IRS shared tax data on nearly 50,000 people with Homeland Security officials — in apparent violation of legal protections: report
The IRS shared confidential information on nearly 50,000 taxpayers with Department of Homeland Security officials for use in enforcing the Trump administration’s massive deportation orders — an apparent violation of basic legal protections, according to court documents.
In a court filing Wednesday afternoon, the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service confirmed the inappropriate sharing of data. The Washington Post reported earlier.
Dottie Romo, the IRS’s chief risk and oversight officer, wrote in a sworn statement that the IRS disclosed taxpayer data even when DHS officials could not provide enough information to identify the individuals they were pursuing.
Taxpayer data is protected under federal law, which has long been a guarantee for undocumented immigrants that data generated by paying their taxes will not be used against them.
However, the Treasury Department agreed in April to provide DHS officials with the names and addresses of individuals believed to be in the country illegally to assist in deportation efforts, according to a DHS report. Sued by the Taxpayer Rights Center In the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
When the IRS sent these requested addresses to the Department of Homeland Security, it also mistakenly disclosed private information for thousands of taxpayers, sources told The Washington Post.
By the time federal courts temporarily blocked the data-sharing agreement, the IRS had already sent data on 47,000 individuals, according to court records.
DHS officials requested the addresses of 1.2 million people, the documents said.
In a statement to The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security stood by the data-sharing agreement, saying: “The government is finally doing what it should have been doing all along.”
The Justice Department and the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment. The IRS, DHS and ICE also did not respond to inquiries.
Immigration officials argued that the data sharing was necessary because the Department of Homeland Security did not have enough information to locate all the individuals the Trump administration wanted to deport, the Washington Post reported, citing several anonymous IRS and Department of Homeland Security officials.
The Treasury Department said sharing the data would assist immigration officers in their efforts to pursue individuals with criminal records.
Both parties were reportedly aware that the data-sharing agreement would violate taxpayer legal protections before they began working together.
Senior IRS officials had warned members of the Trump administration that the order was likely illegal and could lead to arrests based on mistaken identities, according to the Washington Post.
During early meetings about the plan, an IRS employee asked immigration authorities how many people with the same name lived in the same state — an example of how sharing taxpayer data can subvert deportation efforts, a source told the outlet.
Those talks largely sidelined the IRS’s privacy division, instead taking input from its IT division — which was taken over by officials from Elon Musk’s DOGE, the White House panel that cut foreign aid and eliminated federal hiring, according to the report.
The IRS asked the Department of Homeland Security on Jan. 23 to begin taking steps “to prevent disclosure or dissemination, and to ensure the appropriate disposal of any data provided to ICE by the IRS based on incomplete or insufficient address information,” Romo said in her announcement.
She declined to comment on whether the IRS would notify people whose data was shared illegally, adding that the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement had agreed not to use any of the shared data while pending litigation.
Previous cases indicate that affected taxpayers may be entitled to financial compensation, and individual officials who inappropriately shared data may face civil and criminal penalties.
