A watchdog report flags security risks in the IRS-ICE taxpayer data-sharing deal
WASHINGTON — A Treasury inspector general report raises concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ability to safeguard taxpayer information after ICE and the Internal Revenue Service agreed in 2025 to share taxpayer data for the purpose of immigration investigations.
The recently released report provides the first official accounting of the scale of the IRS-ICE information transfer and documents security concerns surrounding an arrangement that has been the subject of multiple lawsuits and significant controversy inside both agencies.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that the 2025 data-sharing agreement between ICE and the Treasury Department — which allowed ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants in the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records — resulted in inconsistent formatting in ICE’s data and the IRS’ matching criteria, which led to errors.
The deal led the then-acting commissioner of the IRS to resign.
The report says that after the agreement was signed, ICE requested address information on more than 1.2 million people, and that the IRS ultimately provided last-known addresses for about 47,000 people.
The inspector general concluded that the IRS’ automated matching process was flawed. Inconsistent formatting in ICE’s data led to questionable matches, including in cases in which incomplete or inaccurate addresses were labeled as valid, the report says.
Representatives from the Treasury Department and the IRS did not respond to a request for comment.
The plan to cross-verify tax and immigration data is part of President Trump’s agenda to secure U.S. borders and his nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants.
However, this is not the first time it’s been revealed that tens of thousands of taxpayers’ information was revealed to ICE.
In February, a federal judge said the IRS broke the law by disclosing confidential taxpayer information to ICE, referring to the same 47,000 disclosures that the inspector general points out.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found that the IRS had erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people with the Department of Homeland Security as part of the 2025 agreement.
No recommendations were made in the new inspector general report, according to a letter by Nancy A. LaManna, deputy inspector general for inspections and evaluations.
“However, we plan to share some concerns we identified during our review with the DHS Office of Inspector General,” her letter says.
Hussein writes for the Associated Press.