President Trump and his administration are moving quickly to fulfill their campaign promise to increase immigration enforcement and carry out mass deportations. The latest twist: Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to deputize special agents in the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) division to help DHS.
But being deputized to help carry out deportations would be a new responsibility, requiring additional training and diverting from other activities with proven benefits.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for investigating complex financial crimes. Its 2,100 special agents are good at what they do, with a reported conviction rate that exceeds 90 percent. Of particular relevance to immigration enforcement, they already have a role investigating financial flows involving human-trafficking networks.
It is unclear how many IRS-CI agents would be diverted to new workstreams under the new policy and how this would affect current fraud investigations, which can be lengthy. This is important because in Fiscal Year 2024, IRS-CI agents identified more than $9.1 billion in fraud, obtained court orders totaling $1.7 billion in restitution to US taxpayers, and seized criminal assets totaling approximately $1.2 billion.
Another potential obstacle: Historically, privacy protections require Congress to enact legislation authorizing an agency to request access to IRS data to assist other agencies in administering non-tax programs. Using IRS information for the sole purpose of locating undocumented immigrants for possible deportation is not allowed.
And, if undocumented immigrants who pay taxes with Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers instead of Social Security Numbers fear the IRS is sharing their information with DHS, they may become reluctant to file, further reducing tax revenues. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes. In some cases, these tax dollars help fund social programs they are not eligible to access.
Expanding the purview of IRS-CI could be especially challenging now, in the midst of layoffs ordered by President Trump. IRS’s limited resources would be best used to do what IRS does best: ensuring taxpayers comply with the tax law.
From December 2023 to December 2024, Elaine Maag was a Tax Policy Advisor at the US Department of the Treasury. This blog was coauthored with Diana Guelespe.
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