DHS Head Seeks to Enlist IRS Officers to Be Part of Mass Deportation Plan

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem recently reached out to Scott Bessent, head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to request the use of IRS investigators to assist with the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Noem made the request in a memo on February 7. Her memo specifically asked that the IRS allow DHS to have some IRS investigators, including law enforcement workers, to investigate financials relating to human trafficking networks and businesses that employ immigrants. The memo indicated that these officers could be sent to U.S. borders to arrest, detain and transport people.

“It is DHS’s understanding that the Department of the Treasury has qualified law enforcement personnel available to assist with immigration enforcement, especially in light of recent increases to the Internal Revenue Service’s work force and budget,” the memo from Noem to Bessent read.

The IRS has around 2,100 employees tasked with enforcing tax law and making arrests, if necessary, of those who evade paying taxes. In addition to shifting more law enforcement officers toward aiding Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which he has promised will be the largest in U.S. history, the removal of these officers from their day-to-day work could mean it will be easier for some people to avoid paying taxes.

In a recent appearance on CNN, Noem was asked about further avenues her department is pursuing to carry out Trump’s campaign to imprison and deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. — including his plan to transport thousands of detainees to Guantanamo Bay. Questioned over whether immigrants found guilty of non-violent crimes could be included among those sent to the military base, which is notorious for human rights abuses, Noem said she “doesn’t know what the president will decide” on the matter.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has already made a legally dubious pact with El Salvador to send incarcerated immigrants — and potentially U.S. citizens who are incarcerated — to that country’s prisons, which have been internationally condemned for human rights abuses, the use of torture, and unnecessary deaths due to medical deprivation.

Trump is also preparing to use the military to enforce his inhumane immigration plans, which will inevitably lead to what his administration is calling “collateral arrests” — the detainment of people who are present in the U.S. legally, such as immigrants with work or student visas or even U.S. citizens. According to an analysis from Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, the executive branch is legally forbidden from ordering the military to enforce immigration law in the U.S.

“The Posse Comitatus Act was enacted in 1878 to end the use of federal troops in overseeing elections in the post-Civil War South. It bars the use of the military to enforce domestic laws, including immigration law,” Cohn wrote in a commentary for Truthout last month. “The act forbids the willful use of ‘any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus [power of the county] or otherwise to execute the laws.’ The only exceptions must be expressly authorized by the Constitution or act of Congress.”