In Big Shift, IRS Would Help Locate Migrants in US

In what would represent a significant shift in how it uses taxpayer data, the IRS is poised to start helping immigration officials locate undocumented migrants in the US. The Washington Post and CNN both report that the IRS is close to working out a deal after weeks of negotiations with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Under the deal, ICE would provide the names and addresses of suspected undocumented migrants, and the IRS would cross-reference them with taxpayer databases to confirm.

This represents a less sweeping alternative first proposed by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security—that the IRS would simply hand over the names and addresses of undocumented people. The tax agency rejected that idea over legal concerns: federal law requires the IRS to closely guard its data, notes the New York Times. The IRS encourages undocumented migrants to file taxes, typically assigning them a nine-digit code in lieu of a Social Security number.

It's not clear when the final compromise would go into effect, but legal challenges already are underway. Earlier this month, amid reports of the proposal, two immigrants rights groups sued the Treasury Department and the IRS to block the sharing of any data with DHS. The lawsuits claim that federal law bars the cooperation because neither DHS nor ICE are listed as exempt from the tax agency's confidentiality rules. (More IRS stories.)