US Court Bars ICE from Accessing Tax Data of Migrants Without Legal Status

US immigration authorities cannot use a tax-information agreement to obtain confidential records belonging to migrants without legal residency, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declared unlawful an agreement reached last year between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Internal Revenue Service. The decision upheld a lower-court ruling that had temporarily stopped the transfer of information on 1.28 million people.

The IRS holds personal information on millions of people who work and pay federal income taxes despite lacking legal status. Those records can include addresses, wages and marital status. Under the agreement signed in April 2025, ICE sought access to the data to help locate people living in the United States illegally as part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation program. More than 47,000 dossiers had already been transmitted.

Federal law has protected confidential taxpayer information since the Watergate era in the 1970s. Organizations that defend migrants' rights sued to stop the disclosure. Nandan Joshi, a lawyer for Public Citizen, welcomed the ruling, saying it recognizes that foreign nationals have the same privacy rights regarding their tax returns as all other taxpayers.

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It recognizes foreign nationals as having the same privacy rights regarding their tax returns as all taxpayers.