A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from sharing taxpayer address information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), halting a key Trump administration policy meant to help immigration authorities locate illegal aliens with deportation orders.
United States District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, appointed by former President Bill Clinton and serving in the District of Columbia, issued a preliminary injunction late last week pausing the IRS-ICE information-sharing arrangement. The order stops the IRS from providing confidential tax data to ICE while litigation over the policy proceeds.
In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly wrote that plaintiffs had shown a “substantial likelihood” that the IRS’s implementation of the address-sharing plan — as well as its subsequent disclosures of taxpayer information — violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The judge found that the agency’s shift away from long-standing confidentiality rules was not properly justified.
Kollar-Kotelly stated that plaintiffs demonstrated the IRS’s new Address-Sharing Policy appeared “arbitrary and capricious” because the agency failed to acknowledge it was departing from its previous strict confidentiality standard, failed to consider the reliance interests of taxpayers, and failed to provide a sufficient rationale for the change. She also concluded that sharing confidential address information with ICE likely violated portions of Internal Revenue Code Section 6103(i)(2). The court further found that plaintiffs had plausibly alleged that the IRS’s broader data-sharing framework could also be unlawful under the APA.
Historic IRS–ICE Deal on Hold
The agreement in question — described as historic for both agencies — allowed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem or ICE Director Todd Lyons to request taxpayer address information from the IRS. The policy was specifically designed to identify the locations of illegal aliens who had already been ordered removed from the United States.
IRS officials, under the arrangement, could provide the requested information directly to ICE.
The collaboration followed findings from the former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which reported discovering potentially millions of illegal aliens on Social Security and Medicaid rolls, and thousands more on voter rolls.
Illegal Immigration and Identity Theft Concerns
The halted policy also touched on broader concerns about illegal immigration and identity theft. Despite the widespread impact on American citizens, research on the connection between the two issues remains limited.
A comprehensive investigation by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) identified approximately 39 million cases between 2012 and 2016 in which illegal aliens are believed to have stolen the identities and Social Security numbers of American citizens.
Next Steps
The injunction temporarily restores prior IRS confidentiality practices while the lawsuit moves forward. The court will later decide whether the agency’s policy must be permanently struck down.
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