The Internal Revenue Service and the White House squabbled over the use of tax data to find suspected undocumented immigrants just hours before Trump administration officials pushed out IRS Commissioner Billy Long on Friday, according to a new report Saturday.
On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security sent a list to the IRS with more than 40,000 names that officials at the department believed were in the country illegally and asked that the IRS use confidential taxpayer information to confirm their addresses, anonymous sources told The Washington Post.
In April, the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, agreed to an arrangement to facilitate the information sharing, going against the recommendations of IRS privacy lawyers.
Officials at DHS have suggested that they may request that the IRS help them locate as many as seven million people. According to federal estimates, there are roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
The IRS said on Friday that it was able to verify fewer than three percent of the names sent in by immigration enforcement officials, according to The Post. The names that the agency was able to match were mostly those for which DHS shared an individual taxpayer identification number. Immigrants often use the number instead of a Social Security number to file their taxes.
Undocumented immigrants pay taxes to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually.
White House officials asked for further information on the taxpayers identified by the IRS, such as whether any of them had made use of the earned income tax credit, which may reduce the tax burden for some filers with low incomes. However, the IRS chose not to provide that information, pointing to taxpayer privacy rights.
The Post reported that Long had told executives at the agency that the IRS wouldn’t provide confidential taxpayer information outside of the deal the IRS had struck with DHS.
The paper noted that its sources were unaware whether the dispute over the IRS playing a part in the mass deportation effort was part of the reason for Long leaving his post.
“The Trump administration is working in lockstep to eliminate information silos and to prevent illegal aliens from taking advantage of benefits meant for hardworking American taxpayers,” a White House spokesperson told the paper.
“Any absurd assertion other than everyone being aligned on the mission is simply false and totally fake news,” the spokesperson said following the publication of the story.
In a statement to The Post, DHS said the agreement with the IRS “outlines a process to ensure that sensitive taxpayer information is protected, while allowing law enforcement to effectively pursue criminal violations.”
“After four years of Joe Biden flooding the nation with illegal aliens, these processes streamline pursuit of violent criminals, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense, all while protecting American citizens’ safety and data,” the statement continued.
On Friday, Long said Trump was set to nominate him to be the ambassador to Iceland. He had been in his role at the IRS for less than two months.
“It is [an] honor to serve my friend President Trump and I am excited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland. I am thrilled to answer his call to service and deeply committed to advancing his bold agenda. Exciting times ahead!” Long said in a statement on X.
“I saw where Former Superman actor Dean Cain says he’s joining ICE so I got all fired up and thought I’d do the same,” he added. “So I called @realDonaldTrump last night and told him I wanted to join ICE and I guess he thought I said Iceland? Oh well.”
On Saturday, a White House official told The Post, “Billy Long did a great job while at the IRS, and his promotion to ambassador was previously slated to happen.”
