ICE Spice Baby 

Diya Ravi

November 21, 2025

On Friday, a federal judge stopped the Internal Revenue Service from providing ICE with the home addresses of taxpayers who were suspected of being undocumented immigrants. This ruling deals a significant blow to President Trump’s renewed mass deportation agenda. 

Many immigrant-rights organizations and civil liberties groups that have challenged the administration are celebrating this decision. Year on end, undocumented immigrants have been encouraged to pay taxes while being reassured that their personal information would remain confidential, unless under minimal circumstances. The blocked program, critics argued, shattered that decades-long understanding.

According to court filings, the IRS already shared information about 47,000 taxpayers, which is only a small portion of what ICE and DHS requested. Officials reportedly sought data on millions of individuals who had outstanding deportation orders. IRS leadership resisted those requests, leading to months of conflict with the White House and ultimately contributing to the departure of several IRS commissioners.

In her 94-page opinion, District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the IRS violated the Internal Revenue Code’s strict confidentiality protections. The law allows taxpayer data to be shared only under narrow exceptions, exceptions she found did not apply here, regardless of a person’s immigration status.

Kollar-Kotelly criticized the Justice Department’s arguments defending the program, calling some claims “not credible.” One example involved the DOJ’s assertion that a single ICE agent was personally overseeing tens of thousands of potential criminal investigations tied to the requested tax data. The judge dismissed the idea as implausible, writing, “The Court finds it unlikely that a single individual could be ‘personally and directly engaged’ in approximately 47,000 criminal matters, let alone 1.28 million.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Taxpayer Rights, a nonprofit organization whose clients include low-income taxpayers and undocumented immigrants. Advocates said the program inflicted “irreparable harm” by placing individuals at risk of deportation simply for complying with federal tax obligations.

Millions of undocumented immigrants file taxes annually, often using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs. Advocates argue that violating the confidentiality of this system undermines public trust and discourages voluntary tax compliance.

Democracy Forward, another group involved in the case, praised the ruling. “This is an important win for millions of people in America whose information has been threatened,” said Skye Perryman, the organization’s president. “Privacy laws enacted in the post-Watergate era exist to prevent abuses of power like this.”

As the administration considers its next legal steps, immigrant-rights groups say the ruling sends a powerful message: tax confidentiality protections still matter, and federal agencies cannot stretch the law to support sweeping deportation efforts.