Judge Blocks IRS from Sharing Tax Info with ICE
A federal judge appointed by Bill Clinton has temporarily halted President Donald Trump’s IRS from using tax records to aid ICE in locating undocumented immigrants.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Colleen Koller Kotelly from Washington, D.C., issued a restraining order to stop the IRS from providing tax information to ICE agents trying to find illegal aliens.
Judge Kotelly stated, “Plaintiffs have demonstrated that the IRS’s execution of its address-sharing policy and the subsequent sharing of taxpayer information with ICE are likely illegal under the law, specifically the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).”
She noted that the IRS’s approach to address-sharing was arbitrary. The IRS did not acknowledge its shift from a strict confidentiality policy, ignored the benefits of the previous policy, and offered no reasonable rationale for the new guidelines. Furthermore, the plaintiffs argued that disclosing taxpayer address data to ICE breached the law, violating aspects of the Internal Revenue Code Section 6103(i)(2). For these reasons, they contended that the IRS’s extensive data-sharing practices were unlawful under the APA.
This ruling marks a significant development for both ICE and the IRS, allowing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Director Todd Lyons to request information on deported undocumented immigrants from the IRS.
From that point, IRS officials are able to provide information regarding these individuals.
The IRS-ICE agreement emerged after ex-Department of Government Efficiency officials claimed they may have identified millions of undocumented immigrants on Social Security and Medicaid lists, as well as thousands on voter registers.
While this is a major issue affecting many Americans, there’s surprisingly minimal research on how illegal immigration relates to identity theft.
A detailed study by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) revealed that from 2012 to 2016, there were 39 million instances where Americans might have had their IDs and Social Security numbers compromised by undocumented individuals.
