IRS reportedly nears deal to share info with ICE

The Internal Revenue Service is reportedly getting close to an agreement to share information such as taxpayers addresses with the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customers Enforcement unit upon request.

The information sharing would be more limited than originally proposed and reportedly led to the removal of the IRS's former chief counsel, William Paul, who had opposed the sharing of confidential taxpayer information, such as Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, with ICE authorities. Under the deal, as reported by the Washington Post and The New York Times, ICE would be able to submit names to the IRS which would cross-reference the data against confidential taxpayer databases. Immigration officials would be able to use the tax data to confirm the names and addresses of people who are suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. The IRS would be able to verify whether ICE officials had the correct residential address for immigrants who have been ordered to leave the U.S.

Last Wednesday, a federal district court refused to issue a temporary restraining order that would have barred the IRS from sharing such data with the immigration officials under a complaint filed by two immigrant advocacy groups. Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and Immigrant Solidarity Dupage — represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, Alan Morrison, and Raise the Floor Alliance — filed suit against the IRS to bar it from unlawfully disclosing individual tax return information to immigration enforcement officials.

"The IRS must disclose the terms of its unprecedented information sharing agreement with ICE," said Nandan Joshi, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel in the case, in a statement. "Attempts by the Trump administration to gain access to the confidential taxpayer databases to engage in mass removal of workers would violate the tax law that protects the privacy of all taxpayers and undermine the protections promised to every taxpayer who files tax returns with the IRS. Attempting to gain access to personal and confidential taxpayer information crosses a line that Congress put into place after Richard Nixon used tax records to go after his enemies during Watergate. The administration's desire to speed up their deportation agenda does not justify jettisoning decades of taxpayer protections. If this deal is being negotiated in good faith, the government should not need to keep it secret."

However, in a separate case another federal judge blocked the Elon Musk-led U.S. DOGE Service on Monday from accessing people's private data at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, and the Office of Personnel Management, according to the Associated Press. That case involved a coalition of labor unions, led by the United Federation of Teachers. It's unclear how this ruling might affect the case involving access to taxpayer information such as ITINs and home addresses on file at the IRS and the Treasury.