Court Allows IRS To Share Immigrant Tax Data
He handed over his keys and walked out—choosing his name over a deal that felt wrong.
The resignation letter sat on his desk for three days before he signed it. Doug O’Donnell, the acting commissioner of the IRS, had spent thirty-eight years climbing the ranks of the agency, through Republican administrations and Democratic ones, through tax seasons and scandals, through everything. He was the kind of career civil servant who believed in process, in privacy, in the sacred trust between a taxpayer and the government that collects their money.
But this—this data-sharing agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement—this felt different.
He thought about the numbers, the 1.28 million names ICE wanted to cross-check. He thought about the 47,000 they actually matched, and the fewer than 5 percent whose address information got passed along. He thought about the waitress in Chicago who files her taxes every year, who pays what she owes, who maybe didn’t check a box somewhere or used a friend’s address because she moved twice last year. He thought about her door being kicked in at 5 a.m.
Maybe that’s not how it happens. Maybe it’s more clinical—a letter, a form, a final notice. But fear doesn’t care about clinical. Fear lives in the gut, in the sleepless hours before dawn, in the flinch when a car backfires on the street.
O’Donnell signed his name. He cleared his desk. He walked out of the building he’d entered for nearly four decades, and he didn’t look back.
In Chicago, the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos office hummed with anxious energy. Volunteers answered phones in Spanish and English, trying to calm callers who had heard the news about the court ruling. Three judges in Washington had decided their lawsuit was unlikely to succeed. Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote that the information being shared wasn’t covered by the IRS privacy statute. Technically, legally, he was probably right. But try explaining statutory interpretation to a mother of three who just realized the government knows where she lives.
She attended know-your-rights workshops, helped organize the food pantry, brought her kids to the Saturday citizenship classes even though they were born here and didn’t need them. She believed in community, in showing up, in the small acts of solidarity that make survival possible. Now she sat in the folding chair, clutching a cup of cold coffee, listening to the news.
“They can see our taxes now?
“They can request matches,” Daniela said carefully. “Names and addresses. To verify.”
Maria Elena nodded slowly. She thought about her husband, who worked construction, who paid taxes with an ITIN number because he didn’t have a Social Security card. She thought about the house they’d rented for seven years, the garden in the backyard, the neighbors who waved hello. She thought about whether the landlord would rent to someone else if they disappeared.
On Truth Social, Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the ruling. In the Centro office, someone read the post aloud. No one responded. What was there to say?
The data-sharing agreement had been signed in April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. It was supposed to be efficient, bureaucratic, a simple matter of cross-verification. But nothing about immigration is simple when you’re the one whose name gets verified.
Earlier that month, court filings revealed that the IRS had already shared some information—thousands of records, potentially in violation of privacy rules designed to protect taxpayer data. An error, officials said. A mistake in implementation. But mistakes have consequences when they involve people’s addresses and the people who show up at them.
Dottie Romo, the IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer, filed a declaration explaining what happened. Only 47,000 matches out of 1.28 million requests. Fewer than 5 percent got additional address information. The numbers sounded small, clinical, manageable. But every number is a person. Every match is a doorstep.
That night, after the office closed, Maria Elena walked home through the familiar streets. She passed the taqueria where they bought dinner on Fridays, the park where her kids learned to ride bikes, the church where she lit candles for her mother back in Oaxaca. She thought about Doug O’Donnell, the man who resigned rather than oversee this agreement. She’d never met him, never heard his name until today. But she understood him somehow. He had looked at the machinery of government and decided he didn’t want to be part of what it was building.
She unlocked her door, stepped inside, and called out to her husband that she was home. Ordinary words. Ordinary night. But underneath them, the quiet hum of fear, and gratitude, and the stubborn determination to keep living in a country that might not want her to.