All my life I have heard Republicans lecture about the importance of small government. They said that government should not try to control people, other than protecting their rights. A Republican named William Weld ran for Governor of Massachusetts on a pledge to get government out of our wallets and out of our bedrooms. For decades, Southern Republicans complained about the federal government intruding into “internal” issues like segregation.
How things have changed!
Under today’s Republican Party, the federal government assumes the power to snoop on you at all times.
A blogger who calls herself @JofromJerz posted the following sage observation on Substack:
Republicans want to decide what books you can read, what history your kids can learn, which medicines you’re allowed to take, what surgeries you can have, what gender you’re permitted to be, what sports you can play, which bathroom you can use, who you can love, and who you can marry.
They want to tell you how many dolls and pencils your kids can have and how much food they can eat.
They want to own your library, your classroom, your hospital bed, your bedroom, your remote control, your kitchen table, and your front door.
They want the right to break into your home, disappear your neighbor, take your children, beat you, execute you in the street, and then tell you—despite the evidence of your own eyes and ears—that what you saw is not what you have seen.
They want you afraid: afraid to record, to document, to criticize, to stand up, to speak out, to organize, to protest, to protect, to utter words they don’t like. They want to own the page, the pill, the joke, the chant, the kiss, the very pronoun in your mouth and the weapon on your waist. They want to decide where you can go, what you can say, and which of your rights they can take away.
They want the power to take your life and then lie about it.
They want to play judge, jury, and executioner and they want you to shut up about it or you’ll be next.
This is tyranny failing miserably to masquerade as order.
But sure—tell me how it’s the liberals who are “coming for your freedoms,” won’t you.
Dan Rather, the much-admired journalist who had a stellar career at CBS News, was outraged by the arrest of Don Lemon and Gloria Fort, two journalists who were arrested for doing their job in Minneapolis.
Journalist Don Lemon outside the federal courthouse in Los Angeles after his arrest. Credit: Getty Images
Rather writes on his blog at Substack:
If you dispatch two dozen federal law enforcement officers to arrest a single journalist, you’re doing more than apprehending a suspect, you’re sending a message. The message is this: no journalist is safe in America, no journalist can freely report without fear of retribution.
We have crossed yet another red line with Donald Trump. In case there was any doubt, this weekend’s actions against former CNN anchor Don Lemon confirm we are now living under an increasingly authoritarian regime.
If we don’t have the right to freely and independently gather information and report the truth as we see it, then we might as well crumple up the Constitution, along with the Bill of Rights, and toss them in the trash. This is not just about Lemon, a longtime professional with whom I have worked, know well, and respect. This is about a foundational American freedom that was just kicked to the curb.
The president has long hated Lemon because he was on to Trump from the jump. But he also checks a lot of the wrong boxes for Trump and his rabid MAGA base. He is gay, black, and a mainstream journalist — three strikes in Trumpworld. So in this time of ceaseless retribution and revenge, why not make an example of him?
Lemon wasn’t the only one arrested. Another journalist, freelance reporter Georgia Fort of Minneapolis, was also charged.
This all stems from a demonstration at a church in Minneapolis by anti-ICE protesters. Why were the protesters in a church? One of the pastors is an ICE official. The government claims Lemon and Fort were participants in the protest, not journalists covering the event.
Three federal judges didn’t think there was enough evidence presented by Trump’s Department of Justice to make a case. It took persuading a federal grand jury to finally bring charges.
Lemon and Fort will have their day in court. Abbe Lowell, a renowned defense attorney, is Lemon’s lawyer.
In a statement, Lowell said, “Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention, and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case. This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”
Trump pulls stunts like this because he doesn’t care about norms, never mind the Constitution. He wants to throw a bone to his base while unnerving those dedicated to finding the truth, a notion the president believes is not just unnecessary but a hindrance to his despotic agenda.
When Fort was released from jail in Minneapolis, she said in a statement, “Do we have a Constitution? That is the pressing question.”
The First Amendment to the Constitution protects freedom of the press, among other protected rights. Yet days ago, independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were arrested in Minneapolis for committing an act of journalism.
Arresting journalists for doing their job happens within a national context in which the major media are being bought up by billionaires and small-town media are struggling to survive. Late night comedians have been harassed , even canceled, because they dare to make fun of our Not-so-great leader. Trump’s erstwhile bestie Elon Musk bought and controls Twitter. His pals the billionaire Ellisons bought CBS.
In a healthy democracy, journalists are not handcuffed for doing their jobs. They are not dragged into courtrooms for showing up, asking questions, and bearing witness. They are not treated as threats simply because they point a camera toward power and refuse to look away.
Yet here we are.
This week, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were arrested and charged under federal law with civil rights violations, including conspiracy to interfere with religious freedom and interfering with the exercise of First Amendment rights at a place of worship, while covering protests at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not for committing violence. Not for inciting chaos. But for documenting what was happening, for talking to people on the ground, for doing exactly what journalism has always existed to do.
And that reality should stop us cold.
Because when a government begins going after journalists, history tells us something is deeply wrong.
We have only targeted journalists in this country during our most shameful chapters. During moments when fear outweighed principle. When those in power decided that controlling the narrative mattered more than the truth.
That is not coincidence. It is pattern.
Authoritarian systems do not begin by jailing everyone. They begin by isolating voices. They begin by making examples. They begin by teaching the public that speaking up carries a cost.
And journalists are always near the top of that list.
Why?
Because journalists give voice to the people.
They do not create dissent. They reveal it. They do not manufacture outrage. They document it. They do not invent injustice. They expose it.
When a journalist shows up, they bring sunlight. And sunlight makes lies harder to sustain.
Trump sees Don Lemon as a threat.
Not because Lemon suddenly changed who he is, but because his audience has changed.
Since leaving CNN, Lemon’s reach has exploded across social media. Younger people who never sat down to watch cable news are now watching his clips, sharing his reporting, and engaging with his long-form conversations. He is reaching people Trump cannot easily reach or control.
And Trump cannot shut Don Lemon down by calling his boss anymore.
The same is true for Georgia Fort.
They are independent.
They are not owned by a corporate parent that can be pressured behind closed doors. They cannot be silenced with a phone call.
The most threatening thing to an authoritarian regime is an independent reporter with a microphone.
The state is now alleging that Don Lemon interfered with parishioners’ right to worship.
But the truth runs in the opposite direction.
His presence protected that right.
Without reporters on the scene, there is no independent record of what happened. No documentation of how protesters were treated. No documentation of how parishioners were affected. No documentation of whether law enforcement actions were proportional or excessive.
Lemon did what journalists are supposed to do. He spoke with protesters. He also spoke with the pastor. He interviewed parishioners who were frustrated and hurt by the disruption. He allowed multiple sides to be heard in real time.
That is not interference.
That is accountability. That is transparency. That is how you protect rights, not undermine them.
Rights do not survive in darkness. They survive in public view.
Heather Cox Richardson pays attention to the rhetoric of President Trump’s close advisor Stephen Miller. She hears echoes of the Confederacy. Miller thinks that immigrants should never be allowed to be on a path to citizenship. If that had been the policy when his great-grandparents arrived from Belarus in the early 20th century, little Stephen would be a serf, a slave, or a laborer, not a well-educated white nationalist advising the President to expel millions of immigrants and close the door to others.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media this morning:
“Plenty of countries in history have experimented with importing a foreign labor class. The West is the first and only civilization to import a foreign labor class that is granted full political rights, including welfare & the right to vote. All visas are a bridge to citizenship. In America, for generations now, the policy has been that anyone who would economically benefit from moving to the US can do so, exercise the franchise in the US and their children, the moment they are born, will be full American citizens with all the rights and benefits therein.”
After his call for a “labor class” excluded from citizenship and a voice in government, Miller went on to reject the idea that Haitians living and working legally in Ohio should be described as part of Ohio communities. Calling out Democratic former senator Sherrod Brown, who is running for the Senate again this year, for including them, Miller posted: “Democrats just flatly reject any concept of nationhood that has ever existed in human history.”
History is doing that rhyming thing again.
In 1858, Senator James Henry Hammond (D-SC), a wealthy enslaver, rose to explain to his northern colleagues why their objection to human enslavement was so badly misguided. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” he said. Such workers needed few brains and little skill; they just had to be strong, docile, and loyal to their betters, who would organize their labor and then collect the profits from it, concentrating that wealth into their own hands to move society forward efficiently.
Hammond called such workers “the mud-sill of society and political government.” Much like the beams driven into the ground to support a stately home above, the mudsill supported “that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.” The South had pushed Black Americans into that mudsill role. “We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves,” he said. The North also had a mudsill class, he added: “the man who lives by daily labor…in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and ‘operatives,’ as you call them, are essentially slaves.”
But Hammond warned that the North was making a terrible mistake. “Our slaves do not vote,” he said. “We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositories of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than ‘an army with banners,’ and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided…by the quiet process of the ballot-box.”
Hammond was very clear about what he believed the world should look like. Black Americans should always be subordinate to white men, of course, but white women, too, were subordinate. They were made “to breed,” as “toy[s] for recreation,” or to bring men “wealth and position,” he had explained to his son in 1852. Hammond’s promising early political career had been nearly derailed when he admitted that for two years he had sexually assaulted his four young nieces, the daughters of the powerful Wade Hampton II (although he insisted he was being wronged because he should get credit for showing any restraint at all when faced with four such “lovely creatures”).
If women and Black people were at the bottom of society, southern white men were an “aristocracy” by virtue of their descent from “the ancient cavaliers of Virginia…a race of men without fear and without reproach,” “alike incapable of servility and selfishness.” By definition, whatever such leaders did was what was good for society, and any man who had not achieved that status was excluded because of his own failings or criminal inclinations.
The southern system, Hammond told the Senate, was “the best in the world…such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth,” and spreading it would benefit everyone.
The next year, rising politician Abraham Lincoln told an audience at the Wisconsin state fair in Milwaukee that he rejected Hammond’s mudsill theory. Lincoln explained that Hammond’s “mud-sill theory” divided the world into permanent castes, arguing that men with money drove the economy and workers were stuck permanently at the bottom.
For his part, Lincoln embraced a different theory: It was workers, not wealthy men, who drove the economy. While men of wealth had little incentive to experiment and throw themselves into their work, men on the make were innovative and hardworking. Such men could—and should—rise. This “free labor” theory articulated the true meaning of American democracy for northerners and for the non-slave-holding southerners, who, as Lincoln reminded his listeners, made up a majority in the South. “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him,” he explained.
In the election of 1860, southern Democrats tried to get voters to back their worldview by promising they were reflecting God’s will and by using virulent racism, warning that Black Americans must be kept in their place or they would destroy American society.
But, in a nation of immigrants and men who had worked their way up from day laborers to become prominent men, Lincoln stood firm on the Declaration of Independence. He warned that if people started to make exceptions to the idea that all men are created equal, they would not stop. They would “transform this Government into a government of some other form.” “If that declaration is not the truth,” Lincoln said, “let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!” To cries of “No! No!” he responded: “[L]et us stand firmly by it then.”
Miller’s white nationalism is not the concept on which this nation was built. The United States of America was built on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the sweat and blood of almost 250 years of Americans, often those from marginalized communities, working to make those principles a reality.
The hierarchical system Miller embraces echoes the system championed by those like Hammond, who imagined themselves the nation’s true leaders who had the right to rule. They were not bound by the law, and they rejected the idea that those unwilling to recognize their superiority should have either economic or political power.
The horrors of the Epstein files show a group of powerful and wealthy men and women who sexually assaulted children and showed no concern either for their crimes or that they might have to answer to the law. The public still does not know the extent of the horrors or the human-trafficking business in which Epstein and others were engaged. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters yesterday that the Department of Justice was not releasing any item from the Epstein files that showed “death, physical abuse, or injury.”
“You [know] the biggest problem with being friends with you?” Dr. Peter Attia wrote in an email to Epstein in response to an email with the subject line “Got a fresh shipment.” Attia answered his own question: “The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”
Trump echoed Hammond in a different way tonight on Air Force One as he traveled to Florida. Asked by a reporter how he would handle being on both sides of his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, he suggested that taking the money of the American people into his own hands would enable him to use it for the public good. “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself,” he said. “We could make it a substantial amount, nobody would care because it’s gonna go to numerous, very good charities.”
Another story tonight indicated the degree to which the president sees himself as part of a wealthy caste that is above the law. Sam Kessler, Rebecca Ballhous, Eliot Brown, and Angus Berwick of the Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster report showing that four days before Trump’s 2025 inauguration, men working for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal with the Trump family to buy 49% of their brand-new cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial. The investors would pay half immediately, sending $187 million to entities held by the Trump family and at least $31 million to entities held by Steve Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial whom Trump had named U.S. envoy to the Middle East weeks earlier.
The deal was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates and oversees more than $1.3 trillion that includes the country’s largest wealth fund. Tahnoon has wanted access to U.S. AI technology, but the Biden administration blocked access out of concern it could end up in Chinese hands. The Trump administration, in striking contrast, has committed to allowing the United Arab Emirates to buy about half a million of the most advanced AI chips a year.
Federal agents acting for the Trump administration are trying to enforce the authority of those like Miller, tear-gassing, arresting, and killing American citizens. Thousands marched peacefully in Portland, Oregon, today but, as Alex Baumhardt of the Oregon Capital Chronicle recorded, “federal officers outside the ICE facility in Portland…indiscriminately threw loads of gas and flash bangs” at marchers, including children. Portland, Oregon, city councillor Mitch Green reported: “I just got tear gassed along with thousands of union members, many of whom had their families with them. Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions.”
Tim Dickinson of The Contrarian wrote: “Today I saw ICE gas little white kids in the streets of Portland with chemical weapons. Imagine what they’re doing to brown and black kids in the detention camps.”
And yet, in another echo of the 1850s, MAGA Republicans are reversing victim and offender, blaming the people under assault for the violence. Trump officials insist that community watch groups and protesters are engaging in “domestic terrorism.” Greg Jaffe and Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the New York Times flagged that Representative Eli Crane (R-AZ) told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Monday that those people protecting their neighbors from the violence of federal agents want “revolution.” “They want to fundamentally remake and tear down the institutions and the culture of this country.”
In an order requiring the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias, from detention, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery noted that in their crusade against undocumented immigrants, U.S. officials are ignoring the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. “[F]or some among us,” the judge wrote, “the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.”
Judge Biery signed the order after saying he was putting “ a judicial finger in the constitutional dike.” Under his signature, he posted the now-famous image of the little boy detained in his blue bunny hat and Spiderman backpack, along with the notations for two biblical passages: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,’” and “Jesus wept.”
Tonight, voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democratic in a special election. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and machinist, defeated right-wing Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a seat that Republicans have held since the early 1990s. Robert Downen of Texas Monthly noted that in the final days of the campaign, the Wambsganss campaign spent $310,000 while Rehmet spent nothing, and Daniel Nichanian of Bolts Mag posted that overall, Wambsganss spent nearly $2.2 million more than Rehmet in the campaign. Both Texas governor Greg Abbott and Trump himself publicly supported Wambsganss.
And yet, as G. Elliott Morrisof Strength in Numbers noted, voters flipped a district that Trump won in 2024 by 17 points to Rehmet, electing him by a 14.4-point margin. After removing the minor-party candidates in the vote, the swing from the Republican in 2024 was 32 points toward the Democrats. In Texas.
—
Notes:
James Henry Hammond, Speech on the Admission of Kansas, March 4, 1858, in Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond of South Carolina (New York: John F. Thrown & Co., 1866), pp. 301–322.
Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), pp. 37–104, 312–314.
The state of Minnesota asked a federal judge to stop the federal militarization in Minneapolis. In a much-anticipated ruling, she said no. The judge, appointed by Biden, said that a previous ruling about federal tactics had been overturned, and she thought it was a signal that any ruling favoring the state would be overturned.
A federal judge has rejected a bid by state and local officials in Minnesota to end Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s massive deployment of thousands of federal agents to aggressively enforce immigration laws.
In a ruling Saturday, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Menendez found strong evidence that the ongoing federal operation ”has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking, consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans.”
“There is evidence that ICE and CBP agents have engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions,” Menendez said, adding that the operation has disrupted daily life for Minnesotans — harming school attendance, forcing police overtime work and straining emergency services. She also said there were signs the Trump administration was using the surge to force the state to change its immigration policies — pointing to a list of policy demands by Attorney General Pam Bondi and similar comments by White House immigration czar Tom Homan.
But the Biden-appointed judge said state officials’ arguments that the state was being punished or unfairly treated by the federal government were insufficient to justify blocking the surge altogether. And in a 30-page opinion, the judge said she was “particularly reluctant to take a side in the debate about the purpose behind Operation Metro Surge.”
The surge has involved about 3,000 federal officers, a size roughly triple that of the local police forces in Minneapolis and St. Paul. However, Menendez said it was difficult to assess how large or onerous a federal law enforcement presence could be before it amounted to an unconstitutional intrusion on state authority.
“There is no clear way for the Court to determine at what point Defendants’ alleged unlawful actions…becomes (sic) so problematic that they amount to unconstitutional coercion and an infringement on Minnesota’s state sovereignty,” she wrote, later adding that there is “no precedent for a court to micromanage such decisions.”
“If that injunction went too far, then the one at issue here—halting the entire operation—certainly would,” the judge said in her Saturday ruling.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison signaled his team would continue fighting to end the federal operation, writing in a statement that “this case is in its infancy and there is much legal road in front of us.”
“We know that these 3,000 immigration agents are here to intimidate Minnesota and bend the state to the federal government’s will,” he said. “That is unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment and the principle of equal sovereignty. We’re not letting up in defending our state’s constitutional powers.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi on X called the decision “another HUGE” win for the Justice Department in its Minnesota crackdown and noted that it came from a judge appointed by former President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
“Neither sanctuary policies nor meritless litigation will stop the Trump Administration from enforcing federal law in Minnesota,” she wrote.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have both called for federal agents to leave the city as the chaos has only intensified in recent weeks.
“This federal occupation of Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” Walz said at a press conference last week after two Customs and Border Patrol agents shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti. “It’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. And today, that campaign claimed another life. I’ve seen the videos from several angles. And it’s sickening.”
Backlash from Pretti’s killing has prompted Trump to pull back on elements of the Minneapolis operation.
Two CBP agents involved in the shooting were placed on administrative leave. CBP Commander Greg Bovino was sidelined from his post in Minnesota, with the White House sending border czar Tom Homan to the state in an effort to calm tensions. Officials also said some federal agents involved in the surge were cycling out of state, but leaders were vague about whether the size of the overall operation was being scaled back.
“I don’t think it’s a pullback,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “It’s a little bit of a change.”
The deployment of ICE to detain and arrest undocumented immigrants threatens to become a war against U.S. citizens who object to ICE’s brutal tactics. We have all seen the videos of ICE agents smashing car windows, knocking men and women to the ground, grabbing women by their hair, pummeling people on the ground, operating in teams of 5 or 6 as they beat up those they choose.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution forbids ICE from entering homes. This article appeared on the blog CAFE, where seasoned prosecutors and law professors comment on matters of law and hold the federal government accountable.
No ICE Cannot Enter Your Home Without a Warrant — and Why Doing So Is Very Dangerous For All of Us By Perry A. Carbone and Mimi Rocah
Dear Insider,
A leaked internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo claims that ICE agents may enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. That claim is wrong as a legal matter— and it threatens one of the most basic freedoms Americans have: the right to be safe in their own homes.
The memo—dated May 12, 2025 and signed by Acting Director Todd Lyons—was leaked by two whistleblowers and shared with Senator Richard Blumenthal. According to the whistleblowers, the memo was directed to all personnel but was distributed in a secretive manner to selected personnel. We spent many years as federal prosecutors enforcing federal law – about 50 years between the two of us. We know firsthand the power of law enforcement authority and how important it is that it be exercised within constitutional limits, especially within the sacrosanct safety of a person’s home.
Our homes have special protection under the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects people from unreasonable government searches and seizures and explicitly names “houses” as protected spaces: “The right of the people to be secure in their … houses … against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause….”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly made this protection crystal clear.
In Payton v. New York (1980), the Court held that police may not enter a home to make an arrest without a judicial warrant, unless there is an emergency or the resident consents, calling physical entry of the home “the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”
In Kyllo v. United States (2001), the Court reaffirmed that the home is a place where privacy protection is at its highest. Even using technology to detect heat patterns inside a home — without ever physically entering — violated the Fourth Amendment if it was done without a warrant.
In Florida v. Jardines (2013), the Court held that bringing a drug-sniffing dog to the front porch of a home to investigate constituted an unlawful “search” under the Fourth Amendment, if done without a search warrant. If the Constitution forbids the government from using technology and animals to sense what happens inside a home, it certainly forbids crossing the threshold without judicial approval.
The whistleblower disclosure shows ICE claiming its agents may enter homes without judicial warrants because immigration enforcement is “civil.” But the Fourth Amendment does not contain a “civil enforcement” carveout. And the relevant Supreme Court’s cases do not turn on whether a matter is labeled “civil” or “criminal.” There is no “immigration exception” to the Constitution.
The ICE memo reportedly relies on Form I-205, a “warrant of removal/deportation” created within the executive branch and not signed by a judge. It authorizes officers to use “necessary and reasonable force” to enter certain residences to arrest people with final removal orders.
That is incompatible with the Fourth Amendment’s demand for judicial oversight. A judicial warrant is one that is issued by an individual who is ”neutral and detached” and can determine probable cause. An administrative warrant, by contrast, is issued by the government agency itself and so does not meet the Constitution and Court’s repeated requirement of being issued by someone “neutral” and “detached.” Federal agencies do not get to rewrite the Constitution through internal memos. Put simply, an administrative warrant is the government agency authorizing itself to enter a home — the constitutional equivalent of letting the fox write its own warrant to enter the henhouse.
This is not an immigration issue. It is a constitutional issue with consequences for all Americans. Yes, it will have huge implications for immigrants, who have long been advisednot to open their door to federal agents unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. But it will not end there. If ICE is permitted to enter homes without judicial warrants, the consequences will not stop with immigration enforcement. Other agencies will follow the same path — and they will do so using the same logic: that civil enforcement, public safety, or administrative necessity justifies bypassing judicial oversight.
One can easily imagine a parade of horribles:
Tax enforcement: IRS agents entering homes to seize records or property based solely on internal agency warrants, without a judge ever reviewing probable cause.
Health and safety enforcement:Public health officials entering private residences to conduct inspections or remove occupants during disease outbreaks without judicial authorization.
Child welfare investigations: Social services entering homes to investigate allegations based only on agency paperwork, without court approval.
Firearms regulation: Regulatory agents entering homes to inspect compliance with gun laws without judicial warrants.
Local law enforcement: Police departments reclassifying certain arrests as “civil” or “administrative” to avoid the warrant requirement altogether.
Once the government can enter a home based on its own approval, the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement becomes optional — a procedural inconvenience rather than a constitutional command.
And that erosion won’t stop at homes. If agency-issued warrants suffice for entry, then agency-issued authorizations will soon suffice for searches of phones, computers, bank accounts, and digital records — all areas the Supreme Court has increasingly treated as deserving heightened constitutional protection.
The Fourth Amendment was written precisely to prevent this outcome: a system in which government officials authorize their own intrusions. Judicial warrants are not a technicality — they are the firewall between liberty and unchecked power. And when that firewall falls, it does not fall selectively. It falls for everyone.
The home is the heart of American liberty. The Fourth Amendment draws a bright line at the front door — and for good reason. This leaked ICE memo crosses that line. It is legally wrong. It is constitutionally dangerous. And it should concern everyone who values privacy, liberty, and the rule of law — regardless of their views on immigration.
Stay Informed, Mimi & Perry
CAFE Contributor Mimi Rocah is the former District Attorney for Westchester County, and previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Division Chief for the Southern District of New York. She is currently an adjunct professor at Fordham School of Law.
Perry A. Carbone served as Chief of the White Plains Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; he previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of New Jersey.
The Department of Homeland Security decided that ICE agents were exempt from the Fourth Amendment, which prevents police from entering homes without a warrant signed by a judge.
U.S. District Court judge Jeffrey Bryan ruled last Saturday in Minneapolis that ICE had to abide by the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This means that law officers can’t burst into your home without a judge’s warrant.
The Fourth Amendment underpins the phrase that “a man’s home is his castle.”
Recently, ICE decided that its agents did not need a judge’s warrant and that an “administrative warrant” would suffice. The administrative warrant would be signed by an ICE employee.
ICE decided that with an “administrative warrant,” it could batter down doors and enter homes to seize suspects.
A FEDERAL JUDGE in Minnesota ruled last Saturday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated the Fourth Amendment after they forcibly entered a Minnesota man’s home without a judicial warrant. The conduct of the agents closely mirrors a previously undisclosed ICE directive that claims agents are permitted to enter people’s homes using an administrative warrant, rather than a warrant signed by a judge.
The ruling, issued by US District Court judge Jeffrey Bryan in response to a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on January 17, did not assess the legality of ICE’s internal guidance itself. But it squarely holds that federal agents violated the United States Constitution when they entered a residence without consent and without a judge-signed warrant—the same conditions ICE leadership has privately told officers is sufficient for home arrests, according to a complaint filed by Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal group representing whistleblowers from the public and private sector.
In a sworn declaration, Garrison Gibson, a Liberian national who has lived in Minnesota for years under an ICE order of supervision, says agents arrived at his home in the early morning on January 11 while his family slept inside. He says he refused to open the door and repeatedly demanded to see a judicial warrant. According to the declaration, the agents initially left, then returned with a larger group, deployed pepper spray toward neighbors who had gathered outside, and used a battering ram to force the door open.
The declaration was filed as part of a January 12 Minnesota lawsuit against Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem challenging federal immigration enforcement operations in the Twin Cities, which state officials characterize as an unconstitutional “invasion” by ICE and other agents that has roiled Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
Federal officials did not contest Gibson’s habeas petition.
Gibson, who reportedly fled the Liberian civil war as a child, says agents entered his home without showing a warrant. His wife, who was filming at the time, warned that children were inside, he says, and that agents holding rifles stood in their doorway. “One agent repeatedly claimed ‘We’re getting the papers’ in response to her demand to see the warrant,” he says. “But without showing a warrant, and apparently without having one, five to six agents moved in as if they were entering a war zone.”
Only after he was handcuffed, Gibson says, did the agents show his wife an administrative warrant.
One day after the judge ordered Gibson’s immediate release, ICE agents took him back into custody when he appeared for a routine immigration check-in at a Minnesota immigration office, according to his attorney, Marc Prokosch, who said Gibson arrived believing the court order had resolved the matter.
“We were there for a check-in, and the original officer said, ‘This looks good, I’ll be right back,’” Prokosch told the Associated Press. “And then there was a lot of chaos, and about five officers came out and then they said, ‘We’re going to be taking him back into custody.’ I was like, ‘Really, you want to do this again?’”
The re-arrest did not reverse the court’s finding that ICE violated the Fourth Amendment during the warrantless home entry, but underscores how the agency retains civil detention authority even if a judge rules that a specific arrest was unconstitutional.
Former President Bill Clinton released the following statement about what’s happening in Minneapolis and other places, as Trump unleashes the armed, masked ICE agents to arrest, harass, and murder our fellow citizens in pursuit of undocumented immigrants .
Well said. Where are other retired Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Senators?
Please speak up, Former Presidents Bush and Obama.
Diane Ravitch's blog 