A newly disclosed whistleblower complaint indicates that Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorized its officers to enter homes without judicial warrants in the cases of people with deportation orders, a sweeping reversal of longstanding rules.
Historically, ICE has told its officers that they could not rely on administrative immigration warrants — signed by officials at the agency, not judges — to enter people's homes, due to constitutional protections against warrantless searches.
But a May 2025 memo disclosed Wednesday by two U.S. government whistleblowers gave ICE officers permission to use those administrative immigration warrants to enter residences by force to arrest unauthorized immigrants who had been ordered deported by an immigration judge or court.
The directive, signed by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, says, "Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose."
Lyons' memo empowered ICE officers to use the "necessary and reasonable amount of force to enter the alien's residence" if the targets of operations do not allow them inside.
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