world”). Beyond the private sponsorship systems described here, the Biden-Harris administration argued that it “hired more than 300 refugee officers,” “more than tripled the size of its refugee officer corps,” and digitized case management to enable “most refugees to receive their Employment Authorization Documents and Social Security Cards within weeks of their arrival.” Joseph R. Biden, Jr., FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration on World Refugee Day Celebrates a Rebuilt U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, Am. Presidency Project (June 20, 2024), https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/372859 [https://perma.cc/M9JP-QRAD].

   [207]. Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration, Exec. Order No. 14013, 86 Fed. Reg. at 8843, § 4(k) (tasking the Secretary of State and Secretary of Health and Human Services); see also Prantl, supra note 205, at 431 (describing the history of the Welcome Corps).

   [208]. See, e.g., Securing Our Borders, Exec. Order No. 14165, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467, 8468, § 7(b) (Jan. 30, 2025) (ending parole programs).

   [209]. See, e.g., Mike DeWine, I’m the Republican Governor of Ohio. Here Is the Truth About Springfield, N.Y. Times (Sep. 20, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/20/opinion/springfield-haitian-migrants-ohio.html [https://perma.cc/H9Z4-NUR2] (autobiographically and approvingly describing the Republican governor-author’s hometown and home state as a refuge for Haitian beneficiaries of P4CHNV); Taylor Orth, Most Americans Support ‘Welcome Corps,’ Biden’s New Refugee Sponsorship Program, YouGov (Jan. 20, 2023), https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45034-most-americans-support-welcome-corps-refugees-poll [https://perma.cc/7SXE-8VBQ] (finding that a majority of polled Democrats and Republicans supported the Welcome Corps).

   [210]. Am. Immigr. Council, The Biden Administration’s Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans: An Overview 1 (2023), https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/147888892_09.23_chnv_factsheet.pdf [https://perma.cc/9JFG-DK4W] (describing how the tradeoff surfaced in the treatment of Venezuelan nationals in 2022); see also Daniel Di Martino, Biden’s Immigration Parole Programs Are Working 17, https://manhattan.institute/article/bidens-immigration-parole-programs-are-working [https://perma.cc/ZX9Q-AC58] (estimating that the “parole program reduce[s] illegal immigration more than it increases legal immigration” by “opening a legal door that has certain requirements”).

   [211]. Daniel Di Martino, Biden’s Parole Program is the Immigration Success Story We’ve Been Waiting For, The Hill (July 3, 2023), https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4074720-bidens-parole-program-is-the-immigration-success-story-weve-been-waiting-for/ [https://perma.cc/GM9A-7AMC]; see also Di Martino, supra note 210, at 19 (arguing that the “parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans and the Uniting for Ukraine parole program are positive developments” and recommending “a dynamic parole program that changes which countries are eligible”).

   [212]. Commentators have described how the first two processes incorporated beneficiary fee waivers as a way of acknowledging failures with early rounds of Afghan refugees, who, until recently, faced high costs to request humanitarian parole. Jayesh Rathod & Anne Schaufele, Immigraft, 2024 Wis. L. Rev. 465, 499 (2024); see also Re-Parole Process for Certain Afghans Nationals, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/information-for-afghan-nationals/re-parole-process-for-certain-afghans [https://perma.cc/EJB2-5MY4] (announcing a new process with no filing fee, including for an Employment Authorization Document applied for at the time re-parole is requested).

   [213]. According to the administration, in the first six months of P4CHNV, 160,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans arrived through the parole processes. Fact Sheet: Data From First Six Months of Parole Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans Shows That Lawful Pathways Work, U.S. Embassy in Caracas (July 25, 2023), https://ve.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-data-from-first-six-months-of-parole-processes-for-cubans-haitians-nicaraguans-and-venezuelans-shows-that-lawful-pathways-work/ [https://perma.cc/V95S-78HC]; Camilo Montoya-Galvez, In 2 Years Since Russia’s Invasion, a U.S. Program Has Resettled 187,000 Ukrainians with Little Controversy, CBS News (Apr. 24, 2024), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukrainian-refugees-us-uniting-for-ukraine-russia-invasion/ [https://perma.cc/24LR-P6T3] (noting that “[i]n two years, U.S. immigration officials have approved more than 236,000 cases under the Uniting for Ukraine program, according to the Department of Homeland Security”).

   [214]. See S.A. v. Trump, 363 F. Supp. 3d 1048, 1056–74 (N.D. Cal. 2018) (providing detailed history of the Central American Minors (CAM) Program, from its 2014 creation through its attempted 2017 termination, which gave rise to the instant legal challenges primarily under the Administrative Procedure Act). Off. of the Spokesperson, Restarting the Central American Minors Program, U.S. Dep’t of State (Mar. 10, 2021), https://2021-2025.state.gov/restarting-the-central-american-minors-program/ [https://perma.cc/39A2-8UMQ] (announcing “the first phase of reinstituting and improving the CAM program to reunite qualified children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras with their parent or parents who are lawfully present in the United States”).

   [215]. See, e.g., Securing Our Borders, Exec. Order No. 14165, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467, 8468 (Jan. 30, 2025) (ending parole programs); Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program, Exec. Order No. 14163, 90 Fed. Reg. 8459, 8459–60 (Jan. 30, 2025) (suspending entry into the country under the United States Refugee Admissions Program).

   [216]. Humanitarian or Significant Public Benefit Parole for Aliens Outside the United States, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/humanitarian_parole [https://perma.cc/SDL7-AMDM]; see also Alexandra Ciullo, Humanitarian Parole: A Tale of Two Crises, 37 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 493, 516 (2023) (expressing concern that “parole is granted for up to only two years and offers no pathway to a longer-term immigration status”).

              Many beneficiaries of P4CHNV and Uniting for Ukraine are fleeing armed conflict, and parole allows them American entry and work authorization. See, e.g., Fact Sheet, supra note 213 (describing how by “the end of June 2023, nearly 160,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans had arrived lawfully under the parole processes”); Montoya-Galvez, supra note 213 (describing how, over two years, U.S. immigration officials had “approved more than 236,000 cases under the Uniting for Ukraine program”). But since the United States does not recognize fleeing armed conflict alone as a basis for recognition as a refugee, they may not have successful grounds to be resettled as refugees. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1980, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42) (defining “refugee” through bases for inability to return and omitting armed conflict).

   [217]. See, e.g., Remaining in the United States After Uniting for Ukraine (U4U): Options for Humanitarian Parolees, Ukr. Immigr. Task Force (June 9, 2025), https://ukrainetaskforce.org/options-for-humanitarian-parolees-to-remaining-in-the-united-states-after-uniting-for-ukraine/ [https://perma.cc/FJL6-NVM2] (providing an overview of potential options for Ukrainians confronting the expiration of humanitarian parole).

   [218]. One distinction between the programs that has garnered attention is the lack of numerical limits in Uniting for Ukraine compared to P4CHNV. Compare Frequently Asked Questions About Uniting for Ukraine, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., https://web.archive.org/web/20250114055607/https:/www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/uniting-for-ukraine/frequently-asked-questions-about-uniting-for-ukraine [https://perma.cc/HE2V-86SV] (“There are no numerical limits on requests for travel authorization or parole under Uniting for Ukraine.”), with Frequently Asked Questions About the Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-processes-for-cubans-haitians-nicaraguans-and-venezuelans [https://perma.cc/4QTX-NDL4] (“The U.S. government will provide travel authorization for up to 30,000 individuals to come to the United States each month across the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan parole processes. This allows for a steady pace of operations and arrivals of individuals seeking parole.”).

   [219]. Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., https://web.archive.org/web/20250106213515/https://www.uscis.gov/CHNV [https://perma.cc/2EWU-GSVL]; Uniting for Ukraine, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., https://web.archive.org/web/20250106220701/https://www.uscis.gov/ukraine [https://perma.cc/D4TZ-BSKB]. Under both programs, eligible nationals may also bring immediate family members from other nationalities. Supporters must also identify beneficiaries because the U.S. government does not provide any mechanism to match supporters with unknown beneficiaries. See Frequently Asked Questions About Uniting for Ukraine, supra note 218.

   [220]. Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, supra note 219 (requiring I-134A); Uniting for Ukraine, supra note 219 (requiring I-134A). See generally U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., Online Request to be a Supporter and Declaration of Financial Support, Form I-134A, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-134a.pdf [https://perma.cc/C7AR-K6UJ] (requiring income and asset information of both the beneficiary and the individual supporter).

   [221]. Online Request to be a Supporter and Declaration of Financial Support, Form I-134A, supra note 220, at 6–7.

   [222]. Id. at 8–9.

   [223]. Ilya Somin, Building on the Success of Uniting for Ukraine, Reason (Apr. 24, 2024), https://reason.com/volokh/2024/04/24/building-on-the-success-of-uniting-for-ukraine/ [https://perma.cc/T6RB-2TMR].

   [224]. Am. Immigr. Council, An Overview of the “Uniting for Ukraine” Program 4 (2023), https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/overview-uniting-ukraine-program/ [https://perma.cc/5VSH-GCRH].

   [225]. Prantl, supra note 205, at 445.

   [226]. See Sponsor a Refugee You Know, Welcome Corps, https://web.archive.org/web/20250830025419/https://welcomecorps.org/become-a-sponsor/sponsoring-someone-you-know/ [https://perma.cc/6A9J-SYKF].

   [227]. See id.

   [228]. Sponsorship Duties, Welcome Corps, https://welcomecorps.org/become-a-sponsor/sponsorship-duties/ [https://perma.cc/XF8W-EJQQ].

   [229]. Sponsorship Duties, supra note 228.

   [230]. See id. (“You will be helping new arrivals navigate complicated processes like signing up for health care and benefits, so being able to communicate clearly is key.”). The Welcome Corps also expanded its reach through permutations, like Welcome Corps on Campus. Months after the inception of the Welcome Corps, Welcome Corps on Campus launched separately and enabled higher education institutions “to play a leading role in resettling refugee students.” The Welcome Corps Expands to Facilitate Sponsorship of Refugee Students by Campus Communities and Higher Education Institutions, Welcome Corps (July 6, 2023), https://welcomecorps.org/become-a-sponsor/campus/the-welcome-corps-expands-campuses/ [https://perma.cc/PLW6-VXLX].

   [231]. Off. of the Spokesperson, Fact Sheet – Launch of Welcome Corps- Private Sponsorship of Refugees, U.S. Dep’t of State (Jan. 19, 2023), https://2021-2025.state.gov/launch-of-the-welcome-corps-private-sponsorship-of-refugees-2/ [https://perma.cc/3FCY-3355].

   [232]. First Amended Class Action Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief at 10–12, Doe v. Noem, 778 F. Supp. 3d 311 (D. Mass. 2025) (No. 25-cv-10495), Dkt. No. 22.

   [233]. See supra sources cited in and text accompanying note 209.

   [234]. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) established this impending tax, beginning in 2026. Pub. L. No. 119–21, § 70604, 139 Stat. 72, 285–86 (2025) (codified at 26 U.S.C. § 4475(a)–(c)) (imposing a 1 percent tax on “any remittance transfer for which the sender provides cash, a money order, a cashier’s check, or any other similar physical instrument (as determined by the Secretary) to the remittance transfer provider”).

   [235]. State ex rel. Goddard v. W. Union Fin. Servs., Inc., 166 P.3d 916, 918 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2007); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-2315 (2026).

   [236]. Goddard, 166 P.3d at 917.

   [237]. Id. at 921.

   [238]. Id. at 926–27.

   [239]. See Settlement Agreement at 6, Goddard, 166 P.3d 916 (No. 1 CA-CV 06-0700). FinCEN helpfully disaggregates money laundering into three (sometimes overlapping) stages: “[1] Placement involves physically placing illegally obtained money into the financial system or the retail economy. . . . [2] Layering involves separating the illegally obtained money from its criminal source by layering it through a series of financial transactions, which makes it difficult to trace the money back to its original source. [3] Integration involves moving the proceeds into a seemingly legitimate form.” FinCEN, Money Laundering Prevention 2, https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/prevention_guide.pdf [https://perma.cc/QJM5-2H6V] (emphasis added).

   [240]. See Arizona Attorney General’s News Release on Multi-State Settlement, Western Union (Feb. 11, 2010), https://ir.westernunion.com/news/archived-press-releases/press-release-details/2010/Arizona-Attorney-Generals-News-Release-on-Multi-State-Settlement/default.aspx [https://perma.cc/LW5G-6KXU]. The nearly $100 million settlement included $21 million to the state of Arizona and $50 million to the Center for State Enforcement of Antitrust and Consumer Protection Laws. Id.

   [241]. Settlement Agreement at 6, Goddard, 166 P.3d 916 (No. 1 CA-CV 06-0700).

   [242]. See generally Stephen Lee, The Economic Dimensions of Family Separation, 71 Duke L.J. 845, 848 (2022) (arguing that, as laws empower financial institutions “to make their own calls about the kinds of international transactions that present a cover for unlawful activity,” the “delays in completing transfers or canceling them altogether” further marginalize poor migrants from formal financial systems).

   [243]. See, e.g., Letter from Sen. Ron Wyden to Hon. Joseph Cuffari, Inspector General, Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 3 (Mar. 8, 2022), https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/DHS%20IG%20ICE_HSI%20data%20complaint%20final.pdf [https://perma.cc/34PB-H5SP] (arguing that the outsourcing to a third party raised independent questions on the data privacy and security protections under DHS and HSI policies).

   [244]. Settlement Agreement Amendment at 14, State ex rel. Horne v. W. Union Fin. Servs., Inc., No. CV 2010-005807 (Ariz. Super. Ct. Jan. 31, 2014). This TRAC database should not be confused with the academic Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). See Home, Transactional Recs. Access Clearinghouse, https://trac.syr.edu [https://perma.cc/E6VE-EZLB] (emphasis added).

   [245]. See Dustin Volz & Byron Tau, Little-Known Surveillance Program Captures Money Transfers Between U.S. and More Than 20 Countries, Wall St. J. (Jan. 18, 2023), https://www.wsj.com/articles/little-known-surveillance-program-captures-money-transfers-between-u-s-and-more-than-20-countries-11674019904 [https://perma.cc/7VMH-VNSN]; Fikayo Walter-Johnson & Nathan Freed Wessler, How the Arizona Attorney General Created a Secretive, Illegal Surveillance Program to Sweep up Millions of Our Financial Records, ACLU (Jan. 18, 2023), https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/how-the-arizona-attorney-general-created-a-secretive-illegal-surveillance-program [https://perma.cc/3V5R-ZZQ7] (“Our review of internal TRAC records revealed 440 local agencies, 80 state agencies, 53 federal agencies, and 152 field offices of specific federal agencies with access to this revealing personal information.”).

   [246]. Nat’l Ass’n Crim. Def. Laws. (NACDL) Fourth Amend. Ctr., Practice Advisory: Law Enforcement Access to Bulk Money Transfer Data 2 (2023) [hereinafter NACDL], https://www.nacdl.org/getattachment/1f631991-aefe-4647-bbac-6c7e7e9240d0/2023_update_wire_transfer_surveillance_practice_advisory_revised2-100.pdf [https://perma.cc/LX9S-TDBB].

   [247]. NACDL, supra note 246, at 3.

   [248]. See Matthew Tokson & Michael Gentithes, The Reality of the Good Faith Exception, 113 Geo. L.J. 551, 579 (2025) (discussing 19 U.S.C. § 1509 as an example of how “government officers can use older, general-purpose statutes to justify aggressive and often unconstitutional new forms of surveillance”).

   [249]. See 19 U.S.C. § 1509(a) (premising authority on “purpose of ascertaining the correctness of any entry, for determining the liability of any person for duty, fees and taxes due or duties, fees and taxes which may be due the United States, for determining liability for fines and penalties, or for insuring compliance with the laws of the United States administered by the United States Customs Service”); see also United States v. Ford Motor Co., 516 F. Supp. 2d 770, 773–74 (W.D. Tex. 2007) (discussing entry records under the statute).

   [250]. See NACDL, supra note 246, at 3; Elizabeth M. Grieco, Patricia de la Cruz, Rachel Cortes & Luke Larsen, Who in the United States Sends and Receives Remittances? An Initial Analysis of the Monetary Transfer Data from the Aug. 2008 CPS Migration Supplement 10 (U.S. Census Bureau, Working Paper No. 87, 2010), https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2010/demo/POP-twps0087.html [https://perma.cc/MU5Y-JLUK] (analyzing Current Population Survey (CPS) Migration Supplement data to find that “[a] total of 364,000 households, representing less than 1 percent of all households, both sent and received monetary transfers, of which 75 percent were foreign born”); Eleanor Marie Lawrence Brown, Outsourcing Criminal Deportees, 80 U. Chi. L. Rev. 59, 64 (2013) (noting that “the federal government, by issuing visas, is a primary facilitator of financial support both for migrants’ families and for governments in the developing world”); supra sources cited in and text accompanying note 245. See generally Shalini Bhargava Ray, Abdication Through Enforcement, 96 Ind. L.J. 1325, 1366 (2021) (criticizing the “use of big data technologies in immigration enforcement,” particularly when federal databases are merged with local information, like DMV rolls).

   [251]. Memorandum from John Roth, Inspector Gen., on Management Alert – CBP’s Use of Examination and Summons Authority Under 19 U.S.C. § 1509 (Nov. 16, 2017), https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/Mga/2017/oig-18-18-nov17.pdf [https://perma.cc/5YXX-T3D5].

   [252]. Id. at 3 (emphasis added); see also id. (“In instances where records are sought from third parties . . . the issuance of a 1509 summons requires probable cause to believe that the records relate to an importation of merchandise that is prohibited.” (emphasis in original)).

   [253]. See NACDL, supra note 246, at 3; Grieco, de la Cruz, Cortes & Larsen, supra note 250 (analyzing CPS Migration Supplement data to find that “[a] total of 364,000 households, representing less than 1 percent of all households, both sent and received monetary transfers, of which 75 percent were foreign born”); Memorandum from John Roth, supra note 251.

   [254]. See, e.g., Right to Financial Privacy Act, 12 U.S.C. § 3401; California Financial Information Privacy Act, Cal. Fin. Code §§ 4050–60 (West 2026) (noting that “policies intended to protect financial privacy imposed by [federal law] are inadequate to meet the privacy concerns of California residents”). Of note, the scope of financial institutions subject to the federal Right to Financial Privacy Act remains disputed. See Sequeira v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 722 F. Supp. 3d 996, 1002 (N.D. Cal. 2024) (noting the unresolved statutory-interpretation question).

   [255]. Letter from Sen. Ron Wyden, supra note 243, at 1–2.

   [256]. Id. at 3.

   [257]. Id. at 1.

   [258]. See, e.g., Matt Wostbrock, Note, Miller in a Cashless Society: Financial Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment, 2023 Colum. Bus. L. Rev. 1015, 1018 n.11 (2023) (arguing that “surveilled parties . . . are unlikely to prevail as there is no constitutional protection of one’s financial data . . . and statutory rights are also limited”).

   [259]. Sequeira, 722 F. Supp. 3d at 1007–09.

   [260]. Id. at 1008 (internal alterations omitted) (citing First Amended Class Action Complaint at 16–17, Sequeira, 722 F. Supp. 3d 996 (N.D. Cal. 2024) (No. 22-cv-07996), Dkt. No. 38). Under California’s UCL, plaintiffs must allege that they suffered “injury in fact and ha[ve] lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition.” Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17204 (West 2026).

   [261]. Sequeira, 722 F. Supp. 3d at 1010 n.6.

   [262]. Id.

   [263]. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 19(a).

   [264]. Sequeira v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 347 F.R.D. 510, 517–18 (N.D. Cal. 2024) (internal quotation marks omitted).

   [265]. Id. at 518.

   [266]. Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion to Alter Judgment at 1–2, Sequeira, 722 F. Supp. 3d 996 (No. 22-cv-07996), Dkt. No. 196.

   [267]. Walter-Johnson & Wessler, supra note 245 (“[T]he secrecy surrounding law enforcement access to the TRAC database has far-reaching implications for people who are accused of crimes based on this data but may not have learned it was used to investigate them.”); id. (“We now know of three criminal prosecutions involving TRAC records, but that is surely a tiny fraction, and criminal defense attorneys and judges need to know more.”).

   [268]. Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, 548 U.S. 331, 348 (2006) (describing a “few cases in which [the Court has] suppressed evidence for statutory violations”).

   [269]. Perez Cruz v. Barr, 926 F.3d 1128, 1145–46 (9th Cir. 2019) (“Because the agents violated 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(b)(2) (2026), Perez Cruz is entitled to suppression of the evidence gathered as a result of that violation.”).

   [270]. See, e.g., Crystal S. Yang, Toward an Optimal Bail System, 92 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1399, 1410–16 (2017) (providing a brief history of bail reform); Cynthia Godsoe, The Place of the Prosecutor in Abolitionist Praxis, 69 UCLA L. Rev. 164, 210 (2022) (noting some prosecutors’ roles in movements to abolish money bail).

   [271]. See, e.g., César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants 35 (2023) (“Given that all immigration imprisonment targets violations of immigration law, why is the civil type of imprisonment permissible without a judicial trial but its criminal variety is not?”); Jain, supra note 47, at 1473 (describing the “hidden costs” of “formal mechanisms of immigration enforcement short of deportation, such as arrest or detention,” which “affect far more people”); cf. Kevin R. Johnson, An Immigration Gideon for Lawful Permanent Residents, 122 Yale L.J. 2394, 2413–14 (2013) (arguing for the extension of Gideon from criminal to civil removal proceedings to “reduce the costs of detention of lawful permanent residents”).

   [272]. U.S. Immigr. & Customs Enf’t, Fiscal Year 2024 ICE Annual Report 22, fig. 12 (2024), https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2024.pdf [https://perma.cc/K67H-JKQL]; see also Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump’s Second Term, Am. Immigr. Council (Jan. 14, 2026), https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/immigration-detention/ [https://perma.cc/E74E-Y53C] (estimating an immigration detention population closer to seventy thousand). These facilities can be operated by a range of actors—from state and local governments to private companies. Fatma Marouf, Immigration Detention and Illusory Alternatives to Habeas, 12 UC Irvine L. Rev. 975, 985–90 (2022) (describing a range of facilities and conditions); Jihye Park, US Immigration Politics, Sanctions Threats and Private Prison Corporations’ Stock Market Values, 63 British J. Criminology 765, 765 (2023) (estimating that “70 per cent of detained immigrants are held in private prisons, generating 25 per cent of [private prison corporation]s’ total annual revenue”).

   [273]. See, e.g., Paulina D. Arnold, How Immigration Detention Became Exceptional, 75 Stan. L. Rev. 261, 320–21 (2023) (describing how two laws passed by Congress in 1996 “removed in large part immigration officials’ discretion to release noncitizens on bond and expanded the classes of noncitizens subject to mandatory detention”); Bhargava Ray, supra note 250, at 1346 (discussing past DHS officials’ embrace of discretion to avoid detention of vulnerable populations, like nursing mothers); Emily Ryo, Fostering Legal Cynicism Through Immigration Detention, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 999, 1038–39 (2017) (describing how “the forced loss of employment resulting from [immigration] detention meant acute financial stress” for detainees and their families).

   [274]. See U.S. Immigr. & Customs Enf’t, ERO 11301.1, Enforcement And Removal Operations: Bond Management Handbook 1–2 (2014), https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/dro_policy_memos/eroBondManagementHandbook2018-ICFO-31476.pdf [https://perma.cc/EE93-FN8P]; cf. Denise L. Gilman, To Loose the Bonds: The Deceptive Promise of Freedom from Pretrial Immigration Detention, 92 Ind. L.J. 157, 167–68 (2016) (“A decision to require a bond necessarily involves continued detention for some period of time, at least until bond payment is gathered and presented or the bond decision is reviewed and modified or vacated.”).

   [275]. 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(3) (establishing how the Secretary of Homeland Security may “prescribe such forms of bond, reports, entries, and other papers . . . as he deems necessary for carrying out his authority under the provisions of this chapter”). For a narrow class of noncitizens, detention may be mandatory. See, e.g., 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c) (enumerating certain categories of “criminal” noncitizens).

   [276]. Gilman, supra note 274, at 164.

   [277]. Cf. Abel Rodríguez, Lethal Immigration Enforcement, 109 Cornell L. Rev. 465, 490 (2024) (arguing that “[a]s immigration detention becomes more widespread and conditions remain questionable, the Supreme Court’s further limits on opportunities to challenge lengthy detention may . . . increase[] preventable deaths in immigration detention”).

   [278]. See, e.g., Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 700 (2001) (recognizing that courts cannot “abdicat[e] their legal responsibility to review the lawfulness of a [noncitizen’s] continued detention” even as judicial “review must take appropriate account of the greater immigration-related expertise of the Executive Branch, of the serious administrative needs and concerns inherent in . . . this complex statute, and the Nation’s need to ‘speak with one voice’ in immigration matters”).

   [279]. Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281, 312 (2018).

   [280]. See, e.g., Laila L. Hlass & Mary Yanik, Studying the Hazy Line Between Procedure and Substance in Immigrant Detention Litigation, 58 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 203, 217 (2023) (arguing for the significance of habeas proceedings since “[b]ond and parole are the primary means by which detained immigrants may be released[] but . . . are foreclosed for scores of immigrants”); Arnold, supra note 273, at 328 (arguing that Jennings v. Rodriguez “went to extraordinary lengths to avoid a constitutional holding” in addressing challenges to “a variety of detention statutes that did not require periodic bond hearings”); see also Emily Ryo & Ian Peacock, A National Study of Immigration Detention in the United States, 92 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1, 51–52 (2018) (arguing that remote location of many detention facilities jeopardizes detainees’ access to counsel and related due process rights).

   [281]. See, e.g., In re Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216, 229 (B.I.A. 2025) (affirming the Immigration Judge’s (IJ’s) lack of “authority to hear the respondent’s request for a bond as the respondent is an applicant for admission and is subject to mandatory detention”). Federal district courts have nonetheless rejected such an enlargement of mandatory detention to anyone who entered without inspection. See Rodriguez v. Bostock, 779 F. Supp. 3d 1239, 1263 (W.D. Wash. 2025) (holding that a noncitizen who entered without inspection was “likely to succeed on the merits, or at least has raised serious questions, that he is unlawfully detained under Section 1225(b)’s mandatory detention authority and instead should be governed under Section 1226(a)’s discretionary detention scheme”); Sampiao v. Hyde, 799 F. Supp. 3d 14, 29 n.11 (D. Mass. 2025) (casting doubt on the BIA’s decision in Hurtado).

   [282]. 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) (describing how the government “(1) may continue to detain the arrested [noncitizen]; and (2) may release the alien on—(A) bond of at least $1,500 with security approved by, and containing conditions prescribed by, the Attorney General; or (B) conditional parole”).

              CBP also has authority over parole decisions at ports of entry, whether for asylum-seeking noncitizens or via “deferred inspection,” whereby individuals permitted entry into the United States are subsequently interviewed about unresolved admissibility issues. Am. Immigr. Council, The Use of Parole Under Immigration Law 2 (2024), https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/use-parole-under-immigration-law [https://perma.cc/6SYX-7NZR].

   [283]. See, e.g., Sarah Sherman-Stokes, No Restoration, No Rehabilitation: Shadow Detention of Mentally Incompetent Noncitizens, 62 Vill. L. Rev. 787, 823–24 (2017) (describing factors for the IJ’s flight risk determination “including whether the respondent has a criminal history of any kind, as well as criminal charges that did not result in a conviction”). If the respondent is found not to pose a danger to persons or property, the IJ may proceed to “making a flight risk determination . . . consider[ing] multiple factors including whether the respondent has a fixed address in the United States; the respondent’s length of residence in the United States; family ties in the United States; employment history in the United States, including length and stability of such employment; as well as the respondent’s immigration record.” Id. at 823–24.

   [284]. David K. Hausman, Risk Assessment as Policy in Immigration Detention Decisions, 68 J.L. & Econ. 103, 114 (2025) (noting how “independent judges set criminal bail, whereas ICE officers, who answer to their supervisors, make detention decisions for noncitizens”).

   [285]. 8 C.F.R. § 236.1(g) (2026) (describing the I-286 Notice of Custody Determination).

   [286]. Id. § 236.1(d). Further, an appeal can continue to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Id. § 236.1(d)(3).

   [287]. Hernandez v. Sessions, 872 F.3d 976, 993 (9th Cir. 2017) (“[W]hen a person’s freedom from governmental detention is conditioned on payment of a monetary sum, courts must consider the person’s financial situation and alternative conditions of release when calculating what the person must pay to satisfy a particular state interest.”); Stacy L. Brustin, A Civil Shame: The Failure to Protect Due Process in Discretionary Immigration Custody & Bond Redetermination Hearings, 88 Brook. L. Rev. 163, 180–82 (2022) (discussing other circuits, such as the Fourth Circuit, which has held that “consideration of ability to pay is not required” (citing Miranda v. Garland, 34 F.4th 338, 366 (4th Cir. 2022))).

   [288]. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., OMB No. 1653-0022, Immigration Bond 1 (2025), https://www.ice.gov/doclib/forms/i352.pdf [https://perma.cc/PX3V-WCEA] (“The surety is the obligor; the bonded alien is the principal; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the beneficiary of all bonds it authorizes. The obligor guarantees the performance of the conditions of the bond.”).

   [289]. ERO 11301.1, supra note 274, at 5–6; see also Bureau of Fiscal Serv., Department Circular 570: Companies Holding Certificates of Authority as Acceptable Sureties on Federal Bonds and as Acceptable Reinsuring Companies, U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury (Aug. 1, 2025), https://fiscal.treasury.gov/about-us/doing-business-with-fiscal-service/surety-bonds/circular-570 [https://perma.cc/J7B2-88M7] (noting that “[t]hose listed as Certified Insurers are acceptable as sureties and reinsurers on Federal bonds”); Immigrants’ Rts. Clinic at Stan. L. Sch. & Immigr. L. Clinic at the UC Davis Sch. of L., Following the Money: New Information About the Federal Government’s Billion Dollar Immigration Detention and Bond Operations 2 (2019) [hereinafter Following the Money], https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/19-02-25-Bond-FOIA-Report_Final.pdf [https://perma.cc/S9XH-CE96] (estimating the surety or bond company’s nonrefundable percentage of the bond amount as “usually 15-20%”).

   [290]. Immigrants Pay $2 Billion in ICE Bonds Since FY 2017, Transactional Recs. Access Clearinghouse (Feb. 8, 2024), https://trac.syr.edu/reports/738/#f1 [https://perma.cc/K22Q-BL4A]. During that time period, the median bonds at the Adelanto, California, and Jena, Louisiana, offices were $15,000 while those at the Washington, DC, and Laredo, Texas, offices were only $5,000. Id. at tbl. 1. Across time, the median bond fell from $7,500 in FY 2017 to $4,000 in FY 2023. Id. at tbl. 2.

   [291]. ERO 11301.1, supra note 274, at 29–30. Such a demand can occur not only after an order of final removal but also potentially for an investigative interview even before such an order. Id. at 31. Termination, or cancellation, of the bond can also occur if the noncitizen passes away, receives permanent residence or citizenship, or voluntarily departs. Id. at 8–10.

   [292]. Following the Money, supra note 289, at 5.

   [293]. Id. at 7 (estimating $40 million in revenue in recent years).

   [294]. Garcia Hernández, supra note 271, at 35 (describing how the dissenters in Shaughnessy v. U.S. ex rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206 (1953), a seminal case “embracing immigration imprisonment,” articulated a well-founded fear of “brutish violence”).

   [295]. Help for Detained Immigrants When You Need It Most, Libre Immigr. Servs., https://librefianza.com [https://perma.cc/KD3W-92LS].

   [296]. Complaint at 2, Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau v. Nexus Servs., Inc., No. 21-cv-00016, 2022 WL 1597840 (W.D. Va. May 19, 2022), Dkt. No. 1.

   [297]. Id. at 28–34.

   [298]. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau v. Nexus Servs., Inc., 156 F.4th 443, 447 (4th Cir. 2025) (affirming “permanent injunctive relief and the imposition of a monetary award that subjects [defendants] to approximately $811,000,000 in liability”).

   [299]. Amended Final Judgment Order at 3, Nexus, 2022 WL 1597840, Dkt. No. 246.

   [300]. Id. at 4.

   [301]. Douglas MacMillan & Silvia Foster-Frau, ICE Moves to Shackle Some 180,000 Immigrants with GPS Ankle Monitors, Wash. Post (July 24, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/07/24/ice-check-in-ankle-monitor-immigrants/ [https://perma.cc/5TG6-9WSC].

   [302]. If mandatory detention expands and bond disappears, for-profit immigration detention rises in its place. Emily Ryo & Ian Peacock, Privatised Immigration Detention: Morality, Economics, and Transparency, in Privatising Border Control: Law at the Limits of the Sovereign State 110, 114 (Mary Bosworth & Lucia Zedner eds., 2022) (describing “the expansion of private prison companies’ role in immigration detention”).

   [303]. President Trump’s focus on immigration enforcement appears to have ebbed migrant flows. See, e.g., Nationwide Encounters, U.S. Customs & Border Prot., https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters [https://perma.cc/M24L-HRH5] (documenting a decline in “encounters” in 2025, compared to past years); CBP Encounters, Off. of Homeland Sec. Stat., https://ohss.dhs.gov/khsm/cbp-encounters [https://perma.cc/7G2T-347D] (defining an encounter as only those with removable noncitizens, including “[p]eople who unlawfully crossed the border between ports of entry” and “[p]eople who entered at a port of entry but are inadmissible”).

   [304]. Christopher L. Eisgruber, Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution, 72 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 54, 83 (1997).

   [305]. See, e.g., Achiume, supra note 81, at 1573 (“Contemporary and historical migration patterns between the First and Third Worlds reflect the deep interconnection [in] Third World persons who live transnational lives.”); Bhargava Ray, supra note 250, at 1328 (contending that, in immigration law, “the President’s failure to adequately guide and constrain line officers’ discretion amounts to abdication in violation of [the Constitutional] duty of faithful execution”).

   [306]. Marcella Alsan & Crystal S. Yang, Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence from Secure Communities, 106 Rev. Econ. & Stat. 1427, 1439 (2024) (finding that immigration enforcement has spillover effects that reduce citizens’ uptake of safety net programs); Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Thitima Puttitanun, Remittances and Immigration Enforcement, 3 IZA J. Migration 1, 17 (2014) (estimating that “police-based initiatives, i.e. 287(g) agreements and Secure Communities, induce undocumented immigrants to start remitting money home, possibly as an insurance mechanism” and that generally “remittances increase with the implementation of stricter immigration policies”).

   [307]. See, e.g., Tom Ginsburg, Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez & Mila Versteeg, When to Overthrow Your Government: The Right to Resist in the World’s Constitutions, 60 UCLA L. Rev. 1184, 1189 (2013) (providing an empirical analysis of the prevalence of the “so-called right to resist” in national constitutions). But see Kim Lane Scheppele, Autocratic Legalism, 85 U. Chi. L. Rev. 545, 548 (2018) (noting that “[w]hile democracy, constitutionalism, and liberalism once marched arm in arm through history, . . . new autocrats who first came to power through elections . . . translate[] their victories into illiberal constitutionalism”).

   [308]. Request for Information on Financial Inclusion, 88 Fed. Reg. 88702, 88702–03 (Dec. 22, 2023).

   [309]. Id. at 88703.

   [310]. Letter from Inclusiv to Natalia Li, Director, Off. of Consumer Pol’y, U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury (Feb. 20, 2024), https://inclusiv.org/sites/default/files/2024-12/February-2024-Comments-on-Treasurys-Request-for-Information-on-Financial-Inclusion.pdf [https://perma.cc/N8NT-LTTX].

   [311]. Id. at 2–3 (emphasis added).

   [312]. See generally Threshold for the Requirement To Collect, Retain, and Transmit Information on Funds Transfers and Transmittals of Funds That Begin or End Outside the United States, and Clarification of the Requirement To Collect, Retain, and Transmit Information on Transactions Involving Convertible Virtual Currencies and Digital Assets With Legal Tender Status, 85 Fed. Reg. 68005 (Oct. 27, 2020) (describing proposal to lower monetary threshold from $3000 to $250).

   [313]. Letter from Remitly to Policy Division, Fin. Crimes Enf’t Network 2 (Nov. 27, 2020), https://www.federalreserve.gov/SECRS/2020/December/20201222/R-1726/R-1726_112520_137397_442005400994_1.pdf [https://perma.cc/FNJ7-X6R7].

   [314]. FinCEN, supra note 239, at 2. Unlike riskier, cash-accepting legacy competitors like Western Union, Remitly characterized its digital platform as financially inclusive and inherently protective against money laundering. Frequently Asked Questions, W. Union, https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/frequently-asked-questions/faq-sending-money.html [https://perma.cc/9UBD-PZQD].

   [315]. Letter from Remitly to Policy Division, supra note 313, at 1–2.

   [316]. Id. at 5 (“Over 300 comments were collected that specifically addressed SSN and ITIN collection, each of which expressed customer trust concerns. A common negative theme among negative responses: ‘Don’t feel comfortable sharing SSN for transfers.’”).

   [317]. Id. at 4–5.

   [318]. Remitly argued that the proposed rule’s expansive and sensitive personal information mandate would benefit “larger incumbents, a result at odds with the general policy of increasing innovation and competition in financial services.” Id. at 4–5.

   [319]. Ariel Jurow Kleiman, Shayak Sarkar & Emily Satterthwaite, Taxing Nannies, 110 Iowa L. Rev. 111, 153 (2024) (describing how undocumented workers may prefer formal employment and ITIN-based tax compliance over informal work).

   [320]. See, e.g., Fin. Crimes Enf’t Network (FinCEN), Financial Trends Analysis: Use of Convertible Virtual Currency for Suspected Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking: Threat Pattern & Trend Information, January 2020 to December 2021 5–6, 9–10 (2024) (reporting growing numbers of online child sexual exploitation and human trafficking–related Bank Secrecy Act reports involving convertible virtual currencies (CVCs)). “FinCEN identified four primary money laundering typologies typical of actors utilizing CVCs.” Id. at 9–10; see also Operational Alert: Laundering of Proceeds from Online Child Sexual Exploitation, Fin. Transactions & Reps. Analysis Ctr. of Can., https://fintrac-canafe.canada.ca/intel/operation/exploitation-eng [https://perma.cc/VTH6-QSEM] (discussing characteristics of suspected perpetrators’ international fund transfers).

   [321]. Supra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 152–160.

   [322]. Emily R. Chertoff, Citizenship Federalism, 81 Md. L. Rev. 503, 518 (2022).

   [323]. See, e.g., Cal. Earned Income Tax Credit, Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code § 17052 (West 2026) (providing for eligibility through “federal individual taxpayer identification number or a social security number” as opposed to only through a social security number).

   [324]. See, e.g., Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union v. Vought, 774 F. Supp. 3d 1, 85 (D.D.C. 2025) (granting a preliminary injunction in response to President Trump’s terminations en masse and stop-work orders at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau).

   [325]. See, e.g., Chamber of Com. v. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, 779 F. Supp. 3d 894, 894–95 (N.D. Tex. 2025) (granting a joint motion for entry of a consent judgment pertaining to CFPB’s Credit Card Penalty Fees Final Rule); Fees for Instantaneously Declined Transactions; Withdrawal of Proposed Rule, 90 Fed. Reg. 3044, 3044 (Jan. 14, 2025) (withdrawing notice of proposed rulemaking “to prohibit covered financial institutions from charging fees, such as nonsufficient funds fees, when consumers initiate payment transactions that are instantaneously declined” as “an abusive practice under the Consumer Financial Protection [Act]”).

   [326]. See, e.g., Consent Motion by Plaintiff Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to Withdraw as a Plaintiff at 1, Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau v. MoneyGram Int’l, Inc., No. 22-cv-3256, 2025 WL 297389 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 24, 2025), Dkt. No. 114.

   [327]. Image posted by Brian Schwartz (@shwartzbWSJ), X, Internal Memo from Mark R. Paoletta, Chief Legal Officer, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Apr. 16, 2025, 15:27 PT), https://x.com/schwartzbWSJ/status/1912633869255188512 [https://perma.cc/29PP-UF4P].

   [328]. See, e.g., Stipulated Final Judgment and Order at 1, MoneyGram, 2025 WL 297389, Dkt. No. 127 (noting remaining Plaintiff State of New York after the CFPB’s withdrawal).

   [329]. 12 U.S.C. § 5552(a)(1) (providing Consumer Financial Protection Act enforcement powers to the states).

   [330]. California Consumer Financial Protection Law (“CCFPL”), Cal. Fin. Code §§ 90000–09 (West 2026).

   [331]. California Money Transmission Act, Cal. Fin. Code §§ 2000–176 (West 2026); Money Transmitters, Ca. Dep’t Fin. Prot. & Innovation, https://dfpi.ca.gov/regulated-industries/money-transmitters/ [https://perma.cc/V67A-YFWN] (“The Money Transmitter Division of DFPI licenses and regulates money transmitters, which includes issuers of payment instruments (money orders), travelers checks and stored value.”).

   [332]. Don’t Let Fear Lead to Fraud: How Immigrants Can Keep Their Money Safe, Cal. Dep’t Fin. Prot. & Innovation (Aug. 19, 2025), https://dfpi.ca.gov/news/insights/dont-let-fear-lead-to-fraud-how-immigrants-can-keep-their-money-safe/ [https://perma.cc/X7K6-LEEK].

   [333]. Chacón, supra note 164, at 1393 (arguing that “[e]ven in their most robust forms, subfederal noncooperation policies aimed at protecting immigrants are limited vehicles for ensuring freedom of movement”); cf. Johnson, supra note 70, at 368–69 (describing how states and public universities filed legal challenges to the federal rescission of DACA).

   [334]. See, e.g., Emma Kaufman, Segregation by Citizenship, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 1379, 1426 (2019) (describing the plenary power doctrine’s “horizontal and vertical dimensions,” as both “a federalism doctrine that limits state and local control over immigration and a separation of powers doctrine that restrains courts’ involvement in political branch decisions on immigration policy”); Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Immigration Enforcement Preemption, 84 Ohio St. L.J. 535, 540 (2023) (offering a new preemption framework in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Kansas v. Garcia, 589 U.S. 191 (2020), which found that state criminal identity theft laws were not preempted by the Immigration and Reform Control Act of 1986).

   [335]. See, e.g., Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility, 87 Fed. Reg. 55472, 55494 (Sep. 9, 2022) (describing how “[a]lthough DHS may issue regulations governing the Affidavit of Support process, Congress has not tasked DHS with the enforcement of the Affidavit of Support Under Section 213A[,]” though such enforcement may be sought by the sponsored immigrant or by a local or state entity). In other words, the agency has historically not enforced such affidavits of support, and states have traditionally been perceived as beneficiaries of such enforcement, rather than obligors. That could, of course, all change.

   [336]. 8 U.S.C. § 1183a(f).

   [337]. Sarkar, supra note 190, at 289–90.

   [338]. Supra sources cited in and text accompanying notes 196, 288–289.

   [339]. See, e.g., Previous Works & Campaigns, Freedom for Immigrants, https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/previous-work-and-campaigns [https://perma.cc/TWV4-3P9V] (noting that “many families cannot afford the high bond amounts set by ICE or immigration judges,” given that bonds range from $1,500 to $250,000); National Bail Fund Network: Directory of Community Bail Funds, Cmty. Just. Exch., https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/en/nbfn-directory#california-en [https://perma.cc/2T8V-QP8C] (providing a directory of community bail funds).

   [340]. See, e.g., The Bail Project, https://bailproject.org/model/ [https://perma.cc/DQ7R-3YEU] (describing a holistic model and estimating that beneficiaries appear for over 90 percent of their court dates).

   [341]. See, e.g., The Uniting American Families Act: Addressing Inequality in Federal Immigration Law: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 111th Cong. 1 (2009) (statement of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Chairman, S. Comm. on the Judiciary) (“The preservation of family unity is at the core of our immigration legal system.”); Albertina Antognini, Family Unity Revisited: Divorce, Separation, and Death in Immigration Law, 66 S.C. L. Rev. 1, 8 (2014) (describing how immigration law defines and shapes American families above and beyond the conventional focus on family-based preferences and unification); Lee, supra note 242, at 905–06 (advocating for “integrating family separation into the legal infrastructure of U.S. financial institutions” by protecting the financial, “long-distance, digitized expressions of familial relationships meant to preserve an emotional bond”).

   [342]. After the drafting of this Article, the Trump administration continued its attacks on immigrants by targeting their financial lives. See, e.g., Restoring Integrity to America’s Financial System, Exec. Order No. 14406, 91 Fed. Reg. 30479, 30479 (May 22, 2026) (“My Administration will not . . . permit risks to our financial system posed by the extension of credit or financial services to the inadmissible and removable alien population.”).