“Earlier this month, the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forged an agreement to share taxpayer data with federal immigration officials. According to a partially redacted memorandum of understanding, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “will come to the IRS with the names and address[es] of taxpayers that they believe have violated federal immigration laws,” reported CNN.
The government has long encouraged undocumented immigrants who work in the United States to file their taxes. But the new agreement means that someone who pays his taxes in good faith could attract unwanted scrutiny and be at greater risk of deportation.
Between 50 percent and 75 percent of undocumented immigrants pay taxes via federal income and/or payroll taxes, the Congressional Budget Office found in 2007. Undocumented immigrants are required to pay taxes, and doing so can help in their immigration cases down the line. The IRS has long “sought to keep information submitted by undocumented immigrants confidential,” so the IRS-ICE agreement marks “a fundamental departure from decades of practice at the tax collector,” reported The New York Times.
If the agreement between ICE and the IRS discourages undocumented immigrants from paying their taxes, the U.S. could lose billions in tax revenue. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a left-leaning economic think tank. Over one-third of those tax dollars “go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing,” including Social Security and Medicare, reported ITEP.
The Budget Lab, a nonpartisan policy research center at Yale University, estimates that the IRS-ICE agreement could cause federal revenues to “come in roughly $300 billion lower” over the next decade. In addition to becoming more hesitant to file their individual income taxes, undocumented immigrants might increasingly take under-the-table jobs.”
“In an opinion issued on Wednesday, a federal judge found that the evidence “strongly support[s]” the conclusion that the Trump administration “willfully disobeyed” a March 15 order temporarily barring the removal of suspected Venezuelan gang members as “alien enemies.” James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says the government’s actions “demonstrate a willful disregard” for that order, “sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.””
“Attorney General Pam Bondi has decided that instead of working to facilitate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) as the Supreme Court has ordered, she will instead take to X to release documents from his 2019 arrest, in which a detective claimed he was an MS-13 member.”
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“These documents had already been publicly available, if you cared to look through the prior court proceedings. The Gang Field Interview Sheet, drafted up by Ivan Mendez, then an officer with the Prince George’s County Police Department, says Abrego Garcia was arrested with purported MS-13 members in a Home Depot parking lot, that he was wearing clothing that they believe to be affiliated with MS-13 (“a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations” which “officers know such clothing to be indicative of the Hispanic gang culture”), and that a confidential informant said he was part of MS-13.
Interestingly, reporting by The New Republic notes that Mendez was suspended the next month for “providing information to a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts.” (“The information he provided focused on an on-going police investigation,” per the county’s news release.)
Information has also come out about Abrego Garcia allegedly beating his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, stemming from a protection order she filed against him in 2021: “At this point, I am afraid to be close to him,” she wrote in the protection order. “I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he [has] left me.” She cites specific examples from August 2020 and November 2020 in which he was violent toward her. Vasquez Sura told CNN that “she sought a civil protective order in 2021 after a disagreement with Abrego Garcia” and that “she had survived a previous relationship that included domestic violence.” She says she did not appear at a court hearing and pursue the matter further: “We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling.””
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” the administration keeps implying that you cannot both support due process for Abrego Garcia and have empathy for the victims of violence from illegal immigrants.”
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“The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. The administration continues to demur on this front, instead choosing to release, via X…the protective order Vasquez Sura filed”
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“most people are neither angels nor demons, and even very bad and violent people—if that is what Abrego Garcia is—deserve due process. The punishment for wifebeating in Maryland, or entering the country illegally, is not indefinite confinement in a Salvadoran prison. He has not just been deported, he has been locked up in CECOT. (“A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world,” writes The New York Times’ Ezra Klein. “It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador’s so-called justice minister, is a coffin.”)”
“the administration’s maneuvering appears to represent a concerted effort to evade longstanding American law by intentionally sending people to a legal black hole with no process, no rights and no recourse.”
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“”the U.S. is labeling people ‘enemies’ with little or no process, and then shipping them offshore””
“Authorities have detained a co-founder of Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union as he was completing the final steps toward gaining U.S. citizenship in what appears to be part of a widening crackdown on college activists by the Trump administration.
Mohsen Mahdawi, who had permanent U.S. residency, was taken into custody Monday in Vermont when he went to a federal office building for a naturalization appointment, according to a legal filing his attorney submitted to block his transfer to a detention facility out of state.”
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““As a result of his speech he’s being detained, I mean it’s outrageous,” said Luna Droubi, an attorney for Mahdawi, who was raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank but has lived in the U.S. for a decade.”
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“Mahdawi appeared on “60 Minutes” in 2023 and was active in the Palestinian student protest movement at Columbia but says he had no role in organizing the largest and most raucous of the demonstrations in the following spring, according to his lawyer’s court filing.
He had finished his studies at Columbia and was planning to graduate in May and then return to the campus in the fall for a master’s degree. Mahdawi is a Buddhist and “believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion,” the court filing said.”
“Bukele is actively helping Trump sidestep court orders in the United States.
During a White House visit Monday in which the two leaders bantered like old friends, Bukele insisted on one thing: He will not release Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a native Salvadoran who was living in Maryland until the U.S. illegally deported him last month. The upshot of that declaration: It gives Trump cover to maintain that he is powerless to implement a judge’s directive that the U.S. “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s immediate return from a brutal El Salvador prison. The Supreme Court upheld that directive last week.
Trump’s “nothing I can do here” stance is unusual for a president who prides himself on strong-arming other world leaders to do his bidding. And it escalates a clash with the courts in advance of a crucial Tuesday hearing before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered Abrego Garcia’s return and is growing frustrated with the administration’s recalcitrance.
Hours after Bukele’s White House visit, the Trump administration quoted some of his comments in a daily report Xinis has demanded. Also in that document, the acting general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, Joseph Mazzara, declared that “DHS does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.” The filing included no information in response to Xinis’ substantive questions.
The burgeoning partnership between Trump and Bukele is not limited to Abrego Garcia. Trump sent hundreds of other deportees to El Salvador last month, many without due process. And on Monday, he intensified his threats of lawless deportations even further: He openly mused about sending U.S. citizens to the Salvadoran prison.”
“A long sliver of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border that President Donald Trump is turning over to the Department of Defense would be controlled by the Army as part of a base, which could allow troops to detain any trespassers, including migrants, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
The transfer of that border zone to military control — and making it part of an Army installation — is an attempt by the Trump administration to get around a federal law that prohibits U.S. troops from being used in domestic law enforcement on American soil.
But if the troops are providing security for land that is part of an Army base, they can perform that function. However, at least one presidential powers expert said the move is likely to be challenged in the courts.”
The military should be focused on fighting and winning wars, not enforcing immigration policy.
“The Supreme Court..unanimously agreed that alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua have a due process right to challenge President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to summarily deport them. At the same time, the majority lifted a temporary restraining order (TRO) that blocked those deportations, saying Venezuelans detained under the AEA must file habeas corpus petitions in Texas, where they are being held, rather than seeking relief in the District of Columbia under the Administrative Procedure Act.”