According to the agreement, ICE officers are permitted to request information from the organization regarding individuals who have been ordered to leave the country or who are undergoing an investigation.
The IRS may therefore provide tax information along with earnings, addresses, and other details about the people ICE is looking into. The agreement was signed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
A Treasury spokesman told CNN that the foundation for this ( memorandum of understanding ) is “based on longstanding authorities granted by Congress, which serve to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans while streamlining the ability to pursue criminals.”
Some illegal immigrants do so for a variety of factors, including to support their case for constitutional residency and to comply with the law. In the presence of a Social Security number, they use ITINs, or personal tax identification figures, to file taxes. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center,” the majority of experts believe that the majority of tax returns filed with ITINs nowadays are filed by unauthorized refugees.”
Former IRS national Nina Olson told the New York Times that the IRS ‘ information is “unprecedented” and is being used to evaluate and arrest illegal immigrants. The strategy is likely to help ICE with its imprisonment work.
According to the agreement, the program will comply with regulations governing what IRS files can and cannot be shared. Each request may be made in accordance with the tax code, and ICE did “ensure the correct management, transmission, maintaining, and protection” of the information it receives.
There is concern that unlawful immigrants won’t pay their taxes because they fear giving the IRS data that could be used by ICE.
Open interest organizations have recently expressed worry about a collaboration between the IRS and ICE. A volunteer advocacy group called Public Citizen sued to halt the plan. The team’s lawyers claimed that it” threatens to take Congress’s authority to decide when and under what conditions different companies may use personal IRS information.”
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA ), whose father was a Mexican immigrant, criticized the agreement.
” The IRS should NEVER be used to deceive immigrant families,” he said. He claimed in a post on X that this backdoor arrangement with ICE” shatters decades of trust” and may be illegal. I am a member of the Ways and Means Committee. I’ll use everything I have to fight this. Nobody should be concerned that filing taxes could endanger their family.
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick says the agreement appears to be limited to criminal investigations and not deportation questions despite the controversy surrounding ICE’s use of IRS data in deportation investigations.
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There are “many inquiries raised about these new agreements,” he said in a post on X.
” But at its core it does not seem that the MOU allows ICE to request taxpayer data for deportation reasons… It seems to be primarily aimed at criminal investigations for willful failure to depart after a removal order, a crime on the books that (until now ) is hardly ever prosecuted,” he continued.
