DOJ Directive Tells Agents to Make AEA Arrests in Homes Without Warrants

A 14 March 2025 directive by Attorney General Pam Bondi was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, and among other items it grants “authority” to enter a target’s home without a warrant.

Property of the People, an advocacy group for open government, acquired the memo and provided it to USA Today. Its features include:

• Front-line officers pursuing suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua are told to seek a warrant for apprehension and removal “as much as practicable.” Such warrants are administrative,  signed by immigration officers rather than by judges as criminal warrants are.
• Citing a “dynamic nature of law enforcement procedures,” officers can “apprehend aliens” based on a “reasonable belief” they meet the criteria for arrest.
• Officers are told they have authority to enter the target’s home if “circumstances render it impracticable” to get a warrant beforehand.
• Immigrants the officers believe to be “Alien Enemies” are “not entitled to a hearing, appeal or judicial review.” (Subsequent court rulings, including from the Supreme Court, say otherwise.)

Lee Gelernt,  ACLU lead counsel in challenging Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, said the directive subjects people to unreasonable search and seizure. “The administration’s unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough. Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore the most bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant.”

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