ICE Memo on Home Entry Raises Fourth Amendment Questions (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The ice crackdown in America is quickly expanding with some questionable tactics, questionable investigations, and as you're about to find out, questionable legal justifications. And while Minneapolis, yes, has been the epicenter, the administration tonight is surging ICE agents into a new target, Maine. The administration is calling it Operation Catch of the Day. Yes, just like catch and release, these dehumanizing fishing analogies continue. One city councilor in Portland, Maine, is calling it something else.

[00:00:35] Speaker 2: I want to be really clear. This is a war of terror that's being waged on our city by the federal government. We've seen people of all ages getting thrown on the ground and getting thrown into trucks.

[00:00:51] Speaker 1: Maine's governor says the federal government is only sowing intimidation and fear. And if that sounds familiar, well, it should because it's happening in Minneapolis could be a preview of what happens in Maine. We've already seen the video showing aggressive ICE tactics, and tonight we're learning about a new one. ICE officers are using sweeping new power to enter homes without a warrant from a judge. The Associated Press has obtained an internal ICE memo that says that agents can enter a residence with only an administrative warrant if they're trying to arrest someone with a final order of removal. I can tell you right now that's headed straight to a legal collision with the Fourth Amendment because that treats the home as a protected space. I mean, literally the word houses is in the text. It 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 warrant shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation. Now one of the few exceptions could be hot pursuit. Think textbook that's a person commits a crime. They're seen running into their house for cover. The cops are chasing them and they run into the house to get them requiring some sort of what they call exigency. Not only used in a civil context like an administrative warrant but here's the thing that's the textbook classroom discussion and the real world is already happening apparently. Look at this video from Minneapolis earlier this month. You can see federal agents ramming through someone's door. The rifles are drawn and the AP says the home belonged to a Liberian man and agents forced their way in with only an administrative warrant. So if this memo is accurate it's likely to further spike tensions between federal agents and anti-ice protesters especially when they have suggested that being near the target could sweep you into their dragnet as well. Would that now mean everyone in the house would not have the same fourth amendment protection? This is from Minneapolis today. A witness says officers deployed some kind of green chemical agent. You can see them dragging someone across the snow. Here's another video from that same altercation towing border patrol chief Greg Bovino throwing a canister into the crowd. The administration did notch a temporary legal win today. A federal appeals court froze a judge's order that limited how federal officers could act around peaceful protesters. All that's going to make for a very tense backdrop tomorrow when vice president J.D. Vance shows up to Minneapolis. We're told he plans to defend how ICE agents are carrying out their operations. But one person Vance has not been defending, Rene Good. It's been two weeks since she was shot and killed by ICE. Two weeks since Vance stood in the White House briefing room and blamed Good for what was his phrase a tragedy of her own making. By tragedy did he mean her own death? In just a moment Good's attorney will join me. But first I want to bring in the former acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, John Sanwed. He's also an attorney. And John, I want to first level set here if we can. Is this a departure from typical ICE procedures when you're trying to detain someone who may have that final order of removal?

[00:04:50] Speaker 3: Yeah, Laura, this is a significant departure. I mean really a true reversal from what longstanding position is at DHS and ICE. Traditionally the position was that you cannot forcibly enter a home without a judicially authorized warrant. So that's your warrant, Laura, as you well know, where you have the officers to fill out an affidavit detailing every element that led to them having probable cause that the individual, let's say in this case if it's an immigration case would be the undocumented immigrant is there, is present, that their immigration status, that they've been ordered to remove. The administrative warrant is just a form, Laura. It's really just a form the officer fills out and maybe another officer signs it. But it's nothing more than a couple of boxes. So the idea though that ICE has now suddenly reversed and said we can forcibly enter a home with just those administrative warrants really is pretty surprising and shocking to me, given the longstanding history and the training and everything else that was very, very clear that you do not, you cannot forcibly enter with just that piece of paper, that form.

[00:05:47] Speaker 1: And no Supreme Court case saying that that is different now, I mean the Fourth Amendment still holds even for people who are maybe non-citizens in this country. But the Associated Press, John, report memo has been, quote, shown only to select DHS officials who then shared it with some employees who were told to read it and return it. Now, what does that signal to you?

[00:06:10] Speaker 3: It signals to me real concerns about the legal basis of your memo. Laura, I talked to, I actually talked to a couple of former lawyers who were in the general counsel's office during the beginning of this administration. They had heard rumors of something like this was going on, but it was being limited to the political class, right, that only the new Trump appointees were working on this memo. All of that is very weird and obviously all of that is very suspicious. But Laura, let me just highlight something very quickly. The immigration advocacy groups are out there and it's getting well known in these communities that are being targeted that ICE could not enter the home with just that administrative warrant. And so, you know, look, I think the administration is looking at this and they're having an increasing problem. It takes a long time to go get those warrants. As you know, the officers have to submit the affidavit, stand before that federal judge, swear to it, and then they can get the warrant. That doesn't lend itself well to a mass deportation campaign. But look, anytime you're drafting legal memos in secret and you're sharing them in secret and you're telling people they can't copy them and you're hiding them from Congress and the public, you should be concerned about the underlying legal basis of that memo.

[00:07:08] Speaker 1: A very good point. When I was out there, people were actually handing out little rights cards to people, telling them what officers could and could not do in the constitution because they were trying to maybe get ahead of what was to come. Meantime, a judge paused a ruling that restricted federal agents from arresting or tear gassing peaceful protesters. And then moments later, the Border Patrol chief, Greg Bovino, deployed a gas canister after warnings, as you heard him give, during clashes with protesters. Now, DHS says the protesters were following Bovino and other agents at gas stations. They were trying their vehicles, even throwing food at them. What do you make of that scene?

[00:07:48] Speaker 3: You know, Laura, if you had any desire to de-escalate the situation, for better or worse, Greg Bovino has become very much a face of these campaigns. We've seen him in Chicago, we've seen him in Los Angeles. He's become pretty well-known as a result of this. He knows that. If he had any desire to de-escalate the situation, lower the temperature in Minneapolis, and again, I've said this a million times, during the Obama administration, there was a lot of criticism about immigration enforcement, but record numbers of criminal aliens were removed without images like this, without these scenes that we're seeing play out everywhere, without this confrontation with the public at large. And so my point is, you can say we can do this in a way that lowers the temperature without, you know, being on the side of criminal aliens, as some of the administration have said, or being in favor of open borders. But, you know, for Bovino to consistently go out to the scene of these protests, he knows his presence is going to inflame things. He knows that. Why does he keep going? There's no operational reason for him to arrive on the scene there. And it's just unfortunate. It just feels often to me like the administration wants to come and inflame these tensions and create more of these scenes, rather than lower the temperature and let ICE do its job and get legitimate bad people off the street, but do it quietly and professionally.

[00:08:57] Speaker 1: I'll tell you, he does stand out. He doesn't wear a mask among a lot of masked agents. You wonder what the point of that is. John Sandweg, thank you so much.