ICE has told its agents they can kick down your door without a warrant from a judge—as long as they have a piece of paper they signed themselves.
A leaked internal memo from May, first reported by the Associated Press and obtained by NBC News via whistleblowers, reveals the agency’s new policy: officers can forcibly enter homes using only administrative warrants—documents ICE issues to itself—to arrest anyone with a final deportation order.
It’s the latest step in establishing the group as Trump’s personal police force—a gestapo.
THE DETAILS: The memo, dated May 12 from ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, acknowledges this is a dramatic shift. “Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence,” it reads, the Office of General Counsel has now decided it’s totally fine.
Translation: for decades, ICE understood they needed a judge’s approval to bust into someone’s home. Now they’ve decided they don’t.
The memo includes some window dressing about “knock and announce” requirements and not raiding homes before 6 a.m. or after 10 p.m. Small comfort when agents can still break down your door on their own authority.
BUT BUT BUT: DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insists everything is above board because people with deportation orders “have had full due process.” But here’s what that talking point conveniently ignores: the Fourth Amendment doesn’t just protect the guilty. It requires judicial oversight specifically because the government shouldn’t be the only check on its own power to invade private homes.
Whistleblower Aid, the group representing the ICE employees who leaked the memo, put it bluntly: “The Form I-205 does not authorize ICE agents to enter a home.” They note this policy contradicts years of federal law enforcement training rooted in constitutional protections.
OF COURSE, the rollout was sketchy. Senator Richard Blumenthal says whistleblowers told him the memo was distributed “in a secretive manner”—some agents were verbally briefed, others shown the document but not allowed to keep copies. Anyone who objected would reportedly be fired.
WHY IT MATTERS: Since Trump returned to office in January, ICE has arrested roughly 220,000 people through mid-October. About 75,000 of them—one-third—had no criminal records whatsoever, according to data obtained by UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project through a lawsuit.
This policy drops weeks after ICE agent fatally shot U.S. citizen Renee Good during an operation in Minneapolis on January 7. The agency is now essentially claiming broader authority to enter homes while simultaneously facing scrutiny for killing an American citizen.
“In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light,” Blumenthal said. He called the policy “legally and morally abhorrent.”
The Constitution doesn’t have an immigration exception. Your front door isn’t supposed to be optional just because an agency decides its own paperwork is good enough.