Several immigrant-rights groups sued Friday to try to shut down a new ICE policy that lets officers enter homes to make arrests of deportation targets based on administrative warrants that don’t have a regular federal judge’s signature.
Signed by Todd Lyons, the acting director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the policy has become a flashpoint in the debate over President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
In a secret memo revealed by whistleblowers, Mr. Lyons said his officers can use a deportation warrant as justification to enter a home even without the residents’ permission, as long as they are there to arrest only someone who has already been ordered deported from the country.
The Greater Boston Latino Network and the Brazilian Worker Center, which filed the lawsuit, said the new policy changes a longstanding understanding of immigration law, which they said requires a judicial warrant to enter a home without permission.
“We will not stand by while ICE engages in unlawful and dangerous practices. We will not be intimidated by fear tactics targeting our neighbors,” said Alexandra Oliver-Davila, a member of the Latino Network’s steering committee.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Massachusetts — one of the least friendly courts in the nation to the Trump administration — though the evidence the plaintiffs cited for the arrests came from elsewhere.
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They pointed to one Jan. 11 arrest of a Liberian man in Minnesota who refused to open his door to a team of federal officers, then saw as they battered in the door and nabbed him anyway, based on a Form I-205 deportation warrant.
A federal judge in Minnesota ruled the arrest violated the Fourth Amendment because agents entered his home without consent or a judicial warrant.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan, a Biden appointee, did not expand on that reasoning.
Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge and longtime staffer handling immigration law for the House Judiciary Committee, said ICE may have a good argument for the new policy.
He said the Form I-205 applies to people who have already been ordered deported. And people in that situation who are still in the U.S. can be subject to tougher government intrusions.
Mr. Arthur, now at the Center for Immigration Studies, said that’s different than the Form I-200, which is ICE’s warrant for arrest.
He pointed to a 1960 Supreme Court opinion that said the power to carry out an administrative deportation arrest dates back to “almost the beginning of the nation.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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