WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. immigration agents are asserting broad powers to force entry into homes without a warrant, according to an internal memo from immigration authorities obtained by The Associated Press, marking a radical shift from longstanding guidelines intended to ensure constitutional limits during government raids.
The memo authorizes ICE agents to use force to enter a residence, basing this on only a more limited administrative order to arrest someone who is subject to a final deportation order—a move activists say clashes with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of guidance given to immigrant communities.
This shift arrives as the presidency of Donald Trump has dramatically expanded immigration arrests nationwide, deploying thousands of agents in a mass deportation campaign that is already reshaping policing strategies in cities such as Minneapolis.
For years, immigrant advocates, legal-aid groups, and local governments have urged people not to open the door to immigration officers unless shown a judge-signed warrant. That guidance rests on Supreme Court rulings that generally prohibit security forces from entering a home without judicial authorization. The ICE directive directly undermines that recommendation, at a moment when arrests are accelerating due to the administration’s immigration push.
The memo itself has not been widely circulated inside the agency, according to a whistleblower’s complaint, but its contents have been used to train new ICE agents dispatched to cities and towns to implement the president’s immigration campaign. New ICE employees, and those still in training, are told to follow the memo’s directives instead of the written training materials that actually contradict it, according to the complaint.
It is unclear to what extent the directive has been applied in immigration enforcement operations. The AP witnessed ICE agents ramming the front door of the home of Garrison Gibson, a Liberian man with a deportation order in force since 2023, in Minneapolis on January 11, wearing heavy tactical gear and with rifles drawn.
Documents reviewed by the AP showed that the agents only possessed an administrative order, meaning there was no judge authorized to approve the entry into private property.
It is almost certain that this change will face legal challenges and strong criticism from activist groups, as well as migrant-friendly state and local governments, which for years have urged people not to open their doors unless ICE shows a judge-signed warrant.
The AP obtained the memo and the whistleblower complaint from a congressional official who shared them on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive documents. The AP verified the authenticity of the whistleblower’s accounts.
The memo, signed by Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, and dated May 12, 2025, states: “While historically the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not relied solely on administrative orders to arrest aliens subject to final orders of deportation at their place of residence, the DHS Office of the Principal Legal Advisor has recently determined that the United States Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative orders for this purpose.”
The memo does not detail how such a determination was made or what its legal implications might be.
Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS Homeland Security spokesperson, told AP in an email that all individuals whom the department notifies with an administrative order have already undergone “due process and a final deportation order.”
She indicated that the officials who issued those orders also found probable cause for the arrest, and that the Supreme Court and Congress have “recognized the legality of administrative orders in immigration enforcement,” without providing further detail. McLaughlin did not respond to questions about whether ICE agents have entered a residence based solely on an administrative order since the memo’s issuance, and if so, how often.
Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal organization that helps whistleblowers expose misconduct, noted in the complaint obtained by the AP that it represents two anonymous federal officials “who disclose an institutional policy directive that is secret and apparently unconstitutional.”
A wave of recent high-profile arrests—many inside private homes and businesses and captured on video—has highlighted immigration arrest tactics, including the use of warrants tailored to the case by agents.
Most immigration arrests are carried out under administrative warrants, which are internal documents issued by immigration authorities authorizing the arrest of a specific person but not allowing forced entry into private homes or other nonpublic spaces without consent. Only warrants signed by judges carry that authority.
All law enforcement operations—including those conducted by ICE and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—are governed by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects everyone in the country from unreasonable searches and seizures.
People can lawfully refuse entry to federal immigration agents at private property if those agents only have an administrative order, with a few limited exceptions.
The memo states that ICE agents may forcibly enter homes and arrest immigrants with only an administrative order—referred to as an I-205—if they hold a final deportation order issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), a district judge, or a magistrate judge.
The document adds that agents must first knock and identify themselves and explain why they are at the residence. They have a limited window to enter the dwelling: after 6 a.m. and before 10 p.m. Those inside the home must have a “reasonable opportunity to respond legally.” But if that fails, the memo states, the agents may use force to enter.
“If the foreign national refuses to permit entry, the officers and ICE agents must use only the force necessary and reasonable to enter the foreign national’s residence, after proper notice by the officer’s or agent’s authority and their intent to enter,” the document states.
The memo is addressed to all ICE personnel. However, it has only been shown to “select DHS officials,” who then shared it with some employees and told them to read and return it, Whistleblower Aid wrote in the disclosure.
One of the two whistleblowers was allowed to view the memo only in the presence of a supervisor and then had to return it. That person was not allowed to take notes. One whistleblower was able to access the document and legally disclose it to Congress, Whistleblower Aid noted.
Although the memo was issued in May, David Kligerman, senior vice president and senior advisor at Whistleblower Aid, said it took his clients a long time to find a “safe and legal path to disclose it to lawmakers and the American people.”
The ICE has quickly hired thousands of new deportation agents to implement the president’s mass deportation agenda. They train at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Brunswick, Georgia.
During an AP tour there in August, ICE officials reiterated that new agents are trained to comply with the Fourth Amendment.
Nevertheless, according to the whistleblowers’ account, newly hired agency agents are told they may rely solely on administrative orders to enter homes and conduct arrests, despite that guidance contradicting DHS’s written training materials.
Lindsay Nash, a law professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law in New York, said the memo “openly contradicts” what the Fourth Amendment protects and what ICE has historically said its authority is.
She noted there is an “enormous potential for overreach and missteps, and we’ve seen that those can occur with very, very serious consequences.”
