Immigrant groups sue to block Trump administration from accessing IRS data for deportations

Immigrant advocacy groups sued the IRS and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday to stop officials from providing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with taxpayer data to bolster immigration enforcement efforts.

DHS officials last month asked the IRS to provide last known addresses, phone numbers and email addresses belonging to potentially undocumented people who have paid taxes, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post. DHS is reportedly seeking the information to more effectively carry out its mass deportation plan.

It is illegal for the IRS to share tax data outside of the department other than under narrow exceptions. One of those exceptions allows the president or his office to seek an individual’s tax returns but does not allow for bulk collection, according to the lawsuit.

The Internal Revenue Code also bars the IRS from disclosing tax information to facilitate immigration enforcement regardless of who asks for it, the lawsuit says, and undocumented immigrants have long been assured that it is safe for them to pay taxes. 

However, the revenue code does allow for the disclosure of taxpayer information in some criminal probes, according to the lawsuit.

Recently appointed IRS acting Director Melanie Krause has indicated she is looking for a legal way to comply with DHS’s request, the Washington Post reported.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, two advocacy groups from the Chicago area, filed the lawsuit.

The IRS has undocumented people’s tax information because many file returns without a Social Security number and are instead issued an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).

IRS disclosure of personal information belonging to such filers will “greatly facilitate DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in identifying and locating millions of individuals who are potentially subject to removal,” the lawsuit says, and will “expose millions of taxpayers to the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.”

President Donald Trump has given ICE agents quotas to boost immigration arrests to as many as 1,500 a day, a roughly fivefold increase from what had been the norm.

A separate lawsuit filed against the IRS and DOGE last month sought to block the IRS from allowing Elon Musk’s team from accessing IRS data. It also asked a judge to order DOGE to erase any data it had already obtained.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said at the time DOGE would not obtain sensitive data because it was merely searching for fraud at a “programmatic level.”