On Tuesday, February 24, the Federal Court in Washington, D.C. rejected a request from an immigrant rights organization to temporarily block the sharing of certain immigrant taxpayer data between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This data could help ICE identify and remove illegal immigrants residing in the United States.
The panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied the request for a preliminary injunction made by immigrant rights organization Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and other nonprofit organizations.
These organizations had previously filed a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem had signed a data-sharing agreement in April last year, which was formally submitted to federal court records.
The agreement allows ICE to provide the names and addresses of undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. to the IRS for the purpose of examining their tax records and conducting cross-checks.
In rejecting the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote that these nonprofit immigrant rights organizations “are unlikely to prevail” because the information shared by these agencies is not protected by IRS privacy regulations.
Attorney General Pam Bondi expressed on social media that the court’s decision is a “crucial victory” for the current administration. She stated in her post, “Deporting illegal immigrants can make the American people safer.”
Court documents revealed that as part of the agreement, the IRS shared taxpayer information of thousands of individuals with the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month.
Dottie Romo, the Chief Risk and Control Officer at the IRS, stated in a release that the IRS verified approximately 47,000 out of the 1.28 million names requested by ICE and provided address information for less than 5% of those individuals.
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[This article contains information from an Associated Press report]