ACLU sues ICE over warrantless home entries in three states

The Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to get a judicial warrant, signed by a neutral magistrate, before making most arrests. Immigration enforcement has historically worked differently. ICE uses administrative warrants, called Form I-200 (Warrant for Arrest of Alien) and Form I-205 (Warrant of Removal), which ICE officers sign themselves without any judge reviewing the probable cause determination. Federal statute allows warrantless immigration arrests only when an officer has reason to believe a person is in the country illegally and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. That flight risk finding is supposed to be individualized for each person.\n\nIn January 2026, the Trump administration issued a memo redefining flight risk so broadly that nearly any immigrant who hasn't already voluntarily turned themselves in qualifies. Critics, including the ACLU, argued the memo effectively eliminated the individualized assessment federal law requires and made every ICE warrantless arrest constitutionally suspect.

ICE arrested 36,099 people in January 2026, the highest monthly total in the agency's history. The enforcement surge was carried out primarily under administrative arrest authority, with officers using Form I-200 warrants they issued themselves rather than seeking judicial review.

As of early March 2026, ICE held 68,289 people in immigration detention. Of those, 73.6% had no criminal conviction. Acting ICE Director TLTodd Lyons signed the May 12, 2025 memo authorizing the home entry policy, titled 'Utilizing Form I-205, Warrant of Removal.' The memo was kept classified internally — ICE told personnel to review it only in the presence of a supervisor, return it, and take no notes. Whistleblowers revealed it to Congress in late January 2026.

On March 18, 2026, the ACLU of 🌰Ohio, Community Refugee and Immigration Services, and allied civil rights groups filed a federal class-action lawsuit in Columbus challenging ICE and DHS for conducting warrantless immigration arrests across Ohio without individualized flight risk assessments. The lawsuit asked the federal court to certify a class of everyone arrested without a judicial warrant for alleged immigration violations since April 22, 2025. Attorneys with the ACLU of Ohio described the pattern: in one documented case, ICE agents arrested a Sandusky man in a Walmart parking lot without presenting a warrant or asking him any questions.

The 🌰Ohio lawsuit is one of three parallel class-actions the ACLU filed in March 2026. The ACLU of 🌲North Carolina filed suit on behalf of five named plaintiffs, several of whom were U.S. citizens. WWWilly Wender Aceituno, a 46-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who had lived in Charlotte for more than 25 years, was among those named. Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, 23, is a U.S. citizen born in North Carolina. Edwin Godinez and his brother Yair Alexander Napoles, both U.S. citizens, were also named plaintiffs. The fact that U.S. citizens were swept up in the arrests strengthened the constitutional challenge by showing the enforcement pattern reached beyond undocumented immigrants.

The 🦆Minnesota lawsuit added a separate dimension: ICE officers in Minneapolis defied a federal court order. The 🌲Washington Post reported that ICE agents carried out arrests that a federal court had specifically prohibited, creating a direct confrontation between the executive branch's enforcement operation and the judiciary's authority to issue binding orders. That defiance of court orders moved the conflict from a legal dispute over arrest standards into a constitutional standoff about whether the executive branch must follow judicial commands.

At the heart of all three lawsuits is the difference between an administrative warrant and a judicial warrant. A judicial warrant requires a neutral judge or magistrate to review the evidence and find probable cause before signing. An administrative warrant is signed by an ICE officer with no judicial review. No federal court has ever held that an administrative warrant authorizes forced entry into a home, and several courts have blocked such entries. The ACLU lawsuits argue that using administrative warrants as a substitute for judicial process also fails to satisfy the Fourth Amendment's requirements for prolonged detention.

The May 2025 DHS memo compounded the constitutional problem. The memo claimed ICE could force entry into American homes using only administrative warrants, reversing decades of agency practice that required either consent or a judicial warrant for home entry. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan became the first federal judge to rule directly on the new policy, issuing an order on January 17, 2026 finding that ICE had violated the Fourth Amendment when agents used a battering ram to enter the Minneapolis home of GGGarrison Gibson, a Liberian national, under only an administrative warrant. Bryan wrote: “This arrest violated the Fourth Amendment.”

Courts in 🌴California and 🤠Texas separately declined to endorse the admin warrant approach for home entries. DHS General Counsel James Percival published a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing the policy was constitutional, claiming the Eighth Circuit had already endorsed admin warrants for home entry. Bryan’s January ruling directly contradicted that position and became the anchor case cited in all three ACLU class-action lawsuits filed in March 2026.

AGAmy Gilbert, an attorney with the ACLU of 🌰Ohio, said Ohioans were scared and that immigration agents were violating the law.

ACLU of 🌲North Carolina staff attorney CSCorina Scott and LGLucia Goin of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project are among the attorneys prosecuting the parallel suits. The lawsuits are backed by Democracy Forward and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in North Carolina. On April 2, 2026, Protect Democracy, the ACLU, and Dorsey & Whitney filed a separate federal suit in 🏛️Washington, D.C. on behalf of immigrants and U.S. citizens affected by the Home Entry Memo, naming Acting ICE Director TLTodd Lyons directly as a defendant.

The legal outcome of these class-actions will determine whether the executive branch can continue conducting mass immigration arrests without judicial oversight across large portions of the country. Courts in at least three circuits — the Sixth, Fourth, and Eighth — will have to decide whether the January 2026 flight risk redefinition and the reliance on administrative warrants satisfy the Fourth Amendment's requirements.

DHS claimed the Eighth Circuit had already blessed the admin warrant approach, citing United States v. Lucas. But that case produced a 5-5 split among the 13 judges who heard it, and no majority endorsed the specific rationale DHS relied on. A ruling against the government could require ICE to seek judicial authorization before every home entry arrest, which DHS argued would make mass enforcement operations practically impossible.