U.S. Court blocks IRS from sharing mass taxpayer data with ICE

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has unanimously ruled that a data-sharing agreement between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was unlawful. The ruling prohibits the IRS from fulfilling mass requests from ICE for taxpayer addresses.

Judge Cornelia Pillard noted that the procedures adopted under the Trump administration “violated federal law in numerous ways” by automating the review of millions of records without individual verification. This process bypassed statutory requirements that mandate specific details for non-tax criminal investigations to prevent the misuse of taxpayer information.

Prior to the judicial intervention, ICE had requested over 1.2 million records, and the IRS had already disclosed the addresses of approximately 47,000 taxpayers. An audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) previously identified inaccuracies and errors in the identification of individuals on these lists.