If you’re wondering why your attorney friends are just staring into space and disassociating, wonder no more: A secret memo told the secret immigration police that invading homes without a warrant is totally fine, totally cool—just keep it on the down low.
The Associated Press got its hands on an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo that—and this is not hyperbole—absolutely guts Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
Actually, that’s the polite, mainstream media way of putting it. What this memo really does is purport to override the Fourth Amendment with no law, just vibes. In other words, it’s unconstitutional as hell.
Federal agents stand outside a convenience store on Jan. 21 in Minneapolis.
To be clear: ICE and Customs and Border Patrol goons were given permission to use force to enter private residences and snatch up someone who has a final notice of removal.
There is no law cited here. That’s not a slam on the quality of the legal reasoning—it’s just a literal statement.
First, the memo reminds us all that President Donald Trump issued his anti-immigrant executive order on Jan. 20, 2025. Executive orders do not have the force of law, but this administration has nonetheless taken the mere existence of the order as a permission slip to trash the Constitution and terrorize individual immigrants and entire cities.
After announcing nothing but the fact that Trump’s order exists, the memo then pivots to saying that, well, the Department of Homeland Security has “not historically relied on” using administrative warrants alone to arrest immigrants in their homes. This is a mushy lawyer way of saying that DHS knows full well that its shock troops can’t use administrative warrants to bust into houses and hasn’t tried to do so in the past.
Administrative warrants are civil and issued by an immigration judge who works for the executive branch and can be hired and fired by Trump. Judicial warrants are issued by real judges independent of the executive branch and require the requesting officer to show individualized probable cause.
The former allows ICE to detain someone in public, but doesn’t give them the right to enter private spaces. For that, you need a judicial warrant thanks to the pesky Fourth Amendment:
“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.”
This is basic Fourth Amendment law. Police must obtain a warrant showing probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and a particularized suspicion of the person or place to be searched. In other words, the Constitution prohibits police from storming into your house based on some civil document signed by an immigration goon.
Related| ICE killed an unarmed citizen. Republicans keep trying to justify it.
But voila! According to the DHS, its general counsel “recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.”
That means that in Trump’s America, an administrative warrant and a final removal order constitute probable cause to enter private homes by force.
Would you like to know what parts of the Constitution, the INA, and immigration regulations factor into this legal analysis? Heavens, no. There’s nothing there.
Nonetheless, the memo tells ICE agents to go buck wild. With only an administrative warrant in hand, ICE goons can now “knock and announce” and, after giving people inside a “reasonable chance to act lawfully,” ICE can use force to enter. You will not be the least bit surprised to learn that there is no explanation of what a “reasonable chance” is, or how long it should last.
Once ICE busts in, they can do a limited search “to ensure officer safety,” but can also arrest someone for anything incriminating they find in plain view.
Federal law enforcement officers knock on the door of a house on Jan. 18 in St. Paul, Minnesota.
So now, ICE agents can violently invade someone’s home based on a civil, not criminal, warrant. Then, they can detain someone even if they have committed no crime because—much to DHS’s chagrin, no doubt—simply being undocumented is not a federal crime.
But what about all those undocumented people with criminal records, the worst of the worst? Surely it’s fine if DHS uses a battering ram to get to them, right?
Well, no—that would still be bad. However, it’s even worse that the overwhelming majority of the people being detained under Trump’s mass deportation push—73%—have no criminal record at all. For those detainees with criminal records, the bulk of their “crimes” are things like low-level traffic violations.
Even ICE knew how unconstitutional this was, so agency officials passed along the memo in secret and by word of mouth, trying to leave no trace.
It’s tempting to say this further dismantling of the Fourth Amendment was inevitable after last fall, when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh invented “Kavanaugh Stops.” Kav explained that ICE could ignore the Fourth Amendment and detain people based on racial profiling because the constitutional violation would be so teeny-tiny—it’s just a few minutes of your time, and you’ll be on your way!
The upshot: Those “brief” stops have been used as justification for brutal violence when ICE detains people.
But guess what? This DHS policy was in the works well before Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Perdomo, which came down in September 2025. The DHS memo blessing warrantless home invasions was issued in May 2025. Trump’s racist goons were always going to do this, and it was always going to be a secret.
The Fourth Amendment isn’t optional, no matter how much the Trump administration would like it to be. However, with Congress and the Supreme Court abdicating their constitutional obligations to check and balance the executive branch, there’s nothing stopping Trump and his vile racist minions from further violating the Constitution, all in the service of hurting people.
