A federal judge ruled Friday that the IRS appears to have broken the law when it reached an agreement to share secret taxpayer data with ICE, and ordered a pause to the practice.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee to the court in the District of Columbia, called the sharing “unlawful conduct” that broke procedural and tax law.
“Plaintiffs have shown that the IRS’s implementation of the Address-Sharing Policy was arbitrary and capricious because the IRS failed to recognize that it was departing from its prior policy of strict confidentiality, failed to consider the reliance interests that were engendered by its prior policy of strict confidentiality, and failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the new policy,” she wrote.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had sought access to IRS data to help track down illegal immigrant targets.
According to documents revealed in the case, ICE initially sought information on more than 7 million IRS taxpayers, then settled on 1.28 million “immigrant taxpayers,” the judge said.
At least 47,000 records were provided, the judge said.
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