ChongLy (Scott) Thao, 56, was taking a Sunday afternoon nap recently at his home in St. Paul, Minn., when federal immigration agents broke down his front door. A group of masked, armed men burst in and took him outdoors in subfreezing temperatures wearing only Crocs, his underwear and a blanket. After being questioned by agents for nearly an hour, he was returned to his residence without any explanation or apology. Thao is a naturalized U.S. citizen with no criminal record.
While searches like these used to require a judicial warrant, a recently leaked Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo from May instructs agents to forcibly enter homes with only an administrative warrant. This policy flies in the face of the Constitution, legal precedent and Homeland Security’s own guidelines. It should concern all Americans who value their privacy and civil liberties.
The warrants that most of us think of — the “come back with a warrant” kind familiar from legal dramas — is a judicial warrant, different from administrative.
Judicial warrants are issued by judges when they are presented with probable cause and allow law enforcement officers to enter and search a person’s residence. In contrast, administrative warrants are issued by staff in the executive branch and can be used to arrest someone, including someone suspected of being in the U.S. without legal status. But until May, they were understood to not allow law enforcement officers to enter a suspect’s home.
ICE is now blurring the distinction between these two types of warrants, telling agents to barge into people’s residences based solely on agency authority. This violates the 4th Amendment, which protects “people” (including noncitizens) from unreasonable searches and seizures in their homes. It ignores rulings from the Supreme Court, which has consistently held that the 4th Amendment prohibits the government’s nonconsensual entry into a person’s home without a judicial warrant. As the high court articulated in 1980, “The physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”
ICE’s new policy, which came to light only because of two whistleblowers, contradicts existing agency guidance. A 2025 Homeland Security training manual says that entering homes without a judicial warrant is prohibited, noting that doing so would be “a violation of the Fourth Amendment.” A 2023 ICE operations handbook similarly states that an administrative warrant is insufficient grounds for entering a home — though of course residents might grant an agent entry voluntarily, especially if they are not aware of their right to deny access to private spaces.
The discussion about administrative and judicial warrants is not an abstract debate. It relates to an abuse of power that is happening now. ICE agents have been forcibly entering homes without proper warrants since at least last summer. Besides the case of Thao, ICE has raided homes in South Dakota, Illinois, Texas, Indiana and California without the necessary legal authorization. In several cases, ICE entered the wrong home. This is one reason judicial warrants have always been required; they have criteria intended to minimize such mistakes.
The agency’s unilateral expansion of government power is dangerous — and not only for immigrant families.
If an agency is allowed to give itself the right to enter people’s homes, the consequences could go far beyond immigration enforcement. The IRS could authorize its agents to force their way into a person’s home without their consent and seize computers, documents and phones. Social service agencies could authorize case workers to forcibly enter a home and check up on people’s children. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms could enter a residence, without any court authority, to verify compliance with gun regulations.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, has defended the use of administrative warrants to arrest undocumented immigrants. “The officers issuing these administrative warrants also have found probable cause,” she said. “For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement.” Yet her explanation is misleading, because it sidesteps the question of using an administrative warrant to invade someone’s home.
Consider the secretive manner in which ICE has rolled out this new policy. The memo was shown only to select agency officials, who were allowed to review it but not take notes on it. There were few physical copies of the memo distributed. Instead, instructors are verbally training new agent hires on the policy. It seems like ICE does not want a paper trail surrounding this policy, probably because it runs afoul of the law.
Lately, immigration agents have shocked the country with fatal shootings of U.S. citizens, while a Fox News poll finds that 59% of voters say that ICE is “too aggressive.” So this is no time to hand agents more unchecked power. Instead, ICE must be reined in. That can start with Democratic lawmakers holding to their demand that agents stop using administrative warrants for home raids, as a condition of fully funding Homeland Security in the weeks ahead.
ICE’s new warrant policy should not be allowed to stand. It threatens people in the sanctity of their own homes and puts Americans at risk of intrusive government overreach.
Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and television commentator in New York City. X: @RaulAReyes Instagram: @raulareyes1
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