An internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement document in May shows that ICE told officers and agents they can forcibly enter homes of people subject to deportation without warrants signed by judges.
The memo, dated May 12, which reads that it is from ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, was shared with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., by two whistleblowers.
It says ICE agents are allowed to forcibly enter a person’s home using an administrative warrant if a judge has issued a “final order of removal.” Administrative warrants permit officers and agents to make arrests and are different from judicial warrants, which judges or magistrates sign allowing entry into homes.
Lyons notes in the document that detaining people “in their residences” based solely on administrative warrants is a change from past procedures.
“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, the DHS Office of General Counsel has 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,” the memo reads.
The memo says agents may “arrest and detain aliens” in their places of residence who are subject to final orders of removal issued by immigration judges, the Board of Immigration Appeals, or U.S. district or magistrate judges.
The memo says under general guidelines that officers and agents using a method called Form I-205 must “knock and announce” and that “in announcing, officers and agents must state their identity and purpose.”
It says that officers and agents must give the people inside time to comply with the order.
It also says that they generally should not enter a residence before 6 a.m. or after 10 p.m., and that they “should only use a necessary and reasonable amount of force” to enter a home.
The Associated Press first reported the document Wednesday.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that immigrants in the country illegally who are served administrative warrants or I-205s, which are removal or deportation warrants, “have had full due process and a final order of removal from an immigration judge.”
“The officers issuing these administrative warrants also have found probable cause,” McLaughlin said. “For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement.”
The group Whistleblower Aid, which is representing the whistleblowers who shared the memo with Congress, said, “This ‘policy’ flies in the face of longstanding federal law enforcement training material and policies, all rooted in constitutional assessments.”
“In other words: the Form I-205 does not authorize ICE agents to enter a home,” the group said in a statement. “Training new recruits, many of whom have zero prior law enforcement training or experience, to seemingly disregard the Fourth Amendment, should be of grave concern to everyone.”
Blumenthal said in a statement that the memo was “allegedly not widely distributed” despite being labeled “all-hands.” A copy of the memo shared with Congress is addressed to “All ICE Personnel.”
“Instead, the disclosure claims that the memo was rolled out in a secretive manner in which some agents were verbally briefed while others were allowed to view it but not keep a copy,” Blumenthal said. “It was reportedly clear that anyone who openly spoke out against this new directive would be fired.”
Whistleblower Aid wrote in its disclosure that the memo was addressed to “All ICE Personnel” but that in practice it was only shown to “select DHS officials.”
Those officials were then to verbally brief the plan, the group said. Supervisors showed it some employees, including the whistleblowers, and directed them to read it and return it, according to the group.
Whistleblower Aid also cites past ICE and DHS training materials that says entering a residence on solely an administrative warrant can cause violations of Fourth Amendment constitutional protections.
The memo is dated less than four months into the second term of President Donald Trump, who campaigned on mass deportations.
Immigration crackdowns by the Trump administration against several Democrat-run cities have sparked protests and unrest, most recently in Minneapolis after an ICE agent fatally shot a U.S. citizen, Renee Good, on Jan. 7.
Blumenthal said in a statement that the newly revealed ICE policy should terrify Americans.
“It is a legally and morally abhorrent policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time,” he said. “In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light.”
The ICE memo says that Form I-205 is not a search warrant and that it “should only be used to enter the residence of the subject alien to conduct an immigration arrest.”
ICE officers have arrested roughly 220,000 people in the nine months from Jan. 20, when Trump returned to office, to Oct. 15, according to data a project shared in December.
Around 75,000 of them have been people with no criminal records, according to the data.
The figures were shared by the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project, which obtained them through a lawsuit against ICE
