The IRS shared confidential information on nearly 50,000 taxpayers with DHS officials for use in carrying out the Trump administration’s massive deportation orders – seemingly violating key 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 earlier reported.
IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer Dottie Romo wrote in a sworn declaration that the IRS disclosed the taxpayer data even when Department of Homeland Security officials were unable to provide enough information to identify the individuals they were after.
Taxpayer data is protected by federal law, which has long acted as a guarantee to undocumented immigrants that data from paying their taxes would not be used against them.
Yet in April, the Treasury Department agreed to provide DHS officials with names and addresses of individuals believed to be in the country illegally to aid their deportation efforts, according to a lawsuit by the Center for Taxpayer Rights in US District Court for DC.
When the IRS sent these requested addresses to the DHS, 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 over data on 47,000 individuals, according to court records.
DHS officials had requested addresses of 1.2 million people, the documents said.
In a statement to the Washington Post, the DHS stuck by the data-sharing agreement, saying “the government is finally doing what it should have all along.”
The Department of Justice declined to comment. The Treasury Department, IRS, DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Immigration officials argued the data sharing was necessary because DHS did not have enough information to locate all the individuals that the Trump administration wanted deported, the Washington Post reported, citing several anonymous IRS and DHS officials.
The Treasury Department argued the data sharing would help immigration officers in their efforts to pursue individuals with criminal records.
Both parties were reportedly aware that the data-sharing agreement would violate legal taxpayer protections before they started working together.
Senior IRS officials had warned members of the Trump administration that it was likely illegal, and could lead to detainments based on mistaken identities, according to the Washington Post.
During early meetings on the plan, an IRS staffer asked immigration authorities how many people with the same name live in the same state – an example of how the sharing of taxpayer data could muck up deportation efforts, a source told the outlet.
These talks largely sidelined the IRS’ privacy department, instead taking input from its IT department – which had been taken over by officials from Elon Musk’s DOGE, the White House committee that slashed foreign aid and axed federal employment, according to the report.
In her declaration, Romo said the IRS told DHS on Jan. 23 to start taking steps to “prevent the disclosure or dissemination, and to ensure appropriate disposal, of any data provided to ICE by IRS based on incomplete or insufficient address information.”
She declined to comment on whether the IRS would inform people whose data was illegally shared, adding that the DHS and ICE agreed not to use any of the shared data while litigation was pending.
Past cases imply that affected taxpayers could be entitled to financial compensation, and individual officials who improperly shared data could face civil and criminal penalties.
