House passes DHS funding bill despite Democratic opposition over ICE

WASHINGTON - The House narrowly passed $1.2 trillion in government funding Thursday, overcoming intense Democratic opposition to funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the agency surges operations in Minneapolis and other cities.

The Department of Homeland Security funding bill — which would allocate $64.4 billion to it, including $10 billion for ICE — was approved 220-207, with seven Democrats joining all but one Republican in voting yes.

Lawmakers also approved three other bills to fund the Departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education, by a wider bipartisan margin of 341-88.

Democrats have argued Congress should not approve funding for the immigration enforcement agency after officers sent to Minnesota and other states have taken action against U.S. citizens.

The agency has flooded cities across the country over the past year, which President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have said is necessary to deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records. But agents have been recorded aggressively detaining individuals, including many U.S. citizens or undocumented immigrants without violent criminal records.

Democratic negotiators on the House Appropriations Committee unsuccessfully pushed to include additional measures in the Homeland Security bill to ensure ICE does not deport U.S. citizens, to force ICE agents to use body cameras and to bar ICE agents from shooting at moving vehicles. The bill does reduce funding for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations by $115 million, decrease the number of detention beds by 5,500, set aside funding for body cameras for agents, and reduce funding for the Border Patrol.

ICE memo instructs officers to enter homes without a judge’s warrant

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo instructs agents and officers that they can enter a person’s home to arrest them without a judicial warrant, a move that immigration lawyers and advocates say violates the Constitution.

The memo, signed by Todd M. Lyons, acting director of ICE, gives the agency broad authority to enter homes to arrest immigrants. Officers are instructed that they can use a Form I-205 to force entry into a private residence. A Form I-205 is signed by an immigration enforcement official and authorizes an arrest following a final order of removal.

The memo advises ICE officers and agents to “use only a necessary and reasonable amount of force” to enter the home of someone who has a removal order and does not grant them permission to enter.

In an emailed statement, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin did not dispute the authenticity of the memo and said that every person subject to a Form I-205 has “had full due process and a final order of removal from an immigration judge.”

Asked about the memo at a news conference in Minneapolis on Thursday, ICE official Marcos Charles said: “We don’t break into anybody’s home. We make entry in either hot pursuit or with a criminal arrest warrant or administrative arrest warrant. The thing to remember is these administrative arrest warrants have been deemed justified by courts in immigration purposes.”

But legal experts say officials are conflating two very different things: A judicial warrant is signed by an independent and neutral judge who examines the evidence to determine if it is sufficient to grant the government the extraordinary power to force their way into someone’s home.

An administrative immigration warrant has none of those properties: They are almost always signed by a federal immigration officer — akin to the police — and the legal justification is not subject to review by a judge.

The issue is critical because the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect people from invasive government actions in their homes, shielding them from unreasonable searches and seizures. (Source: The Washington Post)