Inclusive Action for the City, a Boyle Heights-based economic justice group, has added its name to a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the Internal Revenue Service from unlawfully disclosing taxpayer information to immigration enforcement agencies.
The amended lawsuit – filed March 26 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia – lists Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons, as well as the IRS, the DHS, and ICE as defendants.
Inclusive Action for the City joins Illinois-based groups Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, and Somos un Pueblo Unido, of New Mexico, as the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit is a response to President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport millions of immigrants.
To carry out Trump’s deportation goals, the lawsuit notes that DHS defendants “must first identify and locate individuals who are subject to removal.”
DHS defendants, according to the lawsuit, “are seeking access to taxpayer information because, within the federal government, the IRS’s systems house the largest single source of the names and current addresses of individuals not authorized to be present in the United States.”
The lawsuit mentions that top officials at ICE were removed from their positions in February for “failing to arrest and deport individuals at a pace desired by the administration.”
“At about the same time, DHS asked Secretary Bessent to deputize IRS agents to engage in immigration enforcement activities,” according to the lawsuit.
Rudy Espinoza, the chief executive officer of Inclusive Action, said in a video that the DHS’ attempt to access undocumented taxpayer data would target immigrant taxpayers for deportation, rip families apart, and devastate the economy.
“We cannot sit idly by as the federal government weaponizes tools of economic inclusion and uses them to exclude and harm taxpayers who contribute so much to our communities,” Espinoza said in a press release.
“While the Administration seeks to upend our financial systems and destroy lives, we will fight with urgency to ensure immigrant workers and small business owners in L.A. and across America can continue to safely participate in the economy,” he added.
Like all other workers, immigrant workers of any legal status are required to pay taxes.
Undocumented taxpayers have used Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) since the 1990s to legally file taxes and start businesses, according to the press release from Inclusive Action.
In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid more than $96 billion in federal, state and local taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. In California alone, undocumented immigrants generated $8.5 billion in tax revenue.
“The tax laws guarantee privacy for all taxpayers, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status,” said Nandan Joshi, attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel in the case, in a press release. “The administration’s desire to speed up their deportation agenda does not justify jettisoning decades of taxpayer protections.”
On March 31, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the IRS from sharing taxpayer information with DHS and ICE.