Federal Judge Declares IRS Violated Law in Massive Data Disclosure to ICE
A federal judge has delivered a damning verdict against the Internal Revenue Service, ruling that the agency broke federal law by illegally sharing confidential taxpayer information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on tens of thousands of occasions. The landmark decision represents a significant blow to controversial inter-agency data sharing practices that have drawn fierce criticism from privacy advocates.
Systematic Violations of Taxpayer Confidentiality
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly determined that the IRS committed approximately 42,695 separate violations of IRS Code 6103, one of the strictest confidentiality statutes in federal law. The violations occurred when the agency disclosed last known taxpayer addresses to ICE without proper legal justification or procedural safeguards.
The judge's ruling was based on a declaration filed earlier this month by Dottie Romo, the IRS's chief risk and control officer. This document revealed that the IRS had provided the Department of Homeland Security with information on 47,000 individuals out of the 1.28 million people that ICE had requested data about. In the overwhelming majority of these cases, the IRS supplied additional address information that violated established privacy rules designed to protect sensitive taxpayer data.
Flawed Implementation of Controversial Agreement
The data sharing occurred under a controversial agreement signed in April 2025 by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. This arrangement allowed ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants believed to be in the United States illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records. The controversial nature of this agreement reportedly led to the resignation of the then-acting IRS commissioner.
Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her decision that "the IRS not only failed to ensure that ICE's request for confidential taxpayer address information met the statutory requirements, but this failure led the IRS to disclose confidential taxpayer addresses to ICE in situations where ICE's request for that information was patently deficient." She described the Romo declaration as "a significant development in this case" that supported her findings.
Legal Challenges and Ongoing Controversy
Nina Olson, founder of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, which has sued the government over these disclosures, stated that "this confirms what we've been saying all along: that the IRS has an unlawful policy that violates the Internal Revenue Code's protections by releasing these addresses in a way that violates the law's requirements."
Despite the government's appeal of the case, the Thursday ruling carries substantial weight because Romo's declaration provides concrete evidence supporting the decision on appeal. Representatives from both the IRS and Treasury Department declined to comment on the ruling when contacted by the Associated Press.
Multiple Legal Battles Over Data Sharing
Several ongoing cases continue to challenge the IRS-DHS agreement. Earlier in the week, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to issue a preliminary injunction requested by immigrants' rights group Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and other nonprofit organizations suing to stop implementation of the agreement.
In declining the preliminary injunction request, Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote that the nonprofit groups "are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claim," arguing that the information being shared between agencies might not be covered by the IRS privacy statute. However, two separate court orders have already blocked the agencies from conducting massive transfers of taxpayer information and have prohibited ICE from acting upon any IRS data currently in its possession. These preliminary injunctions remain in effect as legal challenges continue.
The case highlights the ongoing tension between immigration enforcement priorities and taxpayer privacy protections, with significant implications for how federal agencies share sensitive information in the future.
