Unlike other law enforcement agencies that typically obtain a warrant to enter private homes, this week a written directive from ICE argues agents can enter without a court order or a judge’s approval.
Warrantless house calls are playing out from coast-to-coast. In such instances, a heavily armed team led by an agent with a rapid assault breaching tool, commonly known as a battering ram knocks down a door, a practice that tonight is raising complaints of Constitutional violations.
What critics call “cowboy” tactics have been seen from Chicago to Los Angeles and Minneapolis to Portland as part of the administration’s illegal immigration offensive.
Unless lives are in immediate danger, warrantless door-breaking raids have been unconstitutional since the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified 235 years ago.
“The Constitution was all about a reaction to what the British had done to the colonists. The British soldiers had gone into colonist homes, arrested people, without any due process,” said former assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Safer. “The Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment, was a direct reaction to that,” Safer said.
The former Chicago federal prosecutor says an ICE directive in place since last May can’t legally circumvent the American Constitution.
The memo — made public by whistleblowers inside ICE — instructs federal officers that they don’t need a signed court order to go into the private home of a person already designated as an undocumented immigrant.
Agents who do so are just carrying out an administrative function as Vice President JD Vance said today.
“Well, our understanding is that you can enforce the immigration laws of the country under an administrative order if you have an administrative order. That’s what we think,” said Vance during a visit to the embattled city of Minneapolis. “That’s our understanding of the law. That’s our best faith attempt to understand the law.”
“But the Constitution says otherwise,” states former prosecutor Safer. “Now, the Supreme Court has not expressly ruled on how far these sort of knock and talk warrants can go. But it is pretty clear that the essence of the Fourth Amendment is that an independent branch gets to pass on whether you have the goods to warrant such an extreme invasion, going into somebody’s home to arrest them.”
Safer, a regular NBC Chicago legal analyst, tonight says this ICE memo prescribing forcible entry is instructing agents to violate the Constitution, and that if the agency had evidence of dangerous criminals inside a house they could easily obtain an arrest warrant from a judge.
“If these people had committed crimes, they would go to a judge. It’s very easy. You go to judge, all you need is probable cause. You don’t need proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Safer said.
But Vance on Thursday fired back on suggestions that the warrantless, forced entry arrests were unconstitutional.
“Most immigration law in our country Is not done through the criminal system with the judge, it’s done through the administrative law system,” Vance told reporters in the Twin Cities, “We’re going to continue that practice just as they did in the Biden administration or any other administration.”
What to do if you’re on the other side of the door when law enforcement agents show up unannounced? For years the recommendation from immigration attorneys has been that people simply shouldn’t open their door if authorities show up without a warrant.
The former federal prosecutor Ron Safer says that is still the advice…even if it results in federal agents ramming down the door.
When this tactic eventually lands in front of the Supreme Court, Safer thinks justices will side with the original wisdom of the Constitution.
