A coalition of legal groups on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, saying the agency had allowed federal immigration agents to routinely enter homes to carry out searches and arrests in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia, contends that the Homeland Security Department and its subsidiary, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, broke with their longstanding practices last year in adopting an undisclosed policy that allowed agents to force their way into homes without judicial warrants. The suit asks that a federal judge invalidate the policy entirely.
The legal groups brought the case on behalf of several people in Minnesota whose homes were searched. The lawsuit described how residents faced violent confrontations with armed agents in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“With guns drawn and masks on, DHS agents have left children hiding in closets, detained U.S. citizens, and marched people in their pajamas out into the street in subzero temperatures,” the lawsuit said.
The existence of the new home entry policy came to light through information provided by two government whistle-blowers this year. The New York Times reported on their account in January, which held that the policy stemmed from a memo signed by Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, on May 12, 2025.
After the shift in the department’s procedures, forced entries became a more visible and common tactic during federal operations in Minnesota this year. President Trump sent more than 3,000 agents to the state as part of his sprawling immigration crackdown that began in December. ICE agents routinely relied on an administrative form signed by superiors to justify entering homes in lieu of a warrant signed by a judge, according to the lawsuit.
The Trump administration empowered agents to use the so-called I-205 Form at issue in the case as an administrative warrant, permitting them to use armed force to enter a home with only an ICE officer’s signature. By the Department of Homeland Security’s estimates, the lawsuit claims, more than 1.5 million people could be subject to forced entries by agents using an administrative warrant.
The department has maintained that all the individuals served with administrative warrants have already had an immigration judge decide that they can be deported.
The groups behind the lawsuit argued in their complaint that the new policy employed a circular logic in which ICE empowered its own agents to act with no accountability or oversight from the judicial branch.
“Under this policy, the same officers charged with arresting and detaining noncitizens are now also allowed to authorize forcible entry into their homes,” the lawsuit said.
In addition to their claim that the policy trampled constitutional rights, the groups stressed that it was a sharp departure from the caution ICE had previously exercised. To avoid Fourth Amendment violations, ICE agents have been trained to avoid forcibly entering homes without a warrant.
But the Trump administration has begun training new agents that they can use administrative warrants to search homes, based on untested interpretations of the law, the lawsuit claims. It cites congressional testimony by Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer, who said he had personally trained new hires to follow the new, previously undisclosed guidance from Mr. Lyons.
“The Constitution creates a system where we don’t give law enforcement officers — just because they wear badges — unbridled power to seize people on the street or go in their houses,” said Kristy Parker, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. “They do have power when they have proper cause to do it, but the Constitution requires them to go outside of the executive branch to another branch of government to have their case assessed, so that there’s some sort of reasoned, neutral inquiry.”
The lawsuit is built off the experiences of six named people, who the groups said suffered an unconstitutional entry into their homes because of the new policy.
Three of the people are immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades after the government determined it could not practicably remove them to countries such as Liberia and Somalia because of civil strife or other risks. Two of the immigrants’ spouses are U.S. citizens, and are also plaintiffs in the case.
The third longtime resident, a man from El Salvador who joined the lawsuit with his daughter, asserted that the agents who had entered his home and arrested both of them had presented an administrative warrant naming another person who did not live at his address.
The people are being represented by Protect Democracy, a nonprofit legal group focused on democratic backsliding, the A.C.L.U. of Minnesota and the A.C.L.U. of D.C.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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