A federal judge won’t block a controversial Trump administration initiative to share highly sensitive taxpayer information with federal immigration authorities in hopes of tracking down undocumented immigrants and quickly deporting them out of the country.
District Judge Dabney Friedrich on Monday rejected arguments from several immigrant-rights groups, that claimed the data-sharing agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated taxpayer confidentiality laws.
The decision is a victory for President Donald Trump and his immigration agenda. Trump administration officials argued that greater cooperation between the IRS and ICE will protect Americans by kicking out potentially dangerous immigrants who came to the country illegally.
CNN has reached out for comment to the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security.
Friedrich was appointed by Trump in 2017 during the president’s first term. The immigrant-rights groups that filed the case could now appeal her ruling to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
The data-sharing deal allows DHS, which oversees ICE, to ask the IRS to confirm home addresses of suspected undocumented immigrants who are suspected of defying deportation orders. The deal was pushed through in early April over the objections of several top career IRS officials, who refused to sign it because of legal concerns.
Those concerns stemmed from the fact that federal laws strictly limit when the IRS can share taxpayer information with other agencies. The IRS can share data to aid criminal investigations, but the tax agency can’t share data solely to facilitate deportations, which are a civil matter.
The judge concluded in her Monday ruling that the Trump administration crafted the data-sharing deal carefully enough to – at least on its face – comply with the law. The Justice Department has argued that requests for private data will only target people under criminal investigation for illegally defying deportation orders. The immigrant groups have argued this is a thinly veiled pretext to get around the law.
“Requesting and receiving information for civil enforcement purposes would constitute a cognizable injury, but none of the organizations have established that such an injury is imminent,” Friedrich wrote, adding. “The Memorandum only allows sharing information for criminal investigations … On this limited record, the Court cannot assume that DHS intends to use the shared information to facilitate civil rather than criminal proceedings.”
An attorney for the groups that sued the Trump administration, Alan Morrison, said he was disappointed with the ruling but considering an appeal and additional litigation.
The judge “made it clear that DHS and IRS must comply strictly with the limited exception on which they relied,” Morrison said in a statement. “So far, DHS has not made formal requests for taxpayer data, and plaintiffs will be keeping a close watch to be sure that the defendants carry out their promises to follow the law and not use the exception for unlawful purposes.”
For decades, undocumented immigrants have been encouraged to register with the IRS and pay the federal taxes they owe – and have been assured their private identifying information will remain private. The Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate this firewall has spurred panic in immigrant communities and has led some undocumented migrants to pull back from filing their federal taxes this year.
CNN recently reported that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is building a master database with data from the IRS, the Social Security Administration and other agencies to streamline immigration enforcement. A spokesperson for the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, insisted late last month that taxpayer data is not “being inappropriately shared across government agencies.”
At a court hearing last month, Friedrich scrutinized the data-sharing deal and questioned whether the Trump administration concocted a pretext so the arrangement would pass legal muster. But she also pressed the immigrant-rights groups that filed the case, challenging them to show evidence that the Trump administration intended to violate taxpayer privacy laws.
“At its core, this case presents a narrow legal issue: Does the Memorandum of Understanding between the IRS and DHS violate the Internal Revenue Code? It does not,” Friedrich wrote Monday in her ruling. “The plain language of (the federal tax code) mandates disclosure under the specific circumstances and preconditions outlined in the (IRS-ICE agreement).”
This story has been updated with additional details.
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