Students demand ICE agents protecting US delegation leave amid global outrage over Trump’s brutal deportation push.
Published On 6 Feb 20266 Feb 2026
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Hundreds of protesters have gathered in Milan to reject the presence of United States immigration agents in the city before the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Games.
The student-led demonstration on Friday featured banners reading “ICE should be in my drinks, not my city” in reaction to the reported presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials providing security for the US delegation at the games.
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ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is a separate division from the department playing a lead role in US President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation push at home, which provoked global outrage after the fatal shootings of two US citizens and the arrest of a five-year-old and his father.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi insisted this week that HSI would operate only within US diplomatic missions, insisting that officials “are not operational agents” and “have no executive function”.
But students in Milan were not convinced, turning up in force on the streets with plastic whistles, which have become a symbol of anti-ICE rallies in the US, and calling for visiting US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to leave.
Protester Giacomo Calvi told the AFP news agency he was protesting the US “anti-immigration police, which are carrying out all kinds of violence in the United States”.
Protesters spray paint on a wall during a demonstration against ICE organised by students at the 2026 Winter Games, in Milan, Italy, on Friday [Luca Bruno/AP Photo]
“I thought that this was a good opportunity to show that the rest of the world is not OK with what’s happening in Minnesota,” Katie Legare, a protester from Minnesota currently studying in Europe, told the news agency Reuters.
Vance is on a weeklong visit to Italy at a time when relations with Europe have been strained under the Trump administration, which has claimed Europe is facing “civilisational erasure” due to mass migration.
The US vice president and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is close to Trump, hailed their “shared values” on Friday, with the latter calling the the games an event that brings together Italy and the US, and “Western civilisation”.
Vance’s office said in a statement that he and the prime minister discussed the strength of bilateral relations between the nations and mutual efforts to improve the business and investment climate.
Two people have been arrested in Essex for allegedly illegally dumping waste at six different illegal spots across England, the Environment Agency has said.
The pair are suspected of trashing spots across Warwickshire, Derbyshire and Buckinghamshire, as the country grapples with a proliferating black market in illegal waste, dubbed the “new narcotics”.
Earlier this week, the 54-year-old male and 50-year-old woman, both from Essex, were arrested in a joint raid by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Eastern Regional Special Operations Unit.
The suspects were interviewed and then released as the agencies still needed to gather further information.
The EA said the action was part of a “large-scale, active investigation” into waste crime, fraud and money laundering.
The EA’s enforcement and investigations manager Emma Viner said: “Waste crime is completely unacceptable, and we are clear that those responsible will be pursued.”
But the agency has also faced criticism for being too slow to act on reports of waste crime.
The problem sees criminals paid to take away waste and then dodging landfill tax by disposing of it illegally.
It is plaguing communities forced to live next to filthy, stinking tips, and landowners and farmers left to foot the bill for rubbish dumped on their land.
Last year, the EA told a Lords inquiry that its waste crime unit (JUWC) had made 186 arrests during its five-year time, though did not know how many prosecutions that had led to.
Earl John Russell, a Lib Dem peer who sat on the Lords inquiry, welcomed “the fact that action is finally being taken” but said “the EA is not doing enough”.
“Broken systems are creating broken results, and the criminals are running amok,” he told Sky News.
The EA has been “ill-equipped to address these highly complex and highly lucrative and low-risk serious crime issues”, he added.
Lord Russell called on the government to review and publish a report on the scale of serious organised waste crime, and said responsibility for tackling it should be escalated from the Environment Agency to the National Crime Agency.
Environment secretary Emma Reynolds said: “With five waste crime arrests in just seven days, we’ve shown that those responsible for these appalling crimes will be tracked down and held to account.”
This year, the government increased the EA’s budget for waste crime enforcement by 50 per cent to £15.6m.
Ms Reynolds said they are also hiring more officers, introducing tougher checks and exploring digital waste tracking.
Small-time landlords in New York City are “at their breaking point” under Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s housing policies, and conditions could worsen if he follows through on a pledge to freeze rents for nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, according to a new report.
In a Friday report headlined “NYC’s small landlords say they won’t survive Mamdani plan to freeze rent,” the Washington Post interviewed several New York City landlords who shared with the outlet how the new Democratic mayor’s policies have affected their operations.
“Now, with the city’s political landscape shifting around them, New York landlords say they are at their breaking point as Mayor Zohran Mamdani begins to implement even more aggressive tenant-friendly policies,” the outlet reported.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in New York City.(Yuki Iwamura/AP)
Mamdani cruised to victory last year in part on a message focused on cost-of-living issues for New Yorkers, promising an aggressive, unabashedly progressive slate of policy solutions. The Post noted landlords were an “early foil for his administration” with hearings meant to spotlight unethical and abusive practices.
But Valentina Gojcaj, a small landlord who owns two rent-stabilized apartment buildings in the Bronx, told the Post she’s worried she’ll no longer be able to afford to keep her building afloat under Mamdani’s policies.
“Why is he targeting us?” she asked the Post. “This is my investment and something I expect to retire on. What happens to me when I can no longer afford to run these buildings?”
At the start of his term last month, Mamdani promised to implement new tenant protections, which, according to the Post, have “rattled landlords who do not hold vast real estate portfolios.”
Retired transit worker Irving Lee, who inherited an eight-unit rent-stabilized building in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood, told the Post he inherited the building from his father, a Chinese immigrant who worked as a bookkeeper and laundryman. He in turn purchased the building in the 1980s when former Mayor Ed Koch was encouraging immigrants to invest in troubled properties to fight blight.
The Washington Post claimed that small-scale landlords in New York City are “at their breaking point” under Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s housing policies.(Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
“[Lee] now wonders how much longer he can hold on to his family’s investment, given monthly rents of $700 to $1,500 for units that on average take $1,300 apiece to maintain,” the Post wrote.
“There are forces in this city that make it extremely difficult for property owners to care for and renovate these buildings,” Lee told the outlet.
President of the Small Property Owners of New York, Ann Korchak, told the Post that the city has approximately 22,000 buildings consisting of six to 10 units per property, and that thousands of them are owned by New Yorkers like Lee.
As noted by the Post, city data shows rent-stabilized units make up around 40% of all rentals, and cost an average of $1,600 per month.
Out of concern that landlords in the city were abusing rental laws and taking advantage of tenants, state lawmakers passed legislation limiting how much property owners could hike monthly rents after a unit was vacated and subsequently renovated.
“Korchak said the law decimated landlords’ ability to recoup the costs of major improvements, causing many to leave units vacant. The New York Apartment Association estimates the city has 50,000 rent-stabilized ‘ghost apartments,’” the Post reported.
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, speaks during a news conference in the Queens borough of New York, on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026.(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Ronaldo was not part of Al-Nassr’s 2-0 win at home, the second game he’s missed in four days due to unspecified reasons.
Published On 6 Feb 20266 Feb 2026
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Cristiano Ronaldo has missed his second consecutive game for Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League (SPL) amid reports he is unhappy with the club’s majority owner over the lack of transfer activity.
The five-time Ballon d’Or winner was not in the squad when Al-Nassr faced defending champions Al-Ittihad at home on Friday.
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The Portuguese superstar also missed their 1-0 win over Al-Riyadh on Monday, which raised questions over his long-term future at the club.
Ronaldo has been unhappy with how Al-Nassr is being managed by the country’s Public Investment Fund, Portuguese outlet A Bola reported this week.
The 38-year-old was said to be upset with the club’s lack of action in the January transfer window while watching rivals Al-Hilal sign Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema, a former Real Madrid teammate.
Without naming Ronaldo, the SPL issued a statement on Thursday emphasising that no player was bigger than the league.
“The Saudi Pro League is structured around a simple principle: Every club operates independently under the same rules,” the league said.
“Clubs have their own boards, executives and football leadership. Decisions on recruitment, spending and strategy rest with those clubs, within a financial framework designed to ensure sustainability and competitive balance. That framework applies equally across the league.”
Meanwhile, Al-Nassr CEO Jose Semedo has declined to comment on Ronaldo’s absence.
Ronaldo is not injured, ill or out of favour with manager Jorge Jesus, ESPN reported. Neither does he intend to leave Al-Nassr, who signed him to a lucrative two-year contract extension in June 2025.
According to CBS Sports, senior club officials understand Ronaldo’s vexation with the PIF, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that owns Al-Nassr, Al-Hilal and two other Pro League sides.
Ronaldo has scored 17 goals for the club this season.
An 18-year-old man has been charged with the murder of a university student in Leicester.
Harper Dennis is due to appear at Leicester Magistrates’ Court on Saturday, accused of murdering 20-year-old Khaleed Oladipo, Leicestershire Police said.
Mr Oladipo, a cyber security student at De Montfort University, died in hospital on Tuesday night after being stabbed in the chest.
Image:Khaleed Oladipo died after being stabbed in Leicester city centre. Pic: Leicestershire Police/PA
Dennis, of West Drayton, London, is also charged with possession of an offensive weapon in a public place.
He also faces two counts of possession of an offensive weapon in a private place, which are unrelated to the murder investigation.
In a tribute, Mr Oladipo’s family said they could not “begin to put into words how sad we are to have lost Khaleed”.
“He was an extremely loved son, brother, uncle, boyfriend and friend,” they said.
“Khaleed was a good boy who loved his family. He was in his second year at university, and we were so proud of him.
“One of his main passions was football and he had played since the age of four.
“He was an Arsenal supporter and we believe he was on his way home to watch the game later that night when he was stabbed and killed.
“We want to thank the members of the public who stopped to try and help Khaleed and the ambulance service and hospital staff who did all they could to try and save him.”
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
The Trump administration’s top immigration enforcement officials are urging California Gov. Gavin Newsom not to release more than 33,000 criminal illegal immigrants, some of whom have violent felony convictions, back onto the streets without notifying federal authorities.
In a letter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons are asking Newsom to honor ICE detainers of 33,179 inmates in California’s custody.
ICE and Border Patrol Agents march through Los Angeles.(Carlin Stiehl/Getty Images)
“Governor Newsom and his fellow California sanctuary politicians are releasing murderers, pedophiles, and drug traffickers from their jails back into our neighborhoods and putting American lives at risk,” said Lyons. “We are calling on Governor Newsom and his administration to stop this dangerous derangement and commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 33,000 criminal illegal aliens in California’s custody.”
“It is common sense. Criminal illegal aliens should not be released from jails back onto our streets to terrorize more innocent Americans,” he added.
All told, the inmates account for 399 homicides, 3,313 assaults, 3,171 burglaries, 1,011 robberies, 8,380 dangerous drugs offenses, 1,984 weapons offenses, and 1,293 sexual predatory offenses,” DHS said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is urging California Gov. Gavin Newsom to honor ICE detainers for more than 33,000 criminal illegal immigrants in law enforcement custody. (Tayfun Cokun/Anadolu via Getty Images; Jamie Kelter Davis/Getty Images)
Newsom’s office referred Fox News Digital to a Friday post on X: “California cooperates with ICE when it comes to REMOVING CRIMINALS — like sick rapists and murderers — in our state prisons.”
Since Newsom took office in 2019, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has coordinated the transfer of more than 12,000 people, including murderers, rapists, and other violent offenders, into ICE custody.
State law currently allows CDCR to notify and coordinate with ICE to take custody of individuals convicted of felony offenses who have served their terms in California’s state prisons.
Newsom has heavily criticized ICE amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. California’s sanctuary state law – SB 54 – limits cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities for illegal immigrants unless they’ve committed certain serious crimes.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is warning of suspected state-sponsored threat actors targeting high-ranking individuals in phishing attacks via messaging apps like Signal.
The attacks combine social engineering with legitimate features to steal data from politicians, military officers, diplomats, and investigative journalists in Germany and across Europe.
The security advisory is based on intelligence collected by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).
“A defining characteristic of this attack campaign is that no malware is used, nor are technical vulnerabilities in the messaging services exploited,” the two agencies inform.
According to the advisory, the attackers contact the target directly, pretending to be from the support team of the messaging service or the support chatbot.
“The goal is to covertly gain access to one-to-one and group chats as well as contact lists of the affected individuals,”
There are two versions of these attacks: one that performs a full account takeover, and one that pairs the account with the attacker’s device to monitor chat activity.
In the first variant, the attackers impersonate Signal’s support service and send a fake security warning to create a sense of urgency.
The target is then tricked into sharing their Signal PIN or an SMS verification code, which allows the attackers to register the account to a device they control. Then they hijack the account and lock out the victim.
Attackers impersonating Signal support in direct message Source: BSI
In the second case, the attacker uses a plausible ruse to convince the target to scan a QR code. This abuses Signal’s legitimate linked-device feature that allows adding the account to multiple devices (computer, tablet, phone).
The result is that the victim account is paired with a device controlled by the bad actor, who gets access chats and contacts without raising any flags.
QR code used for pairing a new device Source: BSI
Although Signal lists all devices attached to the account under Settings > Linked devices, users rarely check it.
Such attacks were observed to occur on Signal, but the bulletin warns that WhatsApp also supports similar functionality and could be abused in the same way.
Last year, Google threat researchers reported that the QR code pairing technique was employed by Russian state-aligned threat groups such as Sandworm.
Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) also attributed similar attacks to Russian hackers, targeting WhatsApp accounts.
However, multiple threat actors, including cybercriminals, have since adopted the technique in campaigns like GhostPairing to hijack accounts for scams and fraud.
The German authorities suggest that users avoid replying to Signal messages from alleged support accounts, as the messaging platform never contacts users directly.
Instead, recipients of these messages are recommended to block and report these accounts.
As an extra security step, Signal users can enable the ‘Registration Lock’ option under Settings > Account. Once active, Signal will ask for a PIN you set whenever someone tries to register your phone number with the application.
Without the PIN code, the Signal account registration on another device fails. Since the code is essential for registration, losing it can result in losing access to the account.
It is also strongly recommended that users regularly review the list of devices with access to your Signal account under Settings → Linked devices, and remove unrecognized devices.
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After transferring between 30 and 50 million barrels of crude to the US, Venezuela has received $500m from its first oil sale under a US-brokered agreement.
The deal, reached last month, provides a lifeline for Venezuela’s struggling economy. However, the government does not control the proceeds. Instead, funds are deposited into a restricted account in Qatar, subject to US approval, to pay public sector salaries and essential services.
This new agreement came amid major political changes following the US military abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. On January 15, acting President Delcy Rodriguez proposed reforms to Venezuela’s hydrocarbons law, aiming to attract foreign investment by easing restrictions that had favoured nationalisations for the past 25 years.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright also said on Friday that he plans to visit Venezuela soon to meet “all the leadership” and assess oil and gas operations, as Washington signals it intends to oversee Venezuela’s oil sector for the foreseeable future.
As Venezuela moves forward amid these political changes, we examine how the government sustains its operations and the challenges it currently faces.
What is the context, and what has been happening in Venezuela?
One month after the US military action known as Operation Absolute Resolve, Venezuela is navigating a volatile political and economic landscape. The operation, conducted on January 3, 2026, resulted in the abduction of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. According to Venezuela’s Ministry of Defence, the extraction was deadly, resulting in at least 83 deaths.
In the aftermath, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice declared Maduro’s capture a “forced absence” and appointed Rodriguez as acting president. While Rodriguez condemned the US action as an “illegal kidnapping,” she has since signalled willingness to cooperate with Washington, including proposing reforms to attract foreign investment in the oil sector.
She has also framed herself as shaping a new order while maintaining tight control over the implementation of reforms.
Domestically, in late January, Rodriguez also announced a mass amnesty bill aimed at releasing political prisoners and plans to repurpose the notorious El Helicoide prison into a community centre.
Critics, however, argue that these measures may not address Venezuela’s structural problems, raising questions about the interim government’s long-term legitimacy and direction.
Who are the key people running the Venezuelan government?
In Venezuela, power remains concentrated in a “civic-military” alliance.
While Rodriguez holds formal executive authority, analysts like Salvador Santino Regilme, a political scientist who leads the international relations programme at Leiden University in the Netherlands, say that in this case “real power is best understood as residing within a governing coalition rather than a single office-holder.”
Here are some of the key figures forming her government:
Jorge Rodriguez (Head of the National Assembly): The interim president’s brother controls the legislature. He was the architect behind the fast-track approval of the new energy reforms. “Rodriguez controls the legislative agenda and its outcomes,” said Carlos Pina, a Venezuelan political analyst.
Venezuela’s National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez [Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters]
Diosdado Cabello (Interior Minister): He represents the hardline ideological wing of Chavismo. But he is under pressure: With a $25m US bounty on his head for narco-terrorism charges, he faces an ultimatum from Washington to cooperate with the transition or face arrest.
Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello speaks [Marco Bello/Reuters]
Vladimir Padrino (Defence Minister): He has held the military chain of command together, staying in his post for more than 11 years despite a US drug trafficking indictment and a $15m bounty for his capture.
Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez [Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters]
Pina also noted that one actor is often overlooked: the business sector.
“Many business leaders who are still operating inside the country have rallied behind Rodriguez, even before she assumed the interim presidency,” Pina explained. “This group has positioned itself as a kind of shadow power,” he added.
Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez, flanked by Jorge Rodriguez and Cabello [File: Miraflores Palace/Handout via Reuters]
How is the current government paying its bills?
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, estimated at 303 billion barrels, more than five times those of the US. As such, oil remains one of its main sources of income.
“Venezuela’s fiscal survival still depends primarily on hydrocarbons, because oil remains the only sector capable of generating rents at scale,” Santino told Al Jazeera.
The current financial control mechanism operates through several stages, from oil extraction to the final disbursement of funds.
Payments are not sent directly to Venezuela. Instead, they go through US-supervised channels and are deposited into a restricted account in Qatar, to stop creditors from seizing the money to recover Venezuela’s estimated $170bn in external debt.
The US also oversees the distribution of these funds. Venezuela must submit budget requests for specific uses, such as paying teachers, police and healthcare workers. Once approved, the funds are transferred to the Central Bank of Venezuela and then to private local banks.
“Venezuela will submit every month a budget of ‘this is what we need funded.’ We will provide for them at the front end what that [oil] money can be used for,” Rubio detailed the plan during an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January.
“I understand it’s novel, but it’s the best we could come up with in the short term,” Rubio added.
However, experts have raised concerns about the implications of this arrangement.
“Right now, given the control … even though you have a facade, you have an interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, and other members, the one who really has control is Donald Trump,” Jose Manuel Puente, a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion in Caracas, said.
“Venezuela is a state under tutelage right now by the US. The US took control of all its income,” he added.
Some US officials have also criticised the arrangement. Democrat Lloyd Doggett said Rubio’s testimony “raised more questions than answers”
“There are currently no safeguards to ensure the Rodriguez family does not use the revenue to pay off Maduro’s allies,” Doggett said.
And by following this scheme, “[Trump] is unlawfully refusing to honour debts owed to US institutions … and [he] instead appears to be rewarding his donors,” he added.
Are there any other sources of government revenue?
The government has tried to diversify its revenue streams beyond oil.
The country possesses the largest official gold reserves in Latin America. Venezuela’s reserves are approximately 161.2 metric tonnes, worth more than $23bn in today’s market value.
The country is also believed to hold some of the most significant untapped gold resources, but official data is outdated. Large parts of gold production happen through informal or illegal mining networks, especially in southern states like Bolivar.
According to the government in 2025, Venezuela produced 9.5 tonnes of gold in 2025.
“In recent years, gold has increased its share, just like some small export areas, such as the case of tropical fruits, or the case of shrimp,” Puente explained.
“There are some sectors that generate some income, but it is still completely asymmetric in favour of oil,” he added.
How are things looking inside the country?
>With more than 7.9 million people requiring urgent humanitarian assistance and approximately 56 percent of the population living in extreme poverty, according to the United Nations and the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, the administration faces immense pressure to implement effective solutions.
Nationals are struggling with wages that are too low to cover basic living costs.
“I am a housewife. I don’t work. My two older children work, but they earn salaries that are not enough,” Zulma Clavo, a Petare resident in Caracas, told Al Jazeera.
“My son works as a motorcycle taxi driver and has to take risks just to survive, and my daughter earns the minimum wage, and it’s still not enough. When we go grocery shopping, we realise we have to put things back because we don’t have enough money,” she added.
Experts say there will be some economic relief as oil production increases.
“And that, evidently, is going to be a significant flow [of funds]. The thing is, who will finally decide how and in what that large amount of money is invested will be the Americans, and that is the point of difference,” Puente said.
We’ve now combed through hundreds of thousands of files, photos and videos.
They stretch back decades but their effect has been immediate. All week we have said that being mentioned in the files is not evidence of wrongdoing, and that remains a true and important point.
But the release has permanently tarnished reputations and, at the very least, raised questions about supposedly clever people’s judgement.
There is no evidence to suggest wrongdoing by the tech moguls Bill Gates and Elon Musk, for example.
But the files show that both, like Mandelson, associated with Epstein after his conviction for child prostitution. Sarah Ferguson took her daughters to meet Epstein in Miami the week after his release for that very offence.
Sarah Ferguson has previously said her involvement with Epstein was “a gigantic error of judgment”.
Image:Sarah Ferguson’s communications with the Epstein have been laid bare
Image:An email discussed flights being purchased for Ferguson and her daughters
Some, like Mandelson, have argued that they didn’t have the full picture of Epstein’s crimes. But the files also show that many people refused to have anything to do with Epstein after his conviction.
They didn’t need to know every detail to understand, like Melinda Gates did in just one meeting, that Epstein was “evil personified”.
We do now have the full picture, or as full as we can hope for, and it is bleak.
Epstein files: What the latest pictures show
It is the experiences of the survivors – or victims, because not everyone survived, like Virginia Giuffre who died last year – that haunts the documents.
Much of the files look dry and methodical, including one which details some witnesses interviewed by authorities, but on closer inspection you can see it is their high schools that are listed; all are 17, and between them they were abused hundreds of times.
Or the victim who took a pen to the title of her journal, “Flights of fancy”, and altered it to read “Flights and yachts of horror”. Or the testimony of Lisa Phillips, who spoke to Sky News this week:
Image:Epstein files extract with the passage Flights of fancy amended
“One of the young girls came to the door and said, you know, Jeffrey’s ready for his massage and, I argue with the girls for a little bit because I don’t want to do a massage.
“I went with the other girl who brought me to the island. I went into the room to do this massage, and the massage turned into a sexual assault.”
The great and the good visited that same island, or they sought invitations. Unlike Lisa, they had a choice.
Former Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf joins ‘America’s Newsroom’ to react to border czar Tom Homan’s decision to reduce the federal presence in Minneapolis amid a push to allow agents into prisons to detain dangerous individuals.
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A federal judge dealt the Trump administration a blow on Thursday by blocking the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from providing residential addresses to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani — who was nominated by former President Barack Obama — argued that the sharing of data could violate a section of the Tax Act of 1976, which includes privacy protections for taxpayers. The judge’s order blocks ICE and the IRS from sharing data while also prohibiting the use of data that had already been transferred pending a court review.
“Defendants DHS, Secretary Noem, ICE, Acting Director Lyons, and their agents, are enjoined from inspecting, viewing, using, copying, distributing, relying on, or otherwise acting upon any return information that had been obtained from or disclosed by the IRS Defendants pursuant to the information sharing arrangements, including the information received August 7, 2025,” Talwani’s order reads.
Observers film ICE agents as they hold a perimeter after one of their vehicles got a flat tire on Penn Avenue on Feb. 5, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
In addition to concerns about taxpayers’ privacy, Talwani addressed the chilling effect this could have on tax filings by immigrants, as well as the possibility that people could be wrongfully arrested due to mistaken identity. She said that the plaintiffs had “demonstrated that a significant portion of immigrant communities not only share common last names… but also live in shared homes or in the same apartment complexes,” adding to concerns about mistaken identities.
An ICE agent holds a taser as they stand watch after one of their vehicles got a flat tire on Penn Avenue on Feb. 5, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn.(Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The plaintiffs in the case were four community groups: Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts (CEDC), National Parents Union (NPU), National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) and UndocuBlack Network, Inc. (UBN).
The order states that on April 7, 2025, the IRS and ICE established a Memorandum of Understanding to share taxpayer data, supporting a federal crackdown on illegal immigration. ICE subsequently issued three data requests, including an initial June 5 query for 7.6 million individuals, a June 24 request for 7.3 million records and a final June 27 submission for 1.2 million people. While the IRS rejected the first two for legal deficiencies, it approved the third and ultimately transferred over 47,000 addresses to ICE in August 2025. However, now that information is being frozen and cannot be used.
“We disagree with this activist judge’s ruling. Under President Trump’s leadership, the government is finally doing what it should have all along — sharing information across the federal government to solve problems. Biden not only allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood into our country, but he lost them through incompetence and improper processing,” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Protesters, using whistles to alert neighborhoods to ICE activity, face off with Minneapolis police officers in Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 24, 2026. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT /AFP via Getty Images)
“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, and identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense. With the IRS information specifically, DHS plans to focus on enforcing long-neglected criminal laws that apply to illegal aliens but which the Biden Administration ignored,” the spokesperson added.
Talwani is the second judge to block the IRS-ICE information sharing agreement. The first was U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who said it violated a taxpayer confidentiality law, Politico noted. The outlet added that Kollar-Kotelly had also blocked Treasury Secretary and acting IRS commissioner Scott Bessent from disclosing taxpayer information to DHS unless it was being transferred to someone working on a non-tax criminal probe. Kollar-Kotelly was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.
Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.
