‘We want you arrested because we said so’ – how ICE’s policy on raiding whatever homes it …

by John E. Jones III, Dickinson College, [This article first appeared in The Conversation, republished with permission] As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents continued to use aggressive and sometimes violent methods to make arrests in its mass deportation campaign, including breaking down doors in Minneapolis homes, a bombshell report from the Associated Press on Jan. 21, 2026, said that an internal ICE memo – acquired via a whistleblower – asserted that immigration officers could enter a home without a judge’s warrant. That policy, the report said, constituted “a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.” Those limits have long been found in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002, for a primer on the Fourth Amendment, and what the changes in the ICE memo mean. Okay, I’m going to read the Fourth Amendment – and then you’re going to explain it to us, please! Here goes: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
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