Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said the Trump administration is intentionally trying to blur the lines between judicial warrants and the ones immigration agents are drawing up to enter people’s homes against their will.
Federal immigration officers have claimed sweeping new power to make arrests on private property, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo first made public Wednesday by Blumenthal. That includes entering people’s homes without a judge’s sign-off using administrative warrants, which only require the signature of an immigration officer after a final removal order is issued.
The memo first came to Blumenthal’s office through a whistleblower after the senator for months demanded information about immigration agents’ use of force.
“It so desecrates the rule of law and respect for the Constitution that I never thought I would see from any high-ranking federal official,” he told NOTUS.
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Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, signed the memo dated May 12, according to the whistleblower disclosure.
“The administration is trying to blur the line between the two. But a judicial warrant is done by a judge who requires the agent to present facts and meet a standard of probable cause,” Blumenthal said. “An administrative warrant can be issued by a deportation officer or another ICE official.”
Recent hires are receiving verbal directions during training to follow the new memo and disregard written course training that prohibits agents from entering homes without consent or a judicial warrant, according to a Department of Homeland Security employee who disclosed the information, which hadn’t been widely shared within the agency.
Blumenthal said the whistleblower disclosure landed in his office because of his probe into ICE’s detentions of American citizens, adding that more employees will likely come forward. He plans to publish a separate report on immigration agents’ forcible entry into homes, as outlined in the memo, or combine it with his ongoing investigation into federal officials’ use of force.
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, claimed that immigration enforcement has used administrative warrants to enter homes for decades.
“In every case that DHS uses an Administrative warrant to enter a residence, an illegal alien has already had their full due process and a final order of removal by a federal immigration judge. The officer also has probable cause,” she wrote in a post on X.
Vice President JD Vance also defended the practice during a Thursday press conference in Minneapolis.
“We can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law. Now,
it’s possible, I guess, that the courts will say no,” Vance said. “And of course, if the courts say no, we would follow that law. But nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant.”
Of Vance’s comments, Blumenthal said, “He should really know better. He’s a graduate of the Yale Law School — as I am.”
The anonymous federal employees who disclosed the memo through Whistleblower Aid, a legal organization helping workers report wrongdoings, want an investigation into the constitutionality of entering private residencies relying solely on administrative warrants.
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