Second federal judge blocks IRS from sharing addresses with ICE

A federal judge dealt the Trump administration a blow Thursday by blocking the IRS from providing residential addresses to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, argued the sharing of data could violate a section of the Tax Act of 1976, which includes privacy protections for taxpayers. The judge’s order blocks ICE and the IRS from sharing data while also prohibiting the use of data that had already been transferred pending a court review.

“Defendants DHS, Secretary Noem, ICE, Acting Director Lyons, and their agents, are enjoined from inspecting, viewing, using, copying, distributing, relying on, or otherwise acting upon any return information that had been obtained from or disclosed by the IRS Defendants pursuant to the information sharing arrangements, including the information received August 7, 2025,” Talwani’s order states.

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In addition to concerns about taxpayers’ privacy, Talwani addressed the chilling effect this could have on tax filings by immigrants and the possibility that people could be wrongfully arrested due to mistaken identity. She said the plaintiffs had “demonstrated that a significant portion of immigrant communities not only share common last names … but also live in shared homes or in the same apartment complexes,” adding to concerns about mistaken identities.

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The plaintiffs in the case were four community groups: Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts (CEDC), National Parents Union (NPU), National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) and UndocuBlack Network, Inc. (UBN).

The order states that, on April 7, 2025, the IRS and ICE established a memorandum of understanding to share taxpayer data, supporting a federal crackdown on illegal immigration.

ICE subsequently issued three data requests, including an initial June 5 query for 7.6 million individuals, a June 24 request for 7.3 million records and a final June 27 submission for 1.2 million people. While the IRS rejected the first two for legal deficiencies, it approved the third and ultimately transferred over 47,000 addresses to ICE in August 2025. However, now that information is being frozen and cannot be used.

“We disagree with this activist judge’s ruling. Under President Trump’s leadership, the government is finally doing what it should have all along — sharing information across the federal government to solve problems. Biden not only allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood into our country, but he lost them through incompetence and improper processing,” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals; determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them; scrub these individuals from voter rolls; and identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense. With the IRS information specifically, DHS plans to focus on enforcing long-neglected criminal laws that apply to illegal aliens but which the Biden administration ignored.”

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Talwani is the second judge to block the IRS-ICE information-sharing agreement. The first was U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who said it violated a taxpayer confidentiality law, Politico noted. 

The outlet added that Kollar-Kotelly had also blocked Treasury Secretary and acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent from disclosing taxpayer information to DHS unless it was being transferred to someone working on a non-tax criminal probe. Kollar-Kotelly was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.