A federal court rejected a request from an immigrant rights group to provisionally block the IRS from sharing certain taxpayer data that could make it easier to identify and deport people who are in the U.S. illegally.
By Catholics for Catholics
A Washington, D.C., federal court rejected a request on Tuesday from an immigrant rights group to provisionally block the IRS from sharing certain taxpayer data that could make it easier to identify and deport people who are in the U.S. illegally.
According to a story by The Daily Wire, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit refused to issue a preliminary injunction for the immigrants’ rights group, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, and other nonprofits that are suing the federal government over the data-sharing agreement signed last April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The quarrel began in early 2025 after reports that the ICE was seeking the last known addresses of roughly 700,000 undocumented immigrants from the IRS. On April 7, 2025, the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enacted the agreement in a Memorandum of Understanding outlining how ICE could request address information under federal law.
The agreement relies on a provision of federal tax law that permits the IRS to share certain information for non-tax criminal investigations.
The IRS had traditionally interpreted the law as forbidding the disclosure of mailing addresses by themselves. The new agreement reversed that position, permitting the IRS to provide a taxpayer’s last known address if ICE submitted a valid request related to a non-tax criminal investigation.
As a result, the April 7, 2025, Memorandum of Understanding permitting ICE to request last-known taxpayer addresses remains in effect while the case continues. A preliminary injunction would have temporarily blocked the policy, but the court declined to grant one.
Because the advocacy groups could not show they were likely to succeed in their legal challenge, the D.C. Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision denying the preliminary injunction.
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