SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
fourth amendment
Leaked DHS Memo Reveals ICE Claiming Expansive New Warrantless Arrest Powers
"This memo bends over backwards to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval," said one former ICE official.
Jan 31, 2026
An internal legal memo obtained by the New York Times reveals that federal immigration enforcement agents are claiming broad new powers to carry out warrantless arrests.
The Times reported on Friday that the memo, which was signed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons, "expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person."
In the past, agents have been granted the power to carry out warrantless arrests only in situations where they believe a suspected undocumented immigrant is a "flight risk" who is unlikely to comply with obligations such as appearing at court hearings.
However, the memo declares this standard to be “unreasoned” and “incorrect,” saying that agents should feel free to carry out arrests so long as the suspect is "unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location once an administrative warrant is obtained."
Scott Shuchart, former head of policy at ICE under President Joe Biden, told the Times that the memo appears to open the door to give the agency incredibly broad arrest powers.
"This memo bends over backwards," Shuchart said, "to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval."
Claire Trickler-McNulty, former senior adviser at ICE during the Biden administration, said the memo's language was so broad that "it would cover essentially anyone they want to arrest without a warrant, making the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted in a social media post that the memo appears to be a way for ICE to "get around an increasing number of court orders requiring [US Department of Homeland Security] to follow the plain words of the law which says administrative warrantless arrests are only for people 'likely to escape.'"
The memo broadens the terms, Reichlin-Melnick added, so that "anyone who refuses to wait for a warrant to be issued" is deemed "likely to escape."
Stanford University political scientist Tom Clark questioned the validity of the memo, which appears to directly conflict with the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which requires search warrants as a protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures."
"So, here’s how the law works," he wrote. "People on whom it imposes constraints don’t get to just write themselves a memo saying they don’t have to follow the law. Maybe I’ll write myself a memo saying that I don’t have to pay my taxes this year."
Keep ReadingShow Less
JD Vance Caught in Several 'Pernicious' Lies in Defense of ICE
Vance claimed he never said agents had "absolute immunity," that the government was investigating the shooting of Renee Good, and that ICE agents weren't entering homes without judges' warrants. None of it was true.
Jan 23, 2026
Vice President JD Vance is being called out by legal experts and other critics who say he lied voluminously on Thursday in response to questions about his past claims that immigration agents enjoyed “absolute immunity,” about whether they are now illegally entering residences without warrants, and about the shooting of Renee Good.
Vance was peppered with questions during a press conference after meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis, where their conduct has been met with growing backlash in recent weeks, following the shooting of Good on January 7 by agent Jonathan Ross and other violent and unconstitutional actions that have been documented since.
Shortly after the shooting, in a rush to clear Ross of any wrongdoing, Vance made the highly dubious claim that because Ross was "a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action,” he is therefore "protected by absolute immunity."
Legal scholars immediately called out the concept of "absolute immunity" as a fiction that does not refer to any recognized statute.
But despite those remarks having been widely publicized just weeks ago, when asked about them again on Thursday, Vance pretended he never made such a claim.
"No, I didn't say—and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd," he said. "What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into."
"But of course we're going to investigate these things," Vance continued. "We're investigating the Renee Good shooting. But we're investigating them in a way that respects people's rights and ensures that if somebody did something wrong, yes, they're going to face disciplinary action. But we're not going to judge them in the court of public opinion."
In reality, the administration repeatedly said it is not pursuing a criminal investigation into Ross. According to a report from the Washington Post earlier this week, the FBI opened an initial probe into the shooting, and an agent in Minnesota found that "sufficient grounds" existed to open a civil rights probe into Ross, but DOJ officials chose not to pursue it.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed last week that the DOJ was not investigating the case. “We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger. We never do,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration's officials have repeatedly "judged" the case in the court of public opinion by routinely making statements justifying the shooting, with Vance himself praising Ross for "doing his job" and others in the administration referring to Good as a "domestic terrorist."
While it is not investigating Ross for shooting Good, the DOJ is reportedly investigating Good's widow, Becca Good, over the couple's involvement in monitoring and protesting ICE's actions in Minneapolis, which prompted six federal prosecutors with the DOJ to resign in outrage last week.
Xochitl Hinojosa, a former head of public affairs at the DOJ, found Vance's claim that the shooting was being investigated to be in total contradiction to everything else the administration has said about the case.
"Todd Blanche says no criminal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Renee Good. Vance says today they are investigating the incident," she said. "So who exactly is investigating the incident? Because this would normally be the DOJ or the FBI."
While those claims were self-evidently false, legal scholars noted a more "pernicious" lie by Vance in response to a question about a report earlier this week that ICE had issued a memo allowing agents to forcibly enter homes without a judge's warrant, which has been described as a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Asked if the memo, which was first reported on by the Associated Press, violated the Constitution, Vance responded that the story was "missing a whole lot of context" and that what ICE and other agencies proposed was that "we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law."
"Nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We're talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system," Vance went on. "Typically, in the immigration system, those are handled by administrative law judges. So we're talking about getting warrants from those administrative law judges... That's very consistent with the practice of American law."
Rob Doar, a Minnesota-based criminal defense and civil rights attorney, said that Vance had gotten "just about everything wrong" in his explanation.
"Immigration judges are not [administrative law judges]. They don’t issue warrants," Doar said. "ICE 'administrative warrants' are signed by ICE officers, not judges. They do not authorize home entry. Only a judicial warrant does."
Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and the co-editor-in-chief of Just Security said it was a case of "pernicious wordplay by Vance."
The Department of Homeland Security "is doing immigration enforcement in people's homes without a judicial warrant," he said. "Our system—the Fourth Amendment—requires a judicial warrant."
Joe Mastrosimone, a law professor at Washburn University in Kansas, was amazed that a lawyer of Vance's pedigree could be so inaccurate.
"Good Lord," he wrote on social media. "Did JD Vance actually attend and graduate from Yale Law School? He seems to be a really bad lawyer... This is really basic stuff."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Fourth Amendment Literally Exists to Prevent This': Memo Claims ICE Can Forcibly Enter Homes Without Judicial Warrants
"Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, demanding congressional hearings.
Jan 21, 2026
"The United States government is looking for ways around that pesky Fourth Amendment," an investigative journalist said of Wednesday reporting by the Associated Press on an internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo claiming that ICE agents can forcibly enter a private residence without a judicial warrant, consent, or an emergency.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
ICE's May 12 memo, part of a whistleblower disclosure obtained by the AP, says that "although the US 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, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the US Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose."
The January 7 disclosure was sent to the US Senate by the group Whistleblower Aid, which is "keeping the whistleblowers' identities anonymous even from oversight investigators," according to the document. It notes that despite being addressed to "All ICE Personnel," the seemingly unconstitutional memo "has not been formally distributed to all personnel."
Instead, it "has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the memo and return it to the supervisor," the disclosure details. "Newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on" an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.
Yeah, why could anyone think that ICE fits the description of the Gestapo?apnews.com/article/ice-...
[image or embed]
— Dan Sohege (@danielsohege.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 4:48 PM
Asked about the May 12 memo, signed by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP that everyone DHS serves with an administrative warrant has already had "full due process and a final order of removal," and the US Supreme Court and Congress have "recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement."
However, as Whistleblower Aid senior vice president and special counsel David Kligerman stressed in a Wednesday statement, "no court has ever found that ICE agents have such legal authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant."
"This administration's secretive policy advocates conduct that the Supreme Court has described as 'the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed'—that is the warrantless physical entry of a home," he noted. "This is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent."
"If ICE believes that this policy is consistent with the law, why not publicize it?" he asked. "Perhaps they've hidden it precisely because it cannot withstand legal scrutiny. Policies which impact fundamental constitutional rights, particularly one which the Supreme Court has called the greatest of equals among the Bill of Rights, should be discussed openly with the American people. It cannot be undone by hidden policy memos."
They just make up bullshit, bad-faith legal theories, do what they want until a court stops them, then lather, rinse, and repeat. In the meantime, they get to terrorize people. And nothing will happen to any of those responsible.Our courts are not equipped to deal with this.
[image or embed]
— Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 5:14 PM
Other lawyers, journalists, and critics responded similarly to the AP's reporting on social media. Alejandra Caraballo of the Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic declared that "the Fourth Amendment literally exists to prevent this."
Bradley P. Moss, an attorney specializing in litigation related to national security, federal employment, and security clearance law, said, "Remember when the Fourth Amendment was still a thing?"
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: "It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo!"
"This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda," he continued, highlighting a footnote that suggests "they won't even rule out authorizing home invasions with no judicial warrant for people not even ordered removed!"
"In short, this secret memo explains SO MUCH of what we've been seeing over the last months, including this raid of a home in Minneapolis where ICE officers presented no judicial warrant before breaking in the door," he said. "Turns out they were secretly told they don't need one!"
While Reichlin-Melnick shared photos of a scene in which armed immigration agents used a battering ram to enter a Minneapolis home and arrest a Liberian man, federal agents also recently broke down the door of a residence in neighboring Saint Paul, Minnesota, and arrested ChongLy "Scott" Thao, a US citizen who was later freed.
The AP reporting and responses to the leaked memo came as the Trump administration on Wednesday surged immigration agents to Maine for what it dubbed "Operation Catch of the Day," mirroring the federal deployment to not only Minnesota—where ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in her vehicle earlier this month—but also Illinois and California.
US Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened an inquiry into reports of unconstitutional detentions of US citizens by immigration agents in October and on Wednesday demanded answers about the new whistleblower disclosure.
Blumenthal sent lists of questions and requests for records to Lyons and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as well as Benjamin C. Huffman, director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. The senator also wrote to Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), urging them to call the ICE and DHS leaders to testify before their panels.
"Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home," Blumenthal said in a statement. "It is a legally and morally abhorrent policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time."
"In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light," he continued. "Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire. I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward and put the rights of their fellow Americans first."
"My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity and obligation to prove that rhetoric is real," the senator added. "They must hold hearings and join me in demanding the Trump administration answer for this lawless policy."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular