Immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, memo says

WASHINGTON — Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.

The memo authorizes 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, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.

Some Chicago-based immigrant advocates blasted the reported memo.

Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Council of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said it is troubling 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.”

Tsao said his group is not aware of agents breaking into homes without judicial warrants in Illinois. He said the group is watching what’s happening in Minnesota “very carefully” since it had been documented there.

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.

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.

All law enforcement operations — including those conducted by ICE and Customs and Border Protection — are governed by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects all people in the country from unreasonable searches and seizures. People can legally refuse federal immigration agents entry into private property if the agents only have an administrative warrant, with some limited exceptions.

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 Chicago-based Illinois Council of Immigrant and Refugee Rights has been party to prior lawsuits against the federal government, including against the first Trump administration for detaining people without warrants. While many of those cases that have stemmed from the last year of the immigration blitz are ongoing, Tsao said some may be released as they fight court battles from detention centers.

Tsao stressed the importance of documenting any immigration arrests and said the 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.”