By Benjamin S. Weiss
WASHINGTON (CN) — House Democrats on Monday demanded the Department of Homeland Security rescind a controversial directive allowing federal immigration agents to forcibly enter people’s homes without a signed warrant from a judge, following the leak of a memorandum detailing the agency’s broad assertion of law enforcement authority.
Lawmakers say the memo took “a battering ram” to the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure — and pushed back on the Trump administration’s claims that non-U.S. citizens are not subject to those rights.
Homeland Security came under the congressional microscope last month amid the immigration blitz in Minnesota, which saw federal agents conducting aggressive enforcement operations across the state. In Minneapolis, the agency’s campaign resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens, both shot and killed by federal officers.
Amid the heightened scrutiny, whistleblowers leaked to Congress a May 2025 memo from Homeland Security, signed by acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Todd Lyons, which authorized federal agents to forcibly enter homes without a judicial warrant. The directive appears to run counter to longstanding Supreme Court precedent which bars law enforcement from carrying out such searches without a warrant from a neutral judge.
Instead, the memo permits agents to enter homes if they acquire an administrative warrant, an authorization issued by Homeland Security itself and often signed by an immigration judge or immigration officer.
The agency directive generated controversy among immigration advocacy groups and legal aid organizations, which have long advised that an administrative warrant does not authorize a search and that people should not open their doors for federal agents without a signed judicial warrant.
And in a letter to Lyons and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, sent Monday evening and obtained exclusively by Courthouse News, a group of Democrats led by Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin and Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal contended the Trump administration had run afoul of years of legal — and constitutional — precedent.
“The law is clear: ICE does not have the authority to overturn any legal precedent, much less ignore one of the foundational constitutional rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights,” the lawmakers wrote. “You must rescind this memo and adhere to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment by ensuring your agents obtain a judicial warrant prior to making any nonconsensual entry into a private residence.”
The group of Democrats, which also included Representatives Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania and Lucy McBath of Georgia, pointed to landmark Supreme Court rulings, such as the justices’ 1972 decision in Shadwick v. City of Tampa that search warrants be issued by a “neutral and detached” jurist capable of determining whether probable cause exists.
And the lawmakers cited the Homeland Security’s own legal training handbook, which describes entering a home to arrest a person without a warrant or an exception to the warrant as “typically” a violation of the Fourth Amendment, “regardless of whether the officer has probable cause to arrest the suspect.” An officer who enters a home to make an arrest, the manual states, must have a warrant, consent or an “exigent circumstance.”
The Trump administration, however, has countered that only an administrative warrant is necessary for federal agents to enter the home of a person with a final removal order signed by an immigration judge.
Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said last month that agency-level warrants have been used for decades and that they’ve been recognized by the Supreme Court and lower courts.
“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,” she said in a post on X. “The officer also has probable cause.”
And in a Jan. 22 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Department of Homeland Security general counsel James Percival claimed people here illegally are not entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as other U.S. citizens.
But the group of House Democrats fired back Monday, telling Noem and Lyons that the agency attorney’s claims were “unsupported.”
“No precedent has held or even suggested such a reading of the Fourth Amendment, and the amendment’s text specifically refers to the rights of ‘people’ rather than ‘citizens,’” they said. The lawmakers also pointed to at least one incident in which federal agents forcibly entered a U.S. citizen’s home in Minnesota without judicial warrant — pouring further cold water on Homeland Security’s defense.
A spokesperson for the department did not immediately return a request for comment.
Democrats plea to walk back the agency’s controversial warrants directive comes as President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration tactics are facing widening blowback in Congress. The House is expected to vote Tuesday on a package of government funding bills but will only consider a stopgap budget for Homeland Security after Senate Democrats successfully convinced Republicans to delay negotiations on the agency’s spending limits.
Congressional Democrats want their colleagues to consider a raft of reforms for federal immigration agents, including legislation that will bar officers from wearing masks that conceal their identity and force them to wear body-worn cameras.
Noem announced Monday that ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents working in Minneapolis would begin wearing body cams “effective immediately,” and that the program would be expanded nationwide “as funding is available.”
The Homeland Security secretary is expected to testify in the Senate next month.