Republicans once shone against armed IRS agents. Now they want them to enforce immigration

Washington (AP) – For years, Republicans, including President Donald Trumphave shone courage IRS and its cads of armed agents. Now the administration has big plans for them: It wants the agents to help with immigration enforcement.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent a request to Finance Minister Scott Bessent to borrow IRS workers to help with the immigration snack, according to a recent letter obtained by Associated Press. It quotes the IRS’s lifting in funding, although the $ 80 billion infusion of funds that the Federal Tax Collection Agency has received under the Democrats’ inflation law has already been itched back.

Noem’s request asking for workers from the IRS criminal investigative unit within the Ministry of Finance is a change in Republicans’ tone against these workers, but also exemplifies Trump’s focus on border security. It points to a wider shift in the overall direction of the federal workforce under Trump administration – with workers coaxed to resignredesigned to different jobs or eventually fired.

Republicans, both those in the office and on the campaign track, have Long claimed – false -at IRS planned to hire 87,000 armed agents to harass the middle income income. But the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit, which employed 2,144 special agents in 2023, is different from the larger IRS working power of approx. 89,000 workers. These are the agents of guns working with trade with, fraud and other criminal cases in the field.

Now, DHS wants these agents to serve in tasks with immigration and customs enforcement aimed at employers dealing with illegal employment practices, immigrants in the country are monitoring illegally and other tasks.

“Treasury has qualified law enforcement staff available to help with immigration enforcement, especially in the light of the recent increases in the Internal Revenue Service’s workforce and budget,” Noem said in his letter to Bessent.

Trump teased the idea in January in Las Vegas when he said of the IRS employees: “We are developing a plan to either end them all, or maybe we move them to the border.”

Experts in the tax and immigration fields say that this particular request for derivation of workers is unusual and can result in a loss of tax revenue.

While there are precedent across administrations to allocate federal workers to perform work that is not related to their original job, Noem’s request to Bessent is “extraordinary,” said Donald Williamson, former CEO of Kogod Tax Center at American University.

This is partly because it calls for mobilizing people who do not often deal with immigration issues and put the ball in Bessent’s court to choose from thousands of IRS workers to serve DHS’s mission, he said.

“I don’t really look at IRS officials like G-Men,” he said.

Williamson said he does not consider DHS’s request as incompatible with Republicans’ previous criticism of the IRS employment, but he noted that “it is a redirection of the IRS’s efforts” to adapt to the administration’s priorities.

“They have expertise in the revision of employers” and can perform some of the tasks described in Noems Memo, he said.

Chloe East, who is studying immigration policy and is a non -resident fellow at the Brookings institution, said tapping into the IRS labor force to focus on the border rather than catching tax evidences likely to result in lower tax revenue at a time when Trump administration says it is focused on cutting the deficit.

“We’re talking about billions of dollars in lost tax revenue” by mixing the IRS workers, East said. She said Passage of Lake Riley Act Requires the presence of several officers at the border.

“The Trump administration would rather pursue immigrants rather than pursuing money laundering,” she said.

Representatives from the IRS criminal investigation and treasury did not respond to requests for comment.