ICE Grabs IRS Data: Undocumented Taxpayers Face "Perilous" Filing
$25.7B in Social Security taxes at stake
WASHINGTON—On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed a stark, 15-page pact that says says ICE will now request IRS tax records for immigration enforcement purposes. IRS can deny the request, but the resignation over the memo on Wednesday of acting commissioner Melanie Krause is an unsubtle message to her successor.
“It strikes me that it's become a lot more perilous,” Richard Neal (MA) told us Wednesday when asked if it was safe for undocumented migrants to file taxes. When Neal was chairman, the House Ways and Means Committee fought for years to access Trump’s tax returns; this latest handover of tax records to the Trump administration took just weeks. Listen to Neal:
Summer Lee (PA) was blunt when asked the same: “It’s unsafe for anybody in their crosshairs.” Ilhan Omar (MN) advised warily: “Talk to lawyers—there might be risks.” Chuy Garcia (IL) predicts a major revenue fallout to the Treasury when unauthorized folks skip filing out of very reasonable fear of subsequent persecution by immigration agents. Listen to Chuy:
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In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes—all programs that declare them ineligible for benefits.
“It has always been a near sacred promise of understanding that undocumented people would always be safe in paying their taxes in the hope that we could one day have a breakthrough and regularize status for people who contributed to our country, who did their best to pay their taxes, and paid into all of our systems,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Here’s the video:
My Take: The memo is more evidence that the political hysteria of tax evasion by undocumented migrants, like the hysteria around illegal voting, is another sham. Also, it’s clearly unsafe for undocumented Americans to file taxes. That couldn’t be more obvious. Unless the courts quickly intervene, expect the Trump administration to proceed harvesting private tax records as haphazardly as they have the USCIS databases of student visas for revocation and the databases of ICE detainees for transfer to Guantanamo Bay and El Salvador.
