Immigrant advocates slam ICE memo claiming agents can raid homes without a judge's warrant

Immigrant advocates in Chicago are criticizing new guidance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that tells officers they can forcibly enter people's homes without a judge's warrant.

An internal memo reported by the Associated Press advises ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal. Advocates say the move collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.

Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Chicago-based Illinois Council of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said it was troubling the agency asserted arrests could be made without the intervention of an “impartial fact finder,” like a judge. Tsao said the Fourth Amendment protects everyone residing in the U.S. from illegal searches and seizures — "regardless of their status."

“We have seen this administration try to bend and twist existing laws to the fullest extent to which it advantages them, so in a way this is par for the course,” Tsao said. “But on the other hand, it still shocks the conscience that this administration would go so far to violate longstanding constitutional standards.”

Kevin Fee, legal director of ACLU of Illinois, said he had heard of cases in Illinois where federal agents had broken into people’s homes to detain them without a judicial warrant. He said those were "flatly inconsistent" with the Constitution.

“This casts those circumstances in a brand new light,” Fee said. “This memo just emphasizes the fundamental lawlessness under the second Trump administration.”

Federal agents this month rammed the door of the Minneapolis home of a Liberian man with a deportation order from 2023, who was then arrested. Documents reviewed by The AP revealed that the agents only had an administrative warrant — meaning there was no judge who authorized the raid on private property.

The shift comes as the Trump administration dramatically expands immigration arrests nationwide, deploying thousands of officers under a mass deportation campaign that is already reshaping enforcement tactics in cities such as Minneapolis.

The presence of federal agents has been much higher in Minneapolis, where some 3,000 agents have been deployed, than the estimated 250 agents in the Chicago area last fall.

For years, immigrant advocates, legal aid groups and local governments have urged people not to open their doors to immigration agents unless they are shown a warrant signed by a judge. That guidance is rooted in Supreme Court rulings that generally prohibit law enforcement from entering a home without judicial approval. The ICE directive directly undercuts that advice at a time when arrests are accelerating under the administration’s immigration crackdown.

The memo itself has not been widely shared within the agency, according to a whistleblower complaint, but its contents have been used to train new ICE officers who are being deployed into cities and towns to implement the president’s immigration crackdown. New ICE hires and those still in training are being told to follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo, according to the whistleblower disclosure.

The change is almost certain to meet legal challenges and stiff criticism from advocacy groups and immigrant-friendly state and local governments that have spent years successfully urging people not to open their doors unless ICE shows them a warrant signed by a judge.

Most immigration arrests are carried out under administrative warrants, internal documents issued by immigration authorities that authorize the arrest of a specific individual but do not permit officers to forcibly enter private homes or other non-public spaces without consent. Only warrants signed by judges carry that authority.

Fee said the ACLU of Illinois “stands ready” to challenge any cases it hears of going forward, but that it would not be changing its guidance. Those who do not want law enforcement to search their homes should verbally refuse without a judicial warrant being presented, he said.

But the administration’s attempts to rule by presidential edict has made informing people more difficult as the legal waters get muddied by agents ignoring established law, he said.

Tsao, of the Illinois Council of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, stressed the importance of documenting immigration arrests. He said his agency will continue to tell people not to open their doors without the presentation of a judicial warrant, in accordance with the Constitution and in the hopes that they will one day see justice.

“We have to keep doing what we’re doing, we still have to educate our communities regarding how they can best defend themselves,” Tsao said. “We still have to hold out on the possibility that there will be accountability one day."

Contributing: Associated Press