On April 7, an Arizona-based Money Services Business (MSB) filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona challenging FinCEN’s March 2026 geographic targeting order (GTO) imposing additional recordkeeping and reporting requirements on certain MSBs along the southwest border. The complaint notes that the order requires MSBs located in certain counties or zip codes across Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California to file currency transaction reports (CTRs) for every cash transaction of $1,000 or more, compared to the standard $10,000 federal reporting threshold. According to the complaint, FinCEN justified the order as furthering the Treasury’s efforts to combat illicit finance by drug cartels along the southwest border, but the complaint asserts an internal FinCEN memorandum conceded that “most of the business that MSBs conduct is legitimate and essential.”

The March 2026 GTO renewed and expanded two prior orders issued in March 2025 (covered by InfoBytes here) and September 2025 (covered here), broadening the geographic scope to include parts of Arizona and New Mexico and increasing the reporting threshold from $200 to $1,000. The complaint states that MSBs had previously obtained temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions against the March 2025 order in three federal cases, with interlocutory appeals pending in the 5th and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeals as of the filing date. The plaintiff alleged that the GTO would require it to file CTRs for approximately 4,000 transactions per month, amounting to roughly 1,595 hours of additional reporting each month, and that the order had already caused customer losses and threatened to put the company out of business.

The complaint seeks vacatur of the GTO and declaratory and injunctive relief, raising the following five claims: (i) the GTO violates the Fourth Amendment as a general warrant without individualized probable cause; (ii) it compels self-incrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment; (iii) it is ultra vires under the major questions doctrine because 31 U.S.C. § 5326 does not clearly authorize such broad surveillance; (iv) it is arbitrary and capricious under the APA for failure to adequately explain the targeting criteria; and (v) it was issued without required APA notice-and-comment rulemaking.