‘Know Your Rights’ Efforts Confront Reality of ICE’s Forced-Entry Tactics

Since the start of the second Trump administration, advocacy and legal groups have scaled up their efforts to inform immigrants about their constitutional right to demand a warrant if federal agents come knocking at their door.

But it’s growing increasingly difficult to inform immigrants of their rights when those rights are being chipped away, the groups say.

“We can provide all this information about ‘here’s what your rights are, by the letter of the law,’ and these things that we as lawyers held to be true for so long, or we thought we held to be true for so long, and they’re just being completely shattered right in front of our eyes, day by day,” said Julia Decker, policy director at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

A recently publicized internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo revealed federal officers are being trained to force their way into immigrants’ homes without a judge’s sign-off, relying on a document that only requires the signature of an ICE employee after a final removal order is issued.

Organizers of “Know Your Rights” efforts said they will forge ahead in telling immigrants they shouldn’t let immigration officials into their homes without seeing a judicial warrant, a general requirement under the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. But they’re also urging them to memorize their attorneys’ phone numbers, gather their immigration case documentation and remain calm and silent.

“It’s just an upside-down world,” Decker said.

The possibility of deportation has always loomed over people living in the country without legal status, but “it’s a different thing to have thousands of federal agents just here in the city and across the state, and if you step outside your door at any given time, you could be dragged out of your car, and taken away, and shipped off to Texas,” she said.

It’s unclear to what extent ICE is deploying administrative warrants to enter immigrants’ homes without consent. The internal directive from the agency’s acting director, Todd Lyons, dated May 12, was unveiled by two whistleblowers and first reported by The Associated Press last week. Trump administration officials told NBC News that forcible entries without judicial warrants have taken place since last summer.

Earlier this month, federal immigration officers broke down the door to a Minneapolis home with a battering ram to arrest Garrison Gibson, a Liberian man who was ordered removed from the country in 2009 and complied with ICE check-ins over the years, according to The Washington Post. That entry relied on an administrative warrant, not a judicial one.

Following the revelation of ICE’s memo, Vice President JD Vance said during a press conference in Minneapolis last week that administrative warrants, which don’t require an impartial judge’s approval, were appropriate to enforce immigration law.

“It’s possible, I guess, that the courts will say no,” Vance said. “And of course, if the courts say no, we would follow that law. But nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant.”

The existence of the administrative warrants isn’t new, but the scope of power the Trump administration is placing on them to enter private residencies illustrates how the administration is flouting the law, said Malou Chávez, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

More than 25,000 people attended the Seattle-based organization’s trainings in 2025, she said.

“It’s a matter of reading the room and avoiding harm to one’s self or others, but continuing to exercise our rights,” Chávez said of how people should react in the event of forced entry into their homes. “And the truth is that a violation of a constitutional right could then lead to potential defenses against evidence use, against a deportation case.”

The group Siembra started leading community efforts to respond to immigration enforcement in North Carolina under the first Trump administration. It has seen a surge in volunteers wanting to inform neighbors about their rights.

It’s also seen cases of federal agents entering private areas of businesses, such as offices or backrooms where only employees can go, without warrants, Siembra communications strategist Emanuel Gomez-Gonzalez said.

“And all this memo really does, in our view, is make it clear that the unconstitutional actions that are leading to interrogations, detentions and deportations that started last year under this administration are not only fully on display in Minnesota during this ongoing occupation of the state, but this was a directive from the top,” Gomez-Gonzalez said.

At the moment, Siembra hasn’t received reports of ICE agents using administrative warrants to enter immigrants’ homes. Gomez-Gonzalez said the groups’ information efforts are targeted to what is happening in the state. Hence the focus on business owners.

“I always advise caution and care whenever we are dealing with an administration that is looking to provoke this kind of anticipation of what is blatantly impermissible under the Constitution,” Gomez-Gonzalez said.