Court says the IRS can continue to share immigrants' taxpayer data with ICE

A Washington, D.C. federal court on Tuesday, February 24, 2026, rejected a request from an immigrant rights group to temporarily block the IRS from sharing certain taxpayer data with ICE, upholding an agreement signed last April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that aims to identify and deport people in the U.S. illegally as part of President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda. The three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to issue a preliminary injunction for Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and other nonprofits that are suing the federal government over the data-sharing agreement. In declining the request, Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote that the nonprofit groups 'are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claim,' since the information the agencies are sharing isn't covered by the IRS privacy statute. The controversial agreement allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the court decision as a 'crucial victory' for the administration, stating that 'Deporting illegal aliens makes the American people safer.' The Trump administration has positioned the agreement as a key component of President Trump's broader immigration crackdown, which has already resulted in increased deportations and workplace raids across the country. The creation of the data-sharing agreement was so contentious that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service resigned last year specifically over this deal. Recent revelations have added another layer of complexity to the situation. Court filings from earlier this month revealed that the IRS had erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people with the Department of Homeland Security as part of the agreement. According to a declaration filed by IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer Dottie Romo, the IRS was only able to verify roughly 47,000 of the 1.28 million names ICE requested. For less than 5% of those individuals, the IRS provided additional address information to ICE, potentially violating established privacy rules designed to protect taxpayer data. Despite these concerns and the implementation challenges, the court's decision means the data-sharing program will continue while the legal battle proceeds through the courts.