IRS barred from sharing tax data with ICE

A US appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling barring the Internal Revenue Service from sharing taxpayer information with immigration authorities.

The 3-0 decision blocks a Trump administration effort to gather tax data that could help US Immigration and Customs Enforcement identify undocumented migrants for deportation.

Taxpayer information collected by the IRS, including home addresses, earnings and family details, is closely protected under federal law. Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote that Congress imposed stringent conditions on IRS sharing of taxpayer information with other federal agencies after the Watergate scandal exposed executive branch abuses of tax records.

ICE requested more than 1.2 million records from the IRS last year. The tax agency released the addresses of about 47,000 taxpayers before federal courts halted the sharing.

Nandan Joshi, an attorney with Public Citizen, one of the groups that sued the administration, welcomed the ruling. He said noncitizens have the same privacy rights in their tax returns that federal law gives to all taxpayers.

The IRS allows millions of undocumented migrants to pay taxes. President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to expel millions of undocumented migrants and has taken steps since returning to the White House to speed deportations and reduce border crossings.