The Internal Revenue Service could soon start handing over data of undocumented immigrants to immigration agents, a move that Democrats say puts privacy at risk for everyone.
Republicans said the unprecedented data-sharing move would be fine as long as it was in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration goals.
“If you are here illegally, your privacy rights are highly attenuated,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS. “If they’re here [illegally], I don’t want them to be here. I would like there to be a chilling effect. I would like them to return home and to get in line, please.”
Amid other staff cuts at the IRS agency and the firing of a top agency lawyer who opposed data sharing, the IRS has faced pressure from the administration to help with its deportation agenda.
The IRS is reportedly close to reaching a deal with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over sharing data. If approved, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem or ICE director Todd Lyons would be able to submit names and addresses of migrants suspected of being in the country illegally for the IRS to confirm based on their databases.
It would be a major change in how the government handles tax data, which has historically been closely kept to avoid violating data laws. But the Trump administration, with congressional Republican support, has suggested other agencies should be pulled into deportation efforts.
“Seems fairly obvious, the IRS should cooperate with the administration of which it is a part,” Sen. Ted Cruz said. “The IRS, like every other agency, works for the executive branch.”
Migrants-rights groups already sued to stop the plan, but the judge found that they failed to prove their case had standing in court, or that the administration was likely to break the law.
The IRS and ICE did not respond to requests for comment on the potential deal.
Opponents to the data sharing said it would be a dangerous weaponization of the tax system.
“Such unauthorized disclosures of taxpayer data would be a crime,” a group of Senate Democrats wrote in a letter this month about reports of data sharing between the IRS and ICE.
Democrats raised concerns about a potential slippery slope to private data being shared for U.S. citizens as well.
“How do you have that exception?” Sen. Peter Welch asked, of only undocumented people’s data being shared. “It’s a very dangerous and perilous road to walk down that threatens the private information of citizens.”
Democrats questioned if the agreement would actually be put into practice the right way.
“I am concerned about privacy,” Sen. Ruben Gallego said. “Unless there is some kind of process that actually is showing that these people are criminals outside of their status in this country, I think that is an abuse of the system, and it’s not what the IRS was designed to do.”
He also questioned the logic of punishing migrants who did what the government wanted them to do and filed taxes, calling it a “dumb move.”
“These families, we as a government, encourage them to file taxes. We encourage them to establish the fact they have a track record here, that they’re trying to be good eventual citizens,” he said. “A lot of them are doing it because they wanted to show their ability to do it, so that way they could apply for green cards, that way they could apply for visas. And now you’re going to actually discourage people from filing taxes.”
Sen. John Hickenlooper described it as a “betrayal of trust.”
“They paid [taxes] on the condition that that information will be confidential, so I think that’s immoral,” he said. “I don’t know whether it’s legal or not, but it’s certainly immoral.”
One Republican shared Democrats’ concerns about the IRS getting involved in deportation efforts.
“We need to be very, very, very careful and cautious about information that is private information that is collected by our agencies about people in this country,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told NOTUS.
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.