ICE's Fourth Amendment-free search policy, Minnesota church protest charges, and more

The Trump administration's cruel, lawless immigration enforcement efforts were on full display this week. So was the pushback.

Every week thus far in this young, very old year, has illustrated the lengths to which the Trump administration will go to operate in bad faith with inhumane cruelty and ignore the laws and Constitution, particularly to harm, punish, and retaliate against their chosen targets and perceived opponents.

This week — at least outside of the U.S. Supreme Court — President Donald Trump’s harsh immigration enforcement tactics were front and center.

On Wednesday, the Associated Press broke the news — via a whistleblower complaint — that senior officials in the Department of Homeland Security decided last May that they were in charge of the Fourth Amendment, secretly adopting a policy that erased longstanding Fourth Amendment rights for those people subject to deportation orders.

From the explosive May 2025 memo authored by Todd Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement:

Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose. Accordingly, in light of this legal determination, ICE immigration officers may arrest and detain aliens subject to a final under ut removal issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), or a U.S. district court judge or magistrate judge in their place of residence.

Although we haven’t seen that DHS Office of the General Counsel determination, DHS’s acting general counsel at the time was Joseph Mazzara.

Mazzara was most recently in the news for acknowledging that he was the person who gave DHS Secretary Kristi Noem legal advice about whether or not to turn around the Alien Enemies Act flights the night of March 15 after Chief Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to do so. (They did not turn the flights around.)

Sometime less than two months later, per Lyons, Mazzara’s office took on the Fourth Amendment as well.

The news is horrifying, not the least of which because it was the position of DHS for the past eight months — and it wasn’t public during any of that time.

In the best piece I’ve read on this Stanford Law School professor Orin Kerr — a Fourth Amendment expert — concluded on Thursday:

[I]f I had to summarize my current thinking, it seems to me that the DHS policy is likely wrong in light of [a 1971 Supreme Court decision], [a 1972 Supreme Court decision] and [a 1980 Supreme Court decision], although the DHS position is not frivolous in light of [a 1960 Supreme Court decision] as interpreted in [a 2021 district court ruling] — and the trickier issue may be actually getting a merits ruling on the issue in court in light of the absence of remedies due to the Supreme Court’s gradual cutting back on Bivens remedies. Or at least that’s my tentative take without actually getting to see the DHS legal analysis, and with the caveat that I don’t know the administrative law remedies that may be available.

If you want to dive in, go check out his piece.

Mazzara, meanwhile, is now the deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (Incidentally, before going to DHS, Mazzara was at the Texas Attorney General’s Office. In one notable case, he argued at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit one month before the 2024 election — in favor of nationwide injunctions.)

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The church protest arrests

As that news spread, Attorney General Pam Bondi began live-tweeting arrests of Minnesota activists involved in a protest at a Minnesota church where one of the pastors is the acting head of the Minnesota ICE field office — and the man who submitted a declaration defending ICE’s tactics in Minnesota in litigation before U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez alleging that the Trump administration has been violating the First and Fourth Amendment rights of protesters in the Twin Cities.

As for the three arrests carried out in response to the protest at the church where Easterwood is a pastor, DOJ unsuccessfully sought to keep the protesters detained after their arrests. As to the first two people arrested — Nekima Levy-Armstrong and Chauntyll Allen — that request was rejected both by Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko and U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino. The third person arrested — William Kelly — was ordered released by Micko.

And yet, the three face charges in a case that appears to have been prompted largely by right-wing outrage over Don Lemon’s livestreamed coverage of the protest. The Washington Post, moreover, reported on Thursday that DOJ sought to charge Lemon as well but a judge rejected the effort.

When the criminal complaint — signed by Timothy Gerber, OHS-ICE Special Agent — was unsealed Friday as to Levy-Armstrong, Allen, and Kelly, it was clear that others — whose names were redacted — were at least initially sought to be included in the complaint.

The complaint alleges a violation of the FACE Act — an abortion clinic access law that includes a religious worship protection section — and a related conspiracy charge.

Gerber’s supporting affidavit, which strongly supports the claim that Lemon was initially one of those targeted by the effort, frames the entire complaint with Lemon’s coverage.

As the affidavit continues, Gerber’s claims veer further and further from constituting any sort of professional assessment. Here is how Gerber disgustingly described the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in a section in which Allen was discussing what chants the group preferred:

In one parenthetical sentence, Gerber:

• Did not mention that ICE killed Good;

• Asserted that Good was involved in an “illegal protest” (Cc: Judge Menendez);

• Used the exonerative “officer-involved shooting” terminology; and

• Presented to the court as fact that Good “assault[ed] … an immigration officer,” contrary to The New York Times review of available video.

This is Trump administration. Charges like this — backed up with false and misleading claims like this — will continue.

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That wasn’t all this week

There are the enraging, heartbreaking stories about Liam Ramos and other children arrested by ICE.

The lawless boat-strike murders continue.

As The New York Times noted in its report, this was the “first known boat strike in the eastern Pacific since the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela“ — bringing ”the known death toll“ from the strikes “to 125 since early September.”

Also Friday night, there was still more news about Geraldo Lunas Campos — one of three people who have died at ICE’s El Paso Camp East Montana this year and whose autopsy led to a homicide finding earlier this week. The Washington Post reported that ICE staff at the facility “told [911] dispatchers the detainee had tried to hang himself — an account that appears to conflict with the medical examiner’s recent finding of a homicide while being restrained by guards.”

It’s all horrible, yes.

And yet, I don’t want to leave this on that note.

In spite of it all, the people remain my strongest reminder that the Trump administration is isolating itself and will, eventually, fail.

Thousands and thousands of people in Minnesota came out in frigid temperatures and hundreds of business were closed in protest to support getting “ICE Out!” of the state.

Judges this week also pushed back against overreach, and individuals targeted by the administration did the same — with support from lawyers willing to stand up for the law.

And, as we saw in Chicago, juries continued to serve as a final backstop.