Judge won’t block ICE from IRS data

A federal judge on Monday refused to block the Internal Revenue Organization from sharing immigrants tax statistics with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U S In a win for the Trump administration U S District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups They argued that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes are entitled to the same privacy protections as U S citizens and immigrants who are legally in the country Friedrich who was appointed by President Donald Trump had previously refused to grant a temporary order in the occurrence The decision comes less than a month after former acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause resigned over the deal allowing ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U S illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records The plaintiffs are disappointed in the Court s denial of our preliminary injunction but the episode is far from over We are considering our options Alan Butler Morrison the attorney representing the nonprofit groups wrote in an email He noted that the judge s ruling made it clear that the Department of Homeland Guard and the IRS can t venture beyond the strict limitations spelled out in the scenario So far DHS has not made formal requests for taxpayer facts and plaintiffs will be keeping a close watch to be sure that the defendants carry out their promises to follow the law and not use the exception for unlawful purposes Morrison announced The Treasury Department says the agreement with ICE will help carry out President Donald Trump s agenda to secure U S borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown which has resulted in deportations workplace raids and the use of an th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan settlers The acting ICE director has noted working with Treasury and other departments is strictly for the major criminal cases Advocates however say the IRS-DHS information-sharing agreement violates privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans In her ruling Friedrich mentioned the agreement doesn t violate the Internal Revenue Code so the IRS hasn t substantially changed the way it handles taxpayer information Instead the Trump administration has decided to use already existing statutorily authorized tools to help with criminal investigations Friedrich wrote