A senior Treasury Department official is preparing to resign after privately raising objections to a White House-backed initiative aimed at alleged fraud tied to the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

John Hurley, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence and a donor to President Donald Trump, told associates in recent weeks that he plans to exit the role, according to seven people familiar with the matter cited by the Post. Hurley conveyed concerns to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about a project designed to expand federal monitoring of international payments originating in the Minneapolis area. 

Hurley’s departure highlights internal unease among some Trump allies over the breadth of directives to apply law-enforcement and financial surveillance tools to Minneapolis’s Somali community, according to The Washington Post. 

A report by Bloomberg published earlier this month described broader tensions Bessent and Hurley, who serves as the undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, including disputes over how the department how the department imposes sanctions and whom they restrictions target. 

The contention, Bloomberg said, was that President Trump’s top advisors have pursued sanctions designations against foreign judicial officials and international institutions deemed to be political opponents. The two officials have also clashed over the administration’s decision to scale back its adherence to global standards set by the Financial Action Task Force. 

The Minneapolis-focused push has become a top-level political priority inside the administration, after viral videos and federal charges this fall involving Somali men accused of defrauding safety-net programs reignited the issue, The Washington Post said.  

Bessent has sought to show the department is responding but some Treasury officials have pushed back on the speed and aggressiveness of the approach, according to the report. A Trump ally told the Post that Bessent is under pressure “to show some interim results,” adding, “Trump needs something for 2026 on Somalia.”

One response by Bessent is the issuance of a Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) requiring banks and other firms to collect additional information on overseas payments of $3,000 or more, including details such as the recipient’s physical address, email address, and birth date—information that goes beyond what banks typically gather about cross-border recipients, according to the news outlet. 

Treasury is seeking the information whether the transfer is connected to a government benefits program, the Post said. The GTO, which was first made public in January, came into force earlier this month and is managed by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which Hurley oversees as in his role as a Treasury under secretary. 

Career officials involved in drafting the Minneapolis order raised objections and resisted the requirements, viewing them as clumsy and inefficient for uncovering fraud, according to four people familiar with the internal deliberations cited in the report. Some officials also saw the measure as an overtly partisan use of Treasury resources, the Post reported.

Hurley shared at least some of those concerns but was effectively overruled, contributing to tensions with Bessent and others. One person familiar with the administration’s thinking told the Post that Hurley had been on “thin ice” with the White House for not bringing career officials into closer alignment with the administration’s desire to deploy FinCEN more aggressively to flag suspicious payments.

Julie Siegel, a former senior Treasury official in the Biden administration and now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The Washington Post that every family, privately held company and nonprofit in Minneapolis could be swept into the geographic targeting order (GTO), including nonimmigrants. 

In his current role, Hurley leads the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) and the five agencies it oversees, including Treasury’s sanctions arm, OFAC, and the U.S. financial intelligence unit, FinCEN. Collectively, TFI manage a host of U.S. policy tools, from determining which foreign banks have access to U.S. dollar clearing services to deciding how to enforce corporate-transparency laws. 

Read more at The Washington Post