IRS official says agency improperly shared some taxpayer data with ICE

The IRS shared taxpayer data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that skirted federal privacy law and was outside the scope of the agencies’ controversial data-sharing agreement, according to a court filing Wednesday.

A sworn declaration from Dottie A. Romo, previously the IRS’s chief operating officer and now its chief risk and control officer, detailed the tax agency’s missteps regarding a request from ICE for 1.28 million taxpayer records.

The June 2025 request from the Department of Homeland Security component was part of the IRS-ICE data-sharing pact reached last April. The memorandum of understanding between the agencies reportedly led to the resignation of the then-acting IRS commissioner.

According to Romo, the IRS received ICE’s request and engaged in “procedures designed to ensure compliance with Section 6103 of the Tax Code and the MOU.” ICE’s Datafile — which included fields such as first name, last name, address, and final removal order data — was taken by the IRS and plugged into a computer script to see if it matched agency records.

The matching, per Romo’s declaration, was done through either a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) or through address matching. All told, the tax agency found 47,289 matches out of the 1.28 million requested, and disclosed that information to ICE last August.

But according to Romo, the IRS later learned that it “may have supplied last known addresses to ICE” in cases where the ICE-provided Datafile “was either incomplete or insufficiently populated.” There were also instances of ICE-supplied addresses that referred to specific locations (i.e. jails or prisons) but no street names or numbers.

The IRS believes that those non-compliant data fields affected less than 5% of the 47,289 matches, per Romo’s declaration. Nevertheless, providing that extra address information back to ICE was in violation of the MOU and potentially federal privacy law.  

Romo said the Treasury Department notified DHS about the issue on Jan. 23, and requested the agency’s help in “promptly taking steps to remediate the matter consistent with federal law and the MOU, including by taking all appropriate steps to prevent the disclosure or dissemination, and to ensure appropriate disposal, of any data provided to ICE by IRS based on incomplete or insufficient address information.”

DHS and ICE have said they will not inspect, view, use, copy or distribute any tax return information that is part of that batch, the declaration stated. The IRS was blocked last November from sharing taxpayer addresses with ICE by the judge overseeing this case, Center for Taxpayer Rights v. Internal Revenue Service. Last week, a different federal judge hit pause on ICE from using taxpayer data in enforcement operations.

“Should the posture of litigation related to the MOU change,” Romo wrote, “DHS and ICE have confirmed to Treasury and IRS that they will continue to work to ensure that any further actions taken pursuant to the MOU are consistent with federal law.”

The Washington Post first reported the IRS’s improper disclosures of taxpayer data to DHS on Wednesday.