A Massachusetts federal court ruled that information-sharing between the IRS and DHS likely violates federal privacy law, temporarily barring the use of taxpayer data for immigration enforcement.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A federal judge on Feb. 5 temporarily blocked the Department of Homeland Security from using taxpayer information obtained from the Internal Revenue Service for immigration enforcement, finding that the data-sharing arrangement likely violates federal law.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting DHS and its agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement from operating under interagency agreements that allow the IRS to share taxpayer information, including home addresses, for immigration purposes. The injunction will remain in effect while the case proceeds.
The ruling came in Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts v. Bessent, a lawsuit filed by four Massachusetts-based community organizations challenging the legality of the information-sharing agreements.
In her written opinion, Talwani concluded that the plaintiffs demonstrated a “high likelihood that ICE’s handling, use, and storage of taxpayer addresses violated and continues to violate Section 6103” of the Internal Revenue Code, and therefore also violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Administrative Procedure Act, enacted in 1946, governs how federal agencies develop and implement regulations. At the time of its passage, Sen. Pat McCarran of Nevada described the law as “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the federal government.”
Talwani emphasized that the tax code provides “strong privacy protections” for information collected by the IRS and allows disclosure in non-tax criminal matters only when strict procedural safeguards are met. Section 6103 permits disclosures in limited circumstances, including to state tax agencies, the Social Security Administration for official duties, authorized representatives of taxpayers under audit, or pursuant to a court order.
According to the ruling, the IRS and ICE entered into a memorandum of understanding and an implementing agreement in April 2025 to carry out President Donald Trump’s directive that DHS “take immediate steps to identify, exclude, or remove aliens illegally present in the United States.”
Talwani detailed a series of requests ICE made to the IRS in June 2025. On June 5, ICE sought records for 7.6 million individuals, which the IRS rejected for failing to meet disclosure requirements under the tax code. A similar request for 7.3 million records on June 24 was also denied. On June 27, ICE requested records for 1.2 million people. After screening for individuals who had overstayed final deportation orders by more than 90 days, the IRS provided information on approximately 47,000 noncitizen taxpayers.
The judge said the record suggested ICE engaged in data mining, seeking taxpayer addresses first and then attempting to determine whether those individuals may have violated criminal statutes. She contrasted this with the legally permissible approach of initiating a criminal investigation and then requesting specific taxpayer information as needed.
Talwani also raised concerns about the risk of misidentification and warned that such errors, combined with DHS’s legal position that noncitizens may be searched without a judicial warrant, could result in abuse.
Those factors led the court to conclude that “the public interest is not served by ICE’s use of the confidential taxpayer information provided despite ICE’s failure to satisfy the statutorily required procedures for obtaining such information.”
Federal courts have reached differing conclusions on similar issues. On May 12, 2025, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich of the District of Columbia declined to block the IRS from sharing taxpayer data with DHS when the taxpayers were already subject to criminal investigation. Friedrich found that the IRS–DHS memorandum of understanding did not violate the Internal Revenue Code’s data-sharing provisions.
In contrast, on Nov. 21, 2025, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington temporarily barred the IRS from sharing taxpayer data with DHS unless the disclosure complied with Section 6103. In that case, Center for Taxpayer Rights v. IRS, Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the plaintiffs had shown a substantial likelihood that the interagency agreement was unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The federal government appealed Kollar-Kotelly’s decision on Jan. 13 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. On Jan. 21, the judge granted a joint request to stay proceedings in her court pending the appellate ruling, while leaving the injunction in place.
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