Next Defeat: Court Stops Trump’s Grab for Migrants’ Tax Data

The government asks its citizens for honesty, line by line, and promises in return to protect what they entrust to it. Every tax return requires a measure of trust, based on the expectation that the government will not turn that information against the person who provided it. A federal court has now spelled out just how seriously the Trump administration took that promise. On Tuesday, Judges Patricia A. Millett, Cornelia T. L. Pillard and Robert L. Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Internal Revenue Service broke the law when it handed tax data over to the Department of Homeland Security. The panel said the administration's defense was weak, a lame justification for something affecting thousands of people.

That very Section 6103, which the court held up to the government, keeps tax records confidential so the IRS does not become a supplier of information for other government agencies. Confidentiality here is not a favor - it is the price of getting people to tell the government the truth about their income in the first place. The agency has now been told for the second time that its disclosure from the summer of 2025 was not adequately safeguarded. The warning was blunt: the government and its employees could face serious civil and criminal consequences if information is knowingly disclosed in violation of the law. The promise the government makes to people who are honest with it was broken here almost in passing.

The agency defended itself by arguing that an injunction against sharing the data was highly unusual and harmful because it would require the IRS to notify the district court in advance about criminal investigations. The court saw no emergency in that. An agency that guards the secrets of millions of people every day wanted the duty to exercise caution, of all things, to be treated as an unreasonable burden. A lower court already allows the IRS to submit such notices under seal, keeping ongoing investigations out of public view. The danger the agency invoked had already been neutralized before it painted it on the wall. An administration reaching for an excuse managed here to disprove its own argument with its own submission.

This is what haste looks like when a White House wants to get its hands on the data of potential targets for its mass deportations as quickly as possible and treats legal limits as decoration. The disclosure affected thousands of taxpayers, including many who are not accused of any crime. People without legal immigration status pay billions of dollars in taxes every year, and the government is turning that very honesty into a tracking map. The most vulnerable carefully walk the government through their numbers, and the government thanks them by reaching into those records. Paying taxes on time delivers a person's own address straight into the government's hands. The government punishes the very virtue it demands.

DOGE, the government efficiency project once pushed by Elon Musk, is also said to have been involved - a project that had efficiency in its name but apparently not the law. Another court already ordered DOGE last month to turn over its internal communications about the legally disputed agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS. What was supposed to slim down the government is mainly leaving behind records that have to be forced open. That efficiency amounted to finding the shortest way around the law.

The question that remains is why getting to the bottom of this has been so slow. The Trump administration has so far refused to disclose how private tax data ended up in the hands of immigration authorities and who had a hand in it. Whether it intends to follow the rules going forward, it leaves unanswered. Clarity inside its own house is treated as an annoying obligation it leaves to the courts. From citizens, it demands complete openness down to the last receipt - its own files, suddenly, it keeps closed. A system of law that comes down with full force on those below while asking for patience from those above loses exactly the authority in whose name it acts.