SAN DIEGO — Since coming to the United States 30 years ago from Mexico, Fernando Perez said U.S. immigration officers have stopped by his home several times, but he has never opened his door once.
“There are rules and I know them,” said Perez, speaking in a mix of English and Spanish in the parking lot of a Home Depot, where he routinely sought work as a day laborer from contractors and people renovating their homes.
Over the decades, it has become common knowledge in immigrant communities across the country not to open the door to federal immigration officials unless they present a warrant signed by a judge. The Supreme Court has long held that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure prohibits the government’s forcible entry into someone’s home.
As a result, immigration officers have had to adapt by making arrests in public places, which often requires long hours of surveillance outside homes while they wait to catch someone walking into the street.
But internally Immigration and Customs Enforcement memorandum Immigration officers can forcefully enter people’s homes without it, states the AP, obtained by The Associated Press The judge orderedThis represents a radical shift that could upend the legal advice provided to immigrants for decades.
The shift comes as President Donald Trump’s administration dramatically expands immigration detention across the country Mass deportation campaign This is true Reshape implementation tactics In cities like Minneapolis.
In the past, officers would knock on the door, wait, then move forward, Perez said.
“But if they start coming to my house, where I’m paying rent — and they’re not paying rent — that’s the last straw,” he said.
Most immigration arrests were carried out under administrative orders, which are documents issued by immigration authorities authorizing an arrest. Traditionally, they do not allow officers to enter private spaces without approval. Only orders signed by independent judges carry this authority.
It is unclear how widely the memorandum’s guidance applies to immigration enforcement operations. ICE officers witnessed the AP He crashed through the front door A Liberian man’s home in Minneapolis on January 11, under an administrative order only, wearing heavy tactical gear and with their rifles drawn.
Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is demanding congressional hearings on the ICE memo and calling on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for an explanation.
“Every American should be horrified by ICE’s secretive policy that allows its agents to break down your front door and break into your home,” Blumenthal said in a press release.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court in 1980 that “physical entry into a home is the primary evil targeted by the wording of the Fourth Amendment.”
For years, people have been able to avoid arrest by skipping work and outings for several days until agents move on. A senior ICE official once likened the experience of surveillance to watching paint dry.
In July, the AP noted that immigration officers saw a Russian man entering his home in Irvine, California. They gave up when he didn’t leave after three hours. They waited even longer for a Mexican man who never left his home in nearby El Monte, although they met him two days later at a convenience store.
ICE experimented with what the agency called “knocking and chatting” to get people to answer the door by casually asking residents to step out to answer a few questions, according to a 2020 lawsuit in which a federal judge found the practice illegal. In one case, they told a woman that they were probation officers looking for her brother.
Too often, immigration officers simply play the waiting game – a pace that is not conducive to Trump fulfilling his promise of mass deportation.
Since shortly after ICE was created in 2003, advocacy groups and immigrant-friendly state and local governments have spread the word that people should not open their doors to immigration officials unless they can show a warrant signed by a judge.
They held Know your rights Provided training sessions to communities, distributed flyers and posted videos on social media to teach migrants how to protect themselves.
Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, which has held such training sessions, called the memo “deeply disturbing.”
“Know your rights trainings have included that information for decades, and even people who only know the bare minimum about their rights learn it because it’s kind of the first, foundational element of Fourth Amendment law,” he said. “They know to ask officers to put the warrant under the door so they can see if it’s signed by a judge or if it’s an administrative warrant.”
In the majority-Latino city of Santa Ana, where ICE agents were seen roaming the streets in recent days, several residents who did not want to be named said they were well aware of that right. Jesus Delgado, a father of three, said the local elementary school sent information to parents about what to do if ICE shows up at your door.
“They send us notices not to answer the door, not to answer any questions,” he said.
Another man said he learned it from TikTok.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, has sharply criticized the groups providing the information.
“They call it ‘Know Your Rights,'” he said last year on CNN. “I call it ‘How to Escape Arrest.'”
The memo says immigration officers can forcefully enter homes and arrest immigrants using a warrant signed by an immigration official only if they have a final order of removal.
Officers must first knock on the door and say who they are and why they are at the residence, and they cannot enter the home until after 6 a.m. and before 10 p.m. Those inside must be given a “reasonable opportunity to act lawfully.” But if that doesn’t work, the memo says, they can use force to get in.
Law enforcement and legal experts warn that if more immigration officers break into homes, everyone could be at greater risk.
Through strict laws, people in many states have the right to shoot intruders, which could lead to officers shooting, or agents shooting someone who comes at them with a baseball bat or something else they grab at a moment’s notice, Arulanantham said. ICE records often contain wrong addresses, which can lead to more confrontations and agents breaking into the homes of American citizens.
Arulanantham said agents’ aggressive tactics have been on the rise since The Supreme Court filed A lower court order in September bars federal agents in the Los Angeles area from randomly stopping people because of race, language, occupation or location.
“This will be just another step on that path,” he added. “Obviously it would be more important because it signals that you are not even safe in your own home.”
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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report. Thaksin reported from Santa Ana, California.