Here’s What the Government Tried to Keep Hidden in the IRS-ICE Data-Sharing Agreement
The unsealing of key documents, including the agreement itself, reveals not only what taxpayer data ICE is seeking from the IRS, but also the highly questionable justifications the government used to keep that information hidden.
On Tuesday, a controversial agreement between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and immigration authorities that had been shrouded in secrecy was finally made available to the public in its near entirety, thanks to American Oversight’s successful efforts in ongoing litigation.
The agreement, which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to access sensitive taxpayer data to further the Trump administration’s mass-deportation agenda, has sparked major concerns from transparency experts and civil rights advocates and reportedly was a major reason for the April resignation of the acting IRS commissioner. The unsealing of key documents, including the agreement itself, reveals not only what taxpayer data ICE is seeking from the IRS, but also the highly suspect justifications the government used to keep that information hidden.
The IRS-ICE Agreement
After it was reported that the IRS would share taxpayer information with ICE, Public Citizen sued the government on behalf of plaintiffs Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and Immigrant Solidarity DuPage to prevent the IRS from engaging in the disclosure of data for immigration enforcement purposes. In that lawsuit, the government’s filings, which included key briefs as well as the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security, remained partially under seal without the agencies first demonstrating why they shouldn’t be made public.
In the MOU itself, several items were redacted, denying the public the ability to see key details about an arrangement that could compromise millions of taxpayers’ personal information. American Oversight successfully secured a court order requiring the near-complete unsealing of judicial records, including the MOU.
With redactions lifted, we can see what the government was trying to keep secret: That ICE is seeking the addresses of people it is investigating — information that taxpayers entrust the IRS to keep confidential, and that the IRS is bound by law to keep safe. That includes undocumented immigrants, who pay income tax and have long relied on those promises from the IRS. (You can see what was hidden under the redactions below.) In addition, the MOU fails to include any meaningful independent oversight of when and how the information is to be shared, relying on internal compliance and self-reporting and raising questions about how the public can ensure the government is following its own rules.
The Government’s Inappropriate Justifications for Secrecy
When a federal law enforcement agency is involved, the government frequently relies on related privileges and exemptions to justify withholding information from public disclosure. For example, the Freedom of Information Act’s Exemption 7 allows the government, in limited circumstances, to keep records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes private. The use of law enforcement privilege is designed to protect information such as the personal identity of an informant or specific details about an ongoing investigation that, if made public, could jeopardize tactical plans or cause further harm. In other words, this exemption can protect public safety — when properly applied.
In this case, the government sought to keep fundamental details in a written agreement between two agencies hidden from the public by marking these details as “law enforcement sensitive,” a designation typically used to shield information that’s highly sensitive and subject to strict protocols and handling within an agency — for instance, databases potentially at risk of a cyber-attack, findings that could reveal the assigned locations of police officers at the Capitol, or identities of confidential sources.
Here, the government asserted the privilege in an attempt to justify withholding the fact that the IRS is violating the government’s previous promises of confidentiality by sharing addresses — information submitted to the government by the taxpayers themselves — with law enforcement. The public disclosure that the IRS is sharing taxpayer addresses with ICE to advance the Trump administration’s already well-known deportation goals does not present a grave risk to national security, but it does provide those affected with important insight into how such a policy works. The overuse of law enforcement-related exemptions is a perennial problem, as courts typically provide a lot of deference to such claims. American Oversight’s successful efforts to lift the redactions on the MOU reveal the government’s apparent expectation that it could use the law-enforcement privilege without proper justification or reason.
What Was Under the Redactions
The text in red below indicates the details that had previously been redacted from the MOU. The previously redacted text is repeated in brackets at the end of each bullet point.
Page 1 of the agreement
- “[T]his Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. Treasury Department / Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sets forth the agreement of the parties with respect to ICE’s use of the authority in IRC § 6103(i)(2) for the submission of requests for addresses of persons subject to criminal investigation under 8 U.S.C. § 1253(a)(1) or another specifically designated Federal criminal statute.” [redacted text: “addresses of persons subject”]
- “The purpose of this MOU is to establish the procedures and requirements for ICE’s submission of valid IRC § 6103(i)(2) requests for addresses of persons subject to criminal investigation under 8 U.S.C. § 1253(a)(1) or other specifically designated nontax Federal criminal statutes. The specifications and details regarding the IRS’s and ICE’s procedural obligations and requirements concerning the information exchange will be included in a separate implementation agreement entered into between IRS and ICE.” [redacted text: “requests for address of persons subject to criminal investigation”]
- “The IRS will …”
- “Receive requests for address information from ICE.” [redacted text: “address information”]
- “… Search for the last known address for each individual in each request.” [redacted text: “Search for the last known address”]
- “… For each individual the IRS is able to identify from the information provided by ICE, provide the IRS last known address for that individual. For each individual the IRS cannot identify from the information provided by ICE, indicate “no match” in the response.” [redacted text: “For each individual the IRS is able to identify from the information provided by ICE, provide the IRS last known address for that individual. For each individual the IRS cannot identify from the information provided by ICE, indicate “no match” in the response.“]
- “ICE will … Send requests for address information for specifically identified individuals pursuant to the specifications contained in a separate implementation agreement between ICE and IRS.” [redacted text: “Send requests for address information“]
- “Each request will contain the following information with respect to each individual identified in the request: … The taxable period or periods as to which the return information (address) they are seeking relates.” [redacted text: “(address) they are seeking“]
- “Each request will attest that the requested address information will only be used by officers and employees of ICE solely for the preparation for judicial or administrative proceedings, or investigation that may lead to such proceedings, pertaining to the enforcement of 8 U.S.C. § 1253(a)(1), other specifically designated Federal criminal statute, or any subsequent criminal proceedings.” [redacted text: “the requested address information“]
- “ICE will use and redisclose the address information only as specifically authorized by IRC § 6103(i)(2) as implemented in 26 C.F.R § 301.6103(i)-1.” [redacted text: “the address“]
- “ICE will ensure the proper handling, transmission, safeguarding, and security of the address information as contained in Sections 8 and 9 of this MOU.” [redacted text: “the address“]
- “The IRS will… disclose address information from the System(s) of Records described in a separate implementation agreement entered into between the IRS and ICE.” [redacted text: “address information“]
- “ICE will … disclose the following subject identifier information: CVID; A Number; First, Middle and Last Name; Address Information; Date of Birth; Country of Citizenship; FBI Numbers; and Fingerprint Identification Number (FINS), from the System(s) of Records described in a separate implementation agreement entered into between the IRS and ICE; and … maintain the address information provided by the IRS in the System(s) of Records described in a separate implementation agreement entered into between the IRS and ICE.” [redacted text: “CVID; A Number”; “Address Information; Date of Birth; Country of Citizenship; FBI Numbers; and Fingerprint Identification Number (FINS), from the System(s) of Records described in a separate implementation agreement entered into between the IRS and ICE“; “the address information”]
- “This MOU will remain in effect as necessary for the IRS to provide address information in response to ICE requests satisfying the requirements contained in this MOU.” [redacted text: “address information“]