IRS Agrees to Share Data With ICE to Help With Deportations, Report
(Andrew Harnik/AP photo)
The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to share its data on migrants with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to aid with deportations, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The move dissolves a previous privacy agreement that kept taxpayer information like addresses, family members, and salaries secret from other agencies, The Times reported. The move is seen as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations and make good on President Donald Trump’s pledge to remove millions of immigrants from the U.S.
“It’s unprecedented,” Nina Olson, who heads up the Center for Taxpayer Rights and is a former top IRS official, told the Times of the Trump administration’s new policy.
The IRS has been a target of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) since it was established, with Musk claiming widespread fraud at the agency.
The IRS increased staff size thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act passed during the Biden administration, which hired roughly 10,000 new agents to bolster tax enforcement on high-income Americans.
Musk and his team of young DOGE aides have been going from department to department, cutting staff and freezing spending. The moves have prompted several lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the actions, which many legal scholars have deemed illegal.
Also in February, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News host Laura Ingraham he might unleash artificial intelligence on the IRS to make the agency more efficient.
