ICE Acting Director Lyons issued classified memo authorizing warrantless home entry for immigration arrests

On May 12, 2025, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memo authorizing agents to forcibly enter private homes using administrative warrants signed by ICE supervisors rather than federal judges. The memo directed that agents may use these supervisor-signed warrants—not judicial warrants—to enter the homes of individuals with final orders of removal. This departed from longstanding DHS practice, which had required judicial warrants for non-consensual home entry, and from the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches, which courts have applied to both citizens and noncitizens on U.S. soil.

The memo was marked for restricted internal distribution: agents were required to review it only in the presence of a supervisor, return it immediately after review, and take no notes. Two whistleblowers revealed the memo to Senator Richard Blumenthal; NBC News published the full account in January 2026. The memo had reportedly been used to train incoming ICE agents. Legal analysts at the Brennan Center and Just Security noted that administrative warrants—signed by agency officials rather than neutral magistrates—have not been accepted by federal courts as equivalent to judicial warrants for home entry purposes, and that the policy exposed ICE operations to Fourth Amendment challenges.

The Standing records this because it documents a formal executive agency directive authorizing officer conduct that courts have rejected as constitutionally insufficient. The classification of the memo—requiring agents to return it without notes—suggests an awareness that the policy would not survive public or judicial scrutiny. The disclosure by whistleblowers and the subsequent congressional and legal response mark this as a settled instance of executive agency action exceeding its constitutional authority in immigration enforcement.

Updates

2026-02-23 — Former ICE attorney testified agency trains cadets to make warrantless home entries [6, 7]

Former ICE attorney Ryan Schwank, who resigned February 13, 2026 after being assigned to teach at the agency's Georgia training academy, testified before a February 23, 2026 congressional forum chaired by Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Robert Garcia that on his first day as an instructor he "received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant" — directly corroborating that the Home Entry Memo has been operationalized into cadet training. Schwank also testified the academy significantly cut training time and eliminated use-of-force training. DHS disputed the testimony, saying new recruits "receive the same hours of training officers have always received."

2026-04-02 — ACLU and Protect Democracy filed Gibson v. DHS challenging the Home Entry Memo [4, 5]

On April 2, 2026, Protect Democracy, the ACLU, the ACLU of Minnesota, the ACLU of D.C., and Dorsey & Whitney filed Gibson v. DHS in federal court on behalf of six immigrants and U.S. citizens — including Minnesota families — targeted by forced, warrantless home entries. The suit names DHS, ICE, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center as defendants, challenges the Home Entry Memo as unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, and seeks to vacate it under the Administrative Procedures Act. Lead plaintiff Teyana Gibson Brown alleged that masked, armed ICE agents used a battering ram to force entry into her home, pointed guns at her family including her 9-year-old daughter, and detained her husband.