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Federal Appeals Court Blocks IRS Data Sharing With ICE
A federal appeals court upheld a ruling blocking the IRS from sharing taxpayer information with ICE, likely violating federal law.
By  Kristel Escobar
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Federal Appeals Court Blocks IRS Data Sharing With ICE
FOTO: Referencial recreada con IA

Posted on09/10/26 at 03:00

A federal court has maintained a block on the process that allowed the IRS to provide ICE with thousands of taxpayers’ addresses for immigration investigations.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a ruling Tuesday preventing the IRS from continuing to use a procedure for sharing tax information with ICE, concluding that it likely violates federal law.

  • Why it matters: The ruling reinforces that filing taxes does not remove the confidentiality protections federal law grants taxpayers, including immigrants.

ICE Requested Information on 1.28 Million Taxpayers

The scale of the IRS data sharing with ICE was substantial. During the summer of 2025, ICE asked the IRS for the last known addresses of 1.28 million people.

Before a lower court blocked the procedure, the IRS had already provided the immigration agency with 47,289 taxpayer records.

  • In numbers: ICE requested information on 1.28 million people and received records corresponding to approximately 47,000.

According to the court, the problem was not simply that two federal agencies shared information but how they conducted the exchange.

Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code protects the confidentiality of tax information and establishes specific requirements for disclosing it in certain criminal investigations.

The court determined that the procedure used by the IRS and ICE failed to satisfy several of those requirements.

Court Identifies Problems With IRS Data Sharing With ICE

One of the clearest irregularities was that ICE could request information without providing the correct address of the taxpayer it sought.

According to the court’s decision, the IRS even processed requests containing entries such as “unknown address,” “not provided,” or incomplete information.

The court also questioned the safeguards used to verify that each request was genuinely connected to an authorized criminal investigation.

  • The fact: Across requests involving 1.28 million taxpayers, ICE listed the same person as the contact for every case.

Additionally, the court noted that ICE did not provide sufficiently specific reasons explaining why each person’s tax information was relevant to a particular investigation.

According to the judges, the procedure allowed large volumes of records to be reviewed automatically without ensuring that each request satisfied the legal requirements.

What Does the Ruling Mean for Immigrants Who File Taxes?

The ruling to keep taxpayer information from being shared with ICE is particularly relevant to immigrants who file taxes, including those who use an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).

However, an important distinction remains: The decision does not establish that the 47,289 records disclosed belonged specifically to taxpayers using ITINs.

  • The limit: The ruling also does not prohibit every exchange of information between the IRS and ICE.

Federal law includes exceptions allowing certain data to be shared for criminal investigations when the requesting agency meets the requirements established by Congress.

For this reason, the court maintained the block on the Data-Exchange Procedure rather than prohibiting all lawful cooperation between the agencies.

DHS Rejects Ruling and Defends ICE Immigration Investigations

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disagreed with the decision and defended the Trump administration’s strategy.

A spokesperson told Reuters that the department would continue using “all available legal tools” to locate and deport immigrants with final removal orders.

  • What’s next: The ruling keeps the data-sharing procedure suspended and requires any exchange of information to comply with the conditions established by federal tax law.

The decision does not create an absolute prohibition on cooperation between the IRS and ICE.

Its scope is narrower: The government cannot use the challenged procedure to circumvent the confidentiality protections established for taxpayers.

You may be interested in: 170,000 Salvadorans lose TPS after 25 years: What happens now?

SOURCE: The Hill / Fox News / Justia