[[link removed]]

THE IRS IS BUILDING A VAST SYSTEM TO SHARE MILLIONS OF TAXPAYERS’
DATA WITH ICE  
[[link removed]]


 

William Turton, Christopher Bing and Avi Asher-Schapiro
July 15, 2025
ProPublica
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump
administration’s unprecedented plan to turn over IRS records to
Homeland Security in order to speed up the agency’s mass deportation
efforts. _

The Internal Revenue Service is building a computer program that
would give deportation officers unprecedented access to confidential
tax data., Ricardo Tomás for ProPublica

 

_ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign
up for The Big Story newsletter
[[link removed]]
to receive stories like this one in your inbox_.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.
[[link removed]]

ProPublica has obtained a blueprint of the system, which would create
an “on demand” process allowing Immigration and Customs
Enforcement to obtain the home addresses of people it’s seeking to
deport.

Last month, in a previously undisclosed dispute, the acting general
counsel at the IRS, Andrew De Mello, refused to turn over the
addresses of 7.3 million taxpayers sought by ICE. In an email obtained
by ProPublica, De Mello said he had identified multiple legal
“deficiencies” in the agency’s request.

Two days later, on June 27, De Mello was forced out of his job, people
familiar with the dispute said. The addresses have not yet been
released to ICE. De Mello did not respond to requests for comment, and
the administration did not address questions sent by ProPublica about
his departure.

The Department of Government Efficiency began pushing the IRS to
provide taxpayer data to immigration agents soon after President
Donald Trump took office. The tax agency’s acting general counsel
refused and was replaced by De Mello, who Trump administration
officials viewed as more willing to carry out the president’s
agenda. Soon after, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s
parent agency, and the IRS negotiated a “memorandum of
understanding” that included specific legal guardrails to safeguard
taxpayers’ private information.

In his email, De Mello said ICE’s request for millions of records
did not meet those requirements, which include having a written
assurance that each taxpayer whose address is being sought was under
active criminal investigation.

“There’s just no way ICE has 7 million real criminal
investigations, that’s a fantasy,” said a former senior IRS
official who had been advising the agency on this issue. The demands
from the DHS were “unprecedented,” the official added, saying the
agency was pressing the IRS to do what amounted to “a big data
dump.”

In the past, when law enforcement sought IRS data to support its
investigations, agencies would give the IRS the full legal name of the
target, an address on file and an explanation of why the information
was relevant to a criminal inquiry. Such requests rarely involved more
than a dozen people at a time, former IRS officials said.

Danny Werfel, IRS commissioner during the Biden administration, said
the privacy laws allowing federal investigators to obtain taxpayer
data have never “been read to open the door to the sharing of
thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of tax records
for a broad-based enforcement initiative.”

A spokesperson for the White House said the planned use of IRS data
was legal and a means of fulfilling Trump’s campaign pledge to carry
out mass deportations of “illegal criminal aliens.”

Taxpayer data is among the most confidential in the federal government
and is protected by strict privacy laws, which have historically
limited its transfer to law enforcement and other government agencies.
Unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer return information is a felony
that can carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.

The system that the IRS is now creating would give ICE automated
access to home addresses en masse, limiting the ability of IRS
officials to consider the legality of transfers. IRS insiders who
reviewed a copy of the blueprint said it could result in immigration
agents raiding wrong or outdated addresses.

“If this program is implemented in its current form, it’s
extremely likely that incorrect addresses will be given to DHS and
individuals will be wrongly targeted,” said an IRS engineer who
examined the blueprints and who, like other officials, spoke on
condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The dispute that ended in De Mello’s ouster was the culmination of
months of pressure on the IRS to turn over massive amounts of data in
ways that would redefine the relationship between the agency and law
enforcement and reduce taxpayers’ privacy, records and interviews
show.

In one meeting in late March between senior IRS and DHS officials, a
top ICE official made a suggestion: Why doesn’t Homeland Security
simply provide the name and state of its targets and have the IRS
return the addresses of everyone who matches that criteria?

The IRS lawyers were stunned. They feared they could face criminal
liability if they handed over the addresses of individuals who were
not under a criminal investigation. The conversation and news of
deeper collaboration with ICE so disturbed career staff that it led to
a series of departures in late March and early April across the IRS’
legal, IT and privacy offices.

They were “pushing the boundaries of the law,” one official said.
“Everyone at IRS felt the same way.”

The Blueprint

The technical blueprint obtained by ProPublica shows that engineers at
the agency are preparing to give DHS what it wants: a system that
enables massive automated data sharing. The goal is to launch the new
system before the end of July, two people familiar with the matter
said.

The DHS effort to obtain IRS data comes as top immigration enforcement
leaders face escalating White House pressure to deport some 3,000
people per day, according to reports
[[link removed]].

One federal agent tasked with assisting ICE on deportations said
recent operations have been hamstrung by outdated addresses. Better
information could dramatically speed up arrests. “Some of the leads
that they were giving us were old,” said the agent, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the
press. “They’re like from two administrations ago.”

In early March, immigrants rights groups sued the IRS
[[link removed]]
hoping to block the plan, arguing that the memorandum of understanding
between DHS and the IRS is illegal. But a judge in early May ruled
against them
[[link removed]],
saying the broader agreement complied with Section 6103, the existing
law regulating IRS data sharing. That opened the door for engineers to
begin building the system.

The judge did not address the technical blueprint, which didn’t
exist at the time of the ruling. But the case is pending, which means
the new system could still come under legal review.

Until now, little was known about the push and pull between the two
agencies or the exact technical mechanics behind the arrangement.

The plan has been shrouded in secrecy even within the IRS, with
details of its development withheld from regular communications.
Several IRS engineers and lawyers have avoided working on the project
out of concerns about personal legal risk.

Asked about the new system, a spokesperson for IRS parent agency the
Treasury Department said the memorandum of understanding, often called
an MOU, “has been litigated and determined to be a lawful
application of Section 6103, which provides for information sharing by
the IRS in precise circumstances associated with law enforcement
requests.”

At a time when Trump is making threats
[[link removed]]
to deport not only undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens, the
scope of information-sharing with the IRS could continue to grow,
according to documents reviewed by ProPublica and sources familiar
with the matter: DHS has been looking for ways to expand the agreement
that could allow Homeland Security officials to seek IRS data on
Americans being investigated for various crimes.

Last month, an ICE attorney proposed updating the MOU to authorize new
data requests on people “associated with criminal activities which
may include United States citizens or lawful permanent residents,”
according to a document seen by ProPublica. The status of this
proposal is unclear. De Mello, at the time, rejected it and called for
senior Treasury Department leadership to personally sign off on such a
significant change.

The White House described DHS’ work with the IRS as a good-faith
effort to identify and deport those who are living in the country
illegally.

“ProPublica continues to degrade their already terrible reputation
by suggesting we should turn a blind eye to criminal illegal aliens
present in the United States for the sake of trying to collect tax
payments from them,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said
in a statement after receiving questions about the blueprint from
ProPublica.

She pointed to the April MOU as giving the government the authority to
create the new system and added, “This isn’t a surveillance
system. … It’s part of President Trump’s promise to carry out
the mass deportation of criminal illegal aliens — the promise that
the American people elected him on and he is committed to
fulfilling.”

In a separate statement, a senior DHS official also cited the
court’s approval of the MOU, saying that it “outlines a process to
ensure that sensitive taxpayer information is protected while allowing
law enforcement to effectively pursue criminal violations.”

How the System Works

The new system would represent a sea change, allowing law enforcement
to request enormous swaths of confidential data in bulk through an
automated, computerized process.

The system, according to the blueprint and interviews with IRS
engineers, would work like this:

First, DHS would send the IRS a spreadsheet containing the names and
previous addresses of the people it’s targeting. The request would
include the date of a final removal order, a relevant criminal statute
ICE is using to investigate the individual, and the tax period for
which information is sought. If DHS fails to include any of this
information, the system would reject the request.

The system then attempts to match the information provided by the DHS
to a specific taxpayer identification number, which is the primary
method by which the IRS identifies an individual in its databases.

If the system makes a match, it accesses the individual’s associated
tax file and pulls the address listed during the most recent tax
period. Then the system would produce a new spreadsheet enriched with
taxpayer data that contains DHS’ targets’ last known addresses.
The spreadsheet would include a record of names rejected for lack of
required information and names for which it could not make a match.

Tax and privacy experts say they worry about how such a powerful yet
crude platform could make dangerous mistakes. Because the search
starts with a name instead of a taxpayer identification number, it
risks returning the address of an innocent person with the same name
as or a similar address to that of one of ICE’s targets. The
proposed system assumes the data provided by DHS is accurate and that
each targeted individual is the subject of a valid criminal
investigation. In effect, the IRS has no way to independently check
the bases of these requests, experts told ProPublica.

In addition, the blueprint does not limit the amount of data that can
be transferred or how often DHS can request it. The system could
easily be expanded to acquire all the information the IRS holds on
taxpayers, said technical experts and IRS engineers who reviewed the
documents. By shifting a single parameter, the program could return
more information than just a target’s address, said an engineer
familiar with the plan, including employer and familial relationships.

Engineers based at IRS offices in Lanham, Maryland, and Dallas are
developing the blueprint.

“Gone Back on Its Word”

For decades, the American government has encouraged everyone who makes
an income in the U.S. to pay taxes — regardless of immigration
status — with an implicit promise that their information would be
protected. Now that same data may be used to locate and deport
noncitizens.

“For years, the IRS has told immigrants that it only cares that they
pay their taxes,” said Nandan Joshi, an attorney with the Public
Citizen Litigation Group, which is seeking to block the data-sharing
agreement in federal court. “By agreeing to share taxpayer data with
ICE on a mass basis, the IRS has gone back on its word.”

The push to share IRS data with DHS emerged while Elon Musk’s DOGE
[[link removed]] reshaped the
engineering staff of the IRS. Sam Corcos, a Silicon Valley startup
founder with no government experience, pushed out more than 50 IRS
engineers and restructured the agency’s engineering priorities while
he was the senior DOGE official at the agency. He later became chief
information officer at Treasury. He has also led a separate IRS effort
to create a master database using products from Silicon Valley giant
Palantir Technologies, enabling the government to link and search
large swaths of data.

Corcos didn’t respond to a request for comment. The White House said
DOGE is not part of the DHS-IRS pact.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on
Finance, which oversees the IRS, told ProPublica the system being
built was ripe for abuse. It “would allow an outside agency
unprecedented access to IRS records for reasons that have nothing to
do with tax administration, opening the door to endless fishing
expeditions,” he said.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the
department’s internal watchdog, is already probing efforts by Trump
and DOGE
[[link removed]]to
obtain private taxpayer data and other sensitive information,
ProPublica reported in April.

The Trump administration continues to add government agencies to its
deportation drive.

DOGE and DHS are also working to build a national citizenship
database, NPR reported last month
[[link removed]].
The database links information from the Social Security Administration
and the DHS, ostensibly for the purpose of allowing state and local
election officials to verify U.S. citizenship.

And in May, a senior Treasury Department official directed 250 IRS
criminal investigative agents to help deportation operations, a
significant shift for two agencies that historically have had separate
missions.

McKenzie Funk [[link removed]] contributed
reporting, and Kirsten Berg
[[link removed]] and Alex Mierjeski
[[link removed]] contributed
research.

* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* ICE
[[link removed]]
* IRS
[[link removed]]
* Tax returns
[[link removed]]
* privacy laws
[[link removed]]
* immigrant rights
[[link removed]]
* due process
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]