A federal judge on Monday refused to block the Internal Revenue Service from sharing immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S.
In a win for Donald Trump’s administration, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups. They argued that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes are entitled to the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens and immigrants who are legally in the country.
Friedrich, who was appointed by Trump, had previously refused to grant a temporary order in the case.
The decision comes less than a month after former acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause resigned over the deal allowing ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.
The IRS has been in upheaval over Trump administration decisions to share taxpayer data. A previous acting commissioner announced his retirement earlier amid a furor over Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency gaining access to IRS taxpayer data.
The Treasury Department says the agreement with ICE will help carry out Trump’s agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants.
The acting ICE director has said working with Treasury and other departments is “strictly for the major criminal cases.”
Advocates, however, say the IRS-DHS information-sharing agreement violates privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans.
