What happened
The Trump administration is asserting sweeping new powers to forcibly enter people’s homes without a criminal warrant signed by a judge, The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing current and former ICE officials and a memo leaked by two whistleblowers. The secret memo, signed last May by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, said Department of Homeland Security lawyers had “recently determined” that agents could enter private homes with just an internal administrative warrant.

Who said what
DHS’s new policy “is a complete break from the law and undercuts the Fourth Amendment and the rights it protects,” said Whistleblower Aid, the organization representing the two government officials. DHS and ICE leaders “didn’t publicize or broadly distribute the legal decision, predicting that it would invite legal scrutiny,” the Journal said. But according to the whistleblowers, the AP said, new ICE hires “are being told to follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo.”

Lawyers and advocates have “documented cases of agents breaking down people’s doors to arrest them without a warrant” in Minnesota and other cities targeted by ICE, the Journal said. In the “most prominent” case, ICE agents (pictured above) rammed through the door of a Liberian man, Garrison Gibson, though a federal judge found his subsequent arrest “unlawful in part because of the lack of a judicial warrant.”

What next?
The new policy is “almost certain to meet legal challenges,” the AP said. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the migrants targeted under the new policy “have had full due process and a final order of removal from an immigration judge.” But “unlike most judges,” who independently determine there’s probable cause a crime was committed before signing a warrant, immigration judges “are Justice Department employees who must follow the orders of political appointees,” the Journal said.

What happened
The medical examiner’s office in El Paso County, Texas, yesterday officially ruled the Jan. 3 death of a Cuban migrant being held in solitary confinement at ICE’s Camp East Montana a “homicide.” Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died of “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression” after witnesses saw him “become unresponsive while being physically restrained by law enforcement,” the coroner’s report said. 

Who said what
The Department of Homeland Security initially said Lunas Campos died after “staff observed him in distress,” but amended its account last week after his family was informed the death would be ruled a homicide. Lunas Campos died after he “violently resisted” staff attempts to stop his “attempt to take his life,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said last Thursday. 

Fellow detainee Santos Jesus Flores told The Washington Post last week that he saw guards choking Lunas Campos, who repeatedly said, “No puedo respirar,” or “I can’t breathe.” According to The Associated Press, a witness saw Lunas Campos “handcuffed as at least five guards held him down and one put an arm around his neck and squeezed until he was unconscious.” The homicide finding “does not necessarily indicate criminal culpability,” The New York Times said.

What next?
U.S. District Judge David Briones yesterday granted a request from Lunas Campos’ family to bar the government from deporting the two detainees who came forward, saying the planned removals would make it difficult to “obtain the testimony of these witnesses” for the family’s wrongful death lawsuit. Lunas Campos is the “third detainee to die at Camp East Montana, a tent facility hastily built last summer at Fort Bliss,” The Texas Tribune said. Those deaths, which include another alleged suicide, are under investigation.