LOS ANGELES — As a street vendor, Yeditza is used to spending hours in the kitchen.

She would make about 120 tamales every morning and leave dinner ready for her kids before heading out to sell her tamales.

What You Need To Know

Undocumented workers are legally required to pay federal taxes on their income and do so with an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) issued by the IRS

The Trump administration has requested the IRS to share taxpayer information with immigration authorities so that they could carry out deportations

Current law protects the confidentiality of taxpayer information and has historically prohibited the IRS from sharing tax data with immigration authorities

The issue has led to a lawsuit brought by immigrant advocate groups against the Department of Homeland Security to halt the information sharing

It was a tough routine, but one she says she enjoyed knowing she could provide for her family.

Except all that changed in June, when she says Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE officials raided the plaza where she would usually set up.

“It was stressful because you don’t even know what it going on, and people just started yelling, ‘Run, run.’ Luckily other street vendors helped me get to my car,” said Yeditza.

That fear of being deported sent her into hiding for the past four months, and that is why she is concealing her full name as she speaks with Spectrum News 1.

Like many other undocumented immigrants, she applied to get an individual taxpayer identification number, also known as an ITIN. The number is issued by the IRS to undocumented workers, who are not eligible for social security numbers, to they can file income taxes. 

That is what Yeditza has been doing for the past six years she has been in the country. 

“I am trying to do things as right as possible, for my future, and I like to contribute and pay my taxes,” said Yeditza

However, she’s afraid that in doing so, she may now be at a greater risk of deportation as all her personal information is included in her tax documents. 

This is because Immigration and Customs Enforcement has requested the IRS hand over private information, including the home addresses of undocumented taxpayers with removal orders.

Doug Smith, vice president of Policy and Legal Strategy at the nonprofit Inclusive Action, said it is a way for them to carry out mass deportation efforts. 

“ICE is going after IRS data because immigrants do pay taxes to the tune of nearly $100 billion every single year. And that’s an enormous amount of revenue immigrants are paying to fund our government. They’re paying for programs that they often themselves can’t access,” said Smith. 

Smith said the action brings up concerns about private data overreach for everyone.

“There’s nothing to say that they wouldn’t also look for the private tax information of citizens, anyone else, perhaps political opponents, other individuals. And so this is a data privacy concern that everybody should be worried about,” said Smith. 

Which is why in response, advocacy groups, including Inclusive Action, filed a lawsuit hoping to temporarily stop the data sharing while the case played out in court through a preliminary injunction.

Earlier this year, the judge denied the initial request. 

At the time, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin released a statement saying in part:

“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 judge ruled ICE could use the information for criminal prosecutions, which Smith clarifies does not include deportations.

“Deportation does not count as a criminal investigation. That’s a civil proceeding, and so the administration is attempting to misuse the law,” said Smith. 

That is why they have asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the previous decision. 

“Again, this would be a decision that would essentially tell ICE that they can’t make an arrest, that they can transfer any data while the case proceeds and until we get a ruling,” said Smith. 

While they wait for the judges to decide, Yeditza hopes her information is not shared. She said she already filed her taxes this year, but is considering whether she should next year. 

She explains that the anxiety of being separated from her kids and the financial position they are now in is unbearable.