IRS Shared Thousands Of Taxpayers' Confidential Data With DHS Before Court Blocked Agreement

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly shared confidential tax information belonging to thousands of individuals with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Dottie Romo, the tax agency’s chief risk and control officer, said in a sworn declaration that the IRS notified DHS of the error on Jan. 23, 2026, The Washington Post reports.

She added that the agency planned to take steps to “prevent the disclosure or dissemination” of the data and to ensure the “appropriate disposal, of any data provided to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by the IRS based on incomplete or insufficient address information.”

The Controversial 2025 ICE-IRS Data-Sharing Agreement

The move stems from a data-sharing agreement aimed at helping President Donald Trump fulfill his pledge to carry out mass deportations.

As AFROTECH™ previously reported, ICE received unprecedented clearance in April 2025 to request confidential taxpayer information from the IRS to locate and deport undocumented immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants do not have Social Security Numbers and instead file taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), often under the belief that complying with tax laws would not expose them to deportation. There are approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., and over half of them file income tax returns every year, according to The Guardian.

Under the agreement, ICE could submit a request including a taxpayer’s name and identifying information, including address, along with the crime the individual is being investigated for. The IRS would then cross-reference those details against confidential taxpayer records to confirm or deny the information, AFROTECH™ noted. However, the ICE request may not include enough information to identify a specific individual, leaving room for other taxpayers to be inadvertently included in the release, The Post reports.

A federal court blocked the agreement in a November 2025 order, finding that it violated taxpayers’ rights because of longstanding IRS assurances that tax information would remain confidential, the outlet notes.

“A reasonable taxpayer would likely find it highly offensive to discover that the IRS now intends to share that information permissively because it has replaced its promise of confidentiality with a policy of disclosure,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote, according to The Post.

Before Kollar-Kotelly blocked the agreement, DHS submitted requests to the IRS for the addresses of 1.2 million individuals, the outlet notes. The agency ultimately provided information on approximately 47,000 people, court records show.

For fewer than 5% of those individuals, the IRS inadvertently disclosed additional address information belonging to thousands of taxpayers, per The Associated Press.

What Happens Next?

Romo declined to specify whether the IRS would notify individuals whose data was disclosed to immigration officials, according to The Post. She said DHS and ICE had agreed not to “inspect, view, use, copy, distribute, rely on, or otherwise act on” any return information obtained from the IRS while litigation is pending, the outlet notes.