Amid US President Donald Trump‘s long-standing mass deportation efforts and an increasingly worrying climate for illegal immigrants in US due to rampant raids, a federal court has recorded a significant legal victory for immigrant rights.
A ruling issued by Federal District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has barred the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from sharing sensitive taxpayer information with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Kollar-Kotelly found IRS’ policy to be unlawful, arbitrary and in violation of multiple federal laws that protect taxpayer confidentiality, NBC News reported.
The judge’s 94-page decision emphasised the imminent risk posed to undocumented taxpayers, who could face deportation or other civil immigration actions if their confidential information were misused.
How will immigrant rights be affected?
This injunction puts a halt to the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to use IRS data for immigration enforcement. The policy had raised fears that immigrants might avoid filing taxes or seeking IRS help due to the risk their information would be shared with immigration authorities, thereby undermining trust in the tax system, according to the National Information Forum.
The ruling expands on an earlier court order requiring the IRS to notify the court and plaintiffs 72 hours before any large-scale disclosure of taxpayer data to ICE, according to Politico.
It bars the IRS, Treasury, and Department of Homeland Security from sharing tax return data without court approval while the legality of the broader data-sharing agreement is further examined.
Advocates weigh in
According to WRAL News, advocates hailed the ruling as a crucial defence of privacy rights that safeguards millions of taxpayers, including vulnerable immigrant communities, from intrusive government surveillance and enforcement actions not authorised by law.
“This is an important win for millions of people in America whose information has been threatened by the Trump-Vance administration… the privacy laws enacted in the post-Watergate era exist to prevent abuses of power like this and yet leaders in the IRS and ICE launched this effort,” Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said in a statement to WRAL News.
How many people have been deported from US so far?
An estimated 527,000 illegal immigrants have been deported from the US after Trump assumed office in his second term, according to a press release issued by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last month.