Internal Revenue Service agrees to send immigrant tax data to ICE for enforcement
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has agreed to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the US.
The agreement, signed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, allows ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the US illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.
The Treasury argues that this agreement will help carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda to secure US borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown. However, advocates argue that the agreement violates longstanding privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans.
The basis for the agreement is founded on “longstanding authorities granted by Congress, which serve to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans while streamlining the ability to pursue criminals.” The agreement will help ICE find people who are collecting benefits they aren’t entitled to and are “kind of hiding in plain sight” using someone else’s identity. Working with Treasury and other departments is strictly for major criminal cases.
The IRS had already been called upon once to help with immigration enforcement earlier this year. A collection of tax law experts for the NYU Tax Law Center wrote Monday that the IRS-DHS agreement threatens to violate the rights of many more Americans under longstanding laws that protect their tax information from wrongful disclosure or dissemination.