The RecordExhibit 133
Handing taxpayers' addresses to ICE from confidential IRS files
Mixed rulings means: Courts have ruled both ways on parts of it.
In April 2025 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed an agreement letting ICE ask the IRS to confirm the addresses of people it believed were in the country illegally, drawing on tax records that federal law has kept confidential since Watergate.
What happened
Under the agreement, ICE sends names and addresses and the IRS checks them against its records. In the summer of 2025 ICE asked for the last known addresses of as many as 1.28 million people, and by the time a court stepped in the IRS had shared 47,289 addresses, according to court filings described by Reuters and FedScoop. The acting IRS commissioner resigned over the deal, the AP reported.
The IRS later told a court that it 'may have supplied' addresses in cases where ICE's own address data was incomplete, and a judge found that about 42,695 of the 47,289 disclosures went out that way, matched by taxpayer identification number rather than by the address the law requires ICE to supply. Noncitizens had long been encouraged to file taxes on the understanding that the IRS would not share their information with other agencies.
Where it stands
Courts have ruled both ways. In November 2025 Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the IRS from sharing addresses with ICE in a suit brought by the Center for Taxpayer Rights, the Main Street Alliance and two unions, and on Feb. 26, 2026 she found the IRS had violated the tax code about 42,695 times.
On Feb. 5, 2026 Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a preliminary injunction in a separate suit by four community groups, blocking the agreement and barring ICE from using data it had already received.
On Feb. 24, 2026 a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a third case brought by Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, refused a preliminary injunction, writing that those plaintiffs were unlikely to win because the information at issue was not covered by the tax privacy law; Attorney General Pam Bondi called that a crucial victory.
On Sept. 8, 2026 a different D.C. Circuit panel, in an opinion by Judge Cornelia Pillard, upheld the November injunction in the Center for Taxpayer Rights case and found the practice violated federal law in several ways, most seriously because the procedure did not require ICE to supply a real address, and because it automated the review of millions of records with no individual check that each disclosure met the law's conditions.
Both appeals rulings were preliminary, about whether to block the policy while the cases continue, and none of the cases has reached a final judgment. This entry is stamped Mixed rulings because the same appeals court has ruled for the administration in one case and against it in another.
The administration's side
The administration says the agreement helps carry out the president's border security agenda and his wider immigration crackdown, and argued on appeal that the injunction hinders federal law enforcement; Judge Pillard wrote that this was a complaint for Congress, not the courts. The IRS told the court it followed procedures meant to comply with the confidentiality law and the agreement.
After the September ruling a Homeland Security spokesperson said the department disagrees and will keep using every lawful tool to locate and remove people with final removal orders. In a Wall Street Journal column cited by Judge Talwani, Homeland Security's general counsel argued that people in the country illegally are not entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as citizens.
Sources
Permanent link: https://unredactedrecord.com/e/irsice/