Under President Donald Trump, two federal agencies are teaming up to tackle illegal immigration. According to The Washington Post, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem have signed an agreement allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to access Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data in order to identify, track, and locate illegal immigrants within the U.S. Under the terms of the inter-agency agreement, Noem or other senior ICE officials can submit requests to the IRS for personal tax data on individuals suspected of being illegal immigrants. Based on evidence and reasoning provided by ICE, the IRS can then choose to release the information to ICE.

Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause resigned after the agreement was made without her consultation or approval; she learned of the agreement through a Fox News report. Krause and other IRS officials claimed that the tax agency has maintained a longstanding policy assuring illegal immigrants that their tax information will not be released to immigration authorities, and IRS lawyers raised concerns that sharing personal tax information may violate certain privacy laws.

A Treasury Department spokesman said that the agreement between the two agencies establishes a “clear and secure process to support law enforcement’s efforts to combat illegal immigration.” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, meanwhile, said of the agreement that the “government is finally doing what it should have all along: sharing information across the federal government to solve problems.”

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, some illegal immigrants “who are hired without valid work authorization may provide their employer a fake Social Security number, someone else’s number, or even a previously-valid number issued when they may have had work authorization that has since lapsed.” In order to file their taxes, often in an effort to build a case towards becoming a legal permanent resident, illegal immigrants use individual tax identification numbers (ITINs). The Bipartisan Policy Center reported in 2018 that “the vast majority of tax returns filed with ITINs today are filed by” illegal immigrants. In 2010 alone, over three million tax returns were filed using ITINs.

In addition to tracking down illegal immigrants through tax documents, the Trump administration is planning on fining illegal immigrants for every day that they remain in the country illegally. The president intends to enforce a largely-unenforced section of Title VIII of the U.S. Code, which allows the federal government to fine illegal immigrants “for each day the alien is in violation of this section.” While the relevant part of the U.S. Code stipulates that illegal immigrants cannot be fined more than $500 a day, the Trump administration plans to apply the law retroactively, fining illegal immigrants nearly $1,000 a day until they leave. DHS officials have urged illegal immigrants to voluntarily “self-deport.” McLaughlin said in a statement, “If they don’t, they will face the consequences. This includes a fine of $998 per day for every day that the illegal alien overstayed their final deportation order.”

As The Washington Stand previously reported, many illegal immigrants currently in the country are self-deporting, even hiring smugglers who once brought illegals into the U.S. to now get them out. The Trump administration also retired the Biden administration’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One app, reconfiguring and relaunching it as the CBP Home app. Under the Biden administration, the app was used to allow illegal immigrants to schedule appointments at U.S. ports of entry and then get released or paroled into the U.S. while awaiting those appointments. Now, the app is used to allow illegal immigrants to alert the federal government that they are departing voluntarily, schedule immigration checks while crossing the border out of the country, and confirming their arrival in countries other than the U.S.