Padilla, Cortez Masto, CHC Members File Amicus Brief Challenging IRS-ICE Taxpayer Data Sharing

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), along with Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) Chair Representative Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.-13), Representative Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.-38), Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.-34) and 85 House and Senate Democrats filed 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 (ICE) from using - or even viewing - tens of thousands of taxpayers' addresses obtained from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the sharing of which is currently the subject of ongoing litigation.

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 2026, 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.

"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," the brief states. "[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."

The lawmakers' brief argues that reversing Judge Talwani's order would undermine confidentiality protections Congress has repeatedly declined to weaken for the purposes of conducting 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 the potential misidentification of tens of thousands of taxpayers to be impermissibly targeted by the Trump administration's sweeping immigration enforcement campaign.

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 Trump 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 and how the IRS carried it out, this is the only case in which a court has actually barred ICE from using taxpayer data already in its possession.

Padilla has led the charge against the IRS-ICE data sharing agreement. Earlier this year, Padilla and his Democratic colleagues filed a bicameral amicus brief in the case Center for Taxpayer Rights v. IRS, arguing that IRS's implementation of bulk data transfers to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for immigration enforcement violates the privacy protections of taxpayers enshrined by Congress in section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code. Additionally, Padilla and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) demanded answers and accountability from the IRS after the agency admitted in a court filing that the flawed system it adopted to transfer people's home addresses to ICE potentially led to thousands of records being shared improperly in violation of taxpayer privacy laws. Padilla also slammed the Trump Administration after a U.S. district judge ruled that the IRS-ICE data sharing system resulted in almost 43,000 cases of the Trump Administration violating strict taxpayer privacy laws.

The full brief is available here.

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