Judge says IRS broke law by disclosing taxpayer addresses to ICE

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A federal judge ruled that the Internal Revenue Service broke the law by disclosing confidential taxpayer information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement far more often than the agencies’ requests required, as part of a controversial information-sharing arrangement aimed at immigration enforcement. In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the IRS disclosed last known taxpayer addresses to ICE “approximately 42,695 times.”

Kollar-Kotelly said the conduct violated IRS Code 6103, which she described as one of the strictest federal confidentiality laws protecting taxpayer data. She wrote that the IRS “not only failed to ensure that ICE’s request for confidential taxpayer address information met the statutory requirements,” but that this failure led the IRS to share taxpayer addresses in situations where ICE’s request for that information was “patently deficient.”

The decision drew on a declaration filed earlier this month by Dottie Romo, the IRS’ chief risk and control officer, which the court said showed how often the disclosures occurred. The judge said Romo’s filing revealed the IRS had provided the Department of Homeland Security information on 47,000 of the 1.28 million people ICE requested.

Kollar-Kotelly said Romo’s declaration also showed that, in most of those cases, the IRS gave ICE additional address information in violation of privacy rules created to protect taxpayer data. She characterized the Romo declaration as “a significant development in this case,” citing it as support for her findings on the number and nature of disclosures.

The ruling matters procedurally as well as factually, because the government is appealing the case. According to the AP report, the Thursday decision was described as significant because Romo’s declaration supports the issues raised on appeal.

Center for Taxpayer Rights founder Nina Olson, whose group has sued to challenge the data sharing, said the ruling confirms the group’s long-running argument that the IRS has an unlawful policy that violates the Internal Revenue Code’s protections by releasing addresses in a way the law requires agencies to follow. Olson said the decision aligns with what the group has been arguing in the lawsuit.

The information-sharing agreement at the center of the case was signed last April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Under the deal, ICE could submit names and addresses of immigrants in the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records, and the arrangement prompted the then-acting commissioner of the IRS to resign, according to the AP report.

Multiple cases have been challenging the IRS-DHS agreement. Earlier this week, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to issue a preliminary injunction for the immigrants’ rights group Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and other nonprofits suing to stop implementation; in that denial, Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote that the nonprofits were “unlikely to succeed on the merits” because the information shared, the panel said, wasn’t covered by the IRS privacy statute.

Separately, the report said two preliminary injunction orders have blocked the agencies from massive transfers of taxpayer information and blocked ICE from acting on any IRS data it receives. Those preliminary injunctions, the AP report said, remain in place even as the litigation continues and the government appeals the latest ruling.