Massachusetts immigration advocates sued the Trump administration in federal court on Friday over a policy that allows for immigration agents to enter private homes without a warrant.
Whistleblowers with the agency recently revealed that the ICE policy exists, and that senior officials didn’t distribute physical copies of the memo even within the organization.
Lawyers for Civil Rights filed suit on behalf of organizational plaintiffs Brazilian Worker Center and Greater Boston Latino Network. They allege the memo was illegally issued, in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, and unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which bars searches and seizures without a warrant.
The immigrants’ rights nonprofits are asking the federal judge to immediately halt further implementation of the memo.
Brooke Simone, staff attorney for Lawyers for Civil Rights, said what makes this “incredibly urgent” is that some immigrants’ legal status is set to lapse next week. Temporary Protected Status for Haitians — including thousands of immigrants in Massachusetts — will expire Tuesday.
“They’re essentially sitting ducks. Their doors could be knocked down at any moment,” she said.
In an internal memo last May, Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons advised agents they can use force to enter private homes without a judicial warrant.
Specifically, Lyons wrote that officers can rely on Department of Homeland Security administrative warrants to enter people’s homes That document, known as a Form I-205, historically only lets officers take custody of immigrants who have a removal order issued by an immigration judge.
That guidance runs counter to what know-your-rights groups have long advised: that a warrant signed by a judge is necessary for immigration agents to enter a private home. Administrative warrants are different than judicial warrants, in that they’re not reviewed by an independent party and allow any supervising ICE official to sign and allow the entrance.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE didn’t return requests for comment.
The organizations said they were personally impacted because they had to reallocate funds toward additional trainings, presentations and workshops about warrantless home arrests. They had to restructure how they told member to safety interact with ICE agents.
Brazilian Worker Center says its resources have been taxed assisting a community hard hit by ICE, operating just one block away from the Allston car wash where nine employees were detained in November.
Immigrants look to the organization for guidance on how to interact with immigration enforcement, and what to do if an agent shows up at their door.
Brazilian Worker Center’s executive director Lenita Reason said, in one Allston arrest, immigration agents misrepresented themselves.
She said ICE agents knocked on an individual’s door, speaking in Portuguese and saying they were there for a “wellness check.” Once the door was opened, they detained an immigrant.
“We were able to once tell people that they have a right to not open the door, to asking for warrants signed by the judge with their names — but now we can’t ... and we can’t tell them, like, ‘ICE is gonna come and they’re gonna knock on your door. And if you don’t open, they might break it down,’” Reason said. “It’s unbelievable.”
The Greater Boston Latino Network says fewer people are now participating in its services.
Alexandra Oliver-Dávila, a steering committee member of the Greater Boston Latino Network, called the policy “insanity” in a phone interview.
“It’s hard to believe we’re celebrating 250 years of what we call freedom,” Oliver-Dávila said. “Because if we look back in history, having British soldiers be able to go into people’s homes without any warrant, without any thought except that they thought that person was against them ... it’s similar and really concerning.”
