ICE broke into their homes without a proper warrant. Now, they’re suing.

Three Minnesota families whose homes were forcibly entered by immigration agents are suing the federal government, arguing the agents violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. 

The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from the nonprofit Protect Democracy, the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney. 

The complaint alleges that Department of Homeland Security officials issued a memo permitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to enter a home with an administrative warrant — one that is issued by the agency itself and does not require a judge’s approval. The Associated Press first reported the existence of the memo on Jan. 21. 

“Federal leaders tried to keep their policy that allows agents to enter homes without a warrant hidden from the public,” said Ben Casper, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Minnesota. “They know that sending masked federal agents armed with military rifles — but not a judicial warrant — to invade homes is a violation of both the Fourth Amendment and their oath to uphold the Constitution.”

The lawsuit is just the latest constitutional challenge to President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportation, and specifically Operation Metro Surge, when the administration sent roughly 3,000 officers here. The Department of Homeland Security has said it was their biggest immigration enforcement action to date. 

A Trump-appointed federal judge found “compelling and troubling evidence” of racial profiling; judges — appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents alike — repeatedly ruled that people were unlawfully detained and then threatened federal officials with contempt of court for failing to obey judicial orders; a judge ordered faith leaders must be able to offer in-person pastoral care at the Whipple Federal Building after clergy sued and accused the Trump administration of violating religious rights; a Trump appointed judge said the administration “failed to plan for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees” and ordered it to give detainees adequate access to lawyers.

On Dec. 1, the day before the New York Times and other national news outlets reported that the Trump administration would launch a targeted immigration enforcement campaign against Somali people in Minnesota, ICE agents knocked on the door of Abdulkadir Sharif Abdi’s Minneapolis home. When he opened the door, the complaint alleges, agents rushed into the home and arrested Abdi, who is originally from Somalia. 

Abdi arrived in the United States in the 1990s. In 2018, a judge ordered his removal, but also stayed his deportation, finding that Abdi’s public outspokenness against the militant group Al-Shabaab — designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government — put him at risk. He was released from immigration detention in 2019 and has complied with supervision orders ever since, according to the lawsuit. 

The lead plaintiff in the case is Teyana Gibson Brown, whose image was captured by Associated Press photographer John Locher in the early morning of Jan. 11, showing Gibson Brown in her scrubs and Crocs confronting several heavily-armed agents after they used a battering ram to break down her door. 

The agents arrested her husband, Garrison Gibson Brown, also a plaintiff in the case and an immigrant from Liberia who was ordered removed from the U.S. in 2009, but who has remained in the U.S. under ICE supervision since 2021, according to the lawsuit. 

Judge Jeffrey Bryan of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, in his order releasing Garrison Gibson Brown from a detention center in Texas, plainly stated that the arrest violated the Fourth Amendment. 

“I am bringing this case with my husband because our family now feels unsafe in our home due to the government’s illegal policy,” Teyana Gibson Brown said in a statement. “No person or family in the United States should have to go through what we have.”

The two other plaintiffs in the case are Noe Alfredo Salguero, who is from El Salvador but lives and works legally in the U.S. through Temporary Protected Status; and his daughter Jeyli Salguero, a U.S. citizen. The complaint alleges that ICE agents broke into the Salguero family home in Oakdale on Jan. 14 looking for Jeyli Salguero’s half-brother who was not living at the home. 

The complaint alleges the agents held the family at gunpoint and took Noe Alfredo Salguero and his other daughter, Astrid, into custody. The father was released three weeks later, but his daughter opted to self-deport after spending several weeks in a detention center in Texas. 

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.