ICE Tells Agents They Can Start Making Unjustified Arrests Again

Legal Issues

from the who-needs-warrants? dept

It has never been about removing dangerous criminals — the “worst of the worst” — from the United States. Under Donald Trump, immigration enforcement has been about removing immigrants from the country. Period. That’s the whole thing. (And, apparently the only immigrants welcome to seek shelter in the US are those of the whiter variety who are “suffering” the effects of a fake crisis manufactured by racist conspiracy theories.)

Not only does ICE believe it doesn’t need real warrants to enter homes, it believes it doesn’t even need self-issued “administrative” warrants to perform arrests. We’re seeing this all over the nation as ICE raids are now as common a feature in the daily news as sports scores and weather forecasts.

But in certain parts of the nation, ICE needs to show more than the usual nothing to support warrantless arrests. A settlement in a lawsuit filed during Trump’s first term — one that covers six states — said ICE agents must thoroughly document warrantless arrests. Despite the fact that this is still be litigated, ICE has told agents they no longer need to abide by this agreement, as Marisa Kabas reports for The Handbasket:

The terms of the settlement were given a three year duration, meaning it —by ICE’s definition, at least—expired last month. The email on Wednesday—a copy of which was shared with The Handbasket—was sent by ICE’s Principal Legal Advisor Charles Wall, and it made one thing clear: Agents are no longer constrained by the need to justify their warrantless arrests.

[…]

In Wall’s email he wrote: “Despite a pending motion to enforce the settlement agreement and a motion to extend the settlement agreement, it remains terminated. Accordingly, I hereby rescind the May 27, 2022, Castañon-Nava Settlement Obligation statement of policy.” 

Here’s what ICE is wiping off the books, despite pending motions to keep the settlement agreement in place. These stipulations applied to the six states (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas) overseen by the ICE Chicago field office, as listed on the National Immigrant Justice Center website (NIJC represented the plaintiffs):

Under the policy, ICE must document the facts and circumstances surrounding a warrantless arrest or vehicle stop in the individual’s arresting documentation, called an I-213, including:

1. The fact the noncitizen was arrested without an administrative warrant;
2. The location of the arrest (e.g., place of business, residence, vehicle, or a public area);
3. If arrested at a business, whether the individual is an employee of the business; if arrested at a residence, whether the person resides at that place of residence;
4. Ties to the community, if known at the time of arrest, including family, home, or employment;
5. The specific, particularized facts supporting the conclusion that the individual was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained; and
6. A statement of how the ICE officers identified themselves as ICE and “state[d] that the person is under arrest and the reason for the arrest.”

With respect to vehicle stops, ICE must also document specific facts that formed the basis for its reasonable suspicion that a person in the vehicle did not have legal status.

ICE’s lead law-talking guy thinks this should no longer apply because it expired on May 27, 2025. And he says so despite knowing (and admitting!) NIJC has been seeking to have this agreement extended since March 13.

Obviously, ICE never had any intention of following the agreement and would prefer to do its dirty business the way it’s doing it now: with masked agents, unmarked vehicles, and as little of a paper trail as possible. NIJC Associate Director Mark Fleming points out that being overseen by Joe Biden, rather than Donald Trump, didn’t have much of an effect on compliance.

[Fleming] made it clear that ICE has not been diligently observing this policy since Trump resumed office this year. As referenced in Wall’s email, NIJC has filed a motion to extend the terms because, “ICE has not been in substantial compliance with the settlement and consent decree over the last number of months.”

Fleming pointed to a recent case in Liberty, Missouri in which ICE raided a local restaurant to arrest one individual and ended up making 12 warrantless arrests—a clear violation of the policy that was created in response to the settlement. 

All this email does is create a quasi-legal cover for ICE’s continuous refusal to respect the rights of the people it arrests or detains. This puts the Chicago office — and the six states it covers — on equal footing with the rest of the nation where stipulations like these were never in place. ICE will continue to operate as though it’s a secret police agency, legally capable of disappearing literally anyone without so much as a self-issued warrant.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, charles wall, donald trump, ice, mass deportations, probable cause, warrantless arrests