Federal immigration enforcement officials say they have not used taxpayer data obtained from the IRS to carry out deportations, according to a new batch of court filings.
The disclosure late Monday, filed in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, offered clarity into how Immigration and Customs Enforcement used taxpayer information to execute the Trump administration’s deportation blitz.
ICE said it cross-referenced taxpayer data with a list of 1.2 million undocumented immigrants “with final removal orders and identified approximately 33,000 updated addresses” earlier this year. But the immigration enforcement agency said it did nothing with the data, even after its technology office made it available to a team responsible for “enforcement removal operations.”
The filings were part of a lawsuit the advocacy group Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts filed against the IRS, Treasury, Social Security Administration, ICE and Homeland Security looking to stop the federal government from sharing taxpayer information like addresses with immigration enforcement. This data, the Massachusetts group argued, is typically protected from disclosure by a provision in the tax code.
In a separate ongoing case, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Washington-based Clinton appointee, in November blocked the IRS from sharing tax return information until the court can review the case further. Her decision prompted speculation about how consequential the move could be since ICE had apparently already probed IRS data.
In the latest tranche of legal filings, ICE maintains it has not populated its database with IRS information, which is resting in the hands of one government official.
“The IRS data is currently residing on the [ICE Homeland Security Investigations] lead architect's government-issued computer,” Richard S. Fitzgerald, the assistant director of the unit, said in the filings. “The lead architect is responsible for transferring data between the operators and other stakeholders. At this juncture, only the lead architect has access to the IRS data.”
Brian Peltier, the head of technology strategy at SSA, also said the agency would only share address data that doesn’t come from tax data sources or from information “directly from claimants, claimant representatives [or] United States Postal Service reports.”
It’s unclear if the statements will mollify the concerns of the groups suing the federal government. The Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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