On Tuesday, a federal judge slapped down a claim argued by attorneys for the Trump administration, calling the assertion “weak sauce.” The incident emerged amidst an ongoing fight between the administration and the Center for Taxpayer Rights over whether the IRS illegally provided data for over 40,000 taxpayers to the Department of Homeland Security as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort.
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The case stems back to a letter issued in June 2025 by then-IRS commissioner Billy Long, in which he initiated the practice of sharing taxpayer data with DHS in an attempt to identify undocumented immigrants. The action prompted widespread condemnation over privacy concerns, resulting in bipartisan condemnation. Long was fired within just two months, in part out of an attempt to stave off this particular controversy, but also reportedly because officials within the Treasury Department viewed him as incompetent. Shortly after his firing, Long was appointed ambassador to Iceland, a position he holds to this day.
A lawsuit was then filed to halt the data transfer, which has been making its way through the courts ever since. The latest news follows a judge’s ruling in February, who found that the IRS violated its own code “approximately 42,695 times” for each instance it disclosed taxpayer addresses to ICE, which it did even when requests were based on insufficient grounds. Per its own statutes, the IRS cannot provide taxpayer data to another agency unless the agency first shows that it already has said taxpayer’s address, but the court found that adherence to this was so lax that ICE could have submitted requests with an address like “Don’t Care 12345” or “00000” and still received a taxpayer’s real address. DHS lawyers then filed an appeal, arguing that the injunction barring the practice was “highly unusual and harmful” because it requires the IRS to provide the court with “prior notice of criminal investigatory activity.” In other words, they claimed that this would expose otherwise secret investigations.
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But the three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t buy it, writing, “That argument is weak sauce where the district court has permitted the IRS to file any necessary notifications ‘under seal,’ thereby shielding any criminal investigative activity from disclosure.” What’s more, the court declared that IRS personnel “face steep civil and criminal consequences” if they continue providing taxpayer information to DHS.
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