Sánchez, CHC colleagues lead amicus brief in fight over IRS-ICE taxpayer data sharing

WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), along with fellow Congressional Hispanic Caucus members Chair Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Congressman Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), led 85 House and Senate Democrats in filing a bicameral amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to uphold a lower court’s order blocking Immigration and Customs Enforcement from using – or even viewing – tens of thousands of taxpayers’ addresses obtained from the IRS. 

The brief was filed in Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts v. Bessent, the government’s appeal of preliminary relief ordered by Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 

In February, Judge Talwani found that the IRS’s transfer of more than 47,000 taxpayer addresses to ICE in August 2025 likely violated federal tax law, which permits disclosures to law enforcement only when tied to a specific, individualized criminal investigation. Her order froze the underlying data-sharing arrangement and barred ICE from making any further use of the information it had already received. 

The lawmakers’ brief argues that reversing Judge Talwani’s order would gut a confidentiality standard Congress has repeatedly declined to loosen for immigration enforcement – rejecting proposals to do so as recently as 2006 – and that the IRS itself assured ITIN filers for nearly three decades would hold. The brief also warns that ICE’s request was so broad, and so stripped of individual identifiers, that it risked sweeping in the wrong people entirely. 

“Amici submit this brief to make clear how the Administration’s actions and change in policy encroach upon powers reserved by the Constitution for Congress and contravenes Congress’s longstanding prerogative to prioritize collection of federal tax revenues by preserving the confidentiality of return information,” wrote the amici curiae. “[The] disclosure to ICE imperils effective tax administration, the reliance of millions of taxpayers, and Congress’s clear prerogative to decide when and how sensitive tax information may be used for non-tax purposes.”

This is the fifth brief CHC members have led in litigation challenging the IRS-ICE data-sharing arrangement, part of a continued push in Congress to hold the administration accountable after IRS leadership has repeatedly declined to answer lawmakers’ questions about the disclosures. Unlike two earlier cases, which addressed the data-sharing agreement on paper and how the IRS carried it out, this case is the only one where a court has stopped ICE from using taxpayer data already in its possession.

A copy of the brief is available HERE.

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