Newsmax's senior judicial analyst: “The thought that ICE wants to break down doors without a search warrant is profoundly un-American”

Andrew Napolitano on a memo brought forward by a whistleblower: “This is a direct and profound violation of the Fourth Amendment”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the January 22, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Wake Up America

SHARLA MCBRIDE (HOST): I want to pivot to this, because an article in The Wall Street Journal is saying, now, that the Trump administration wants ICE to be able to enter homes looking to arrest people without a warrant. So what is this all about? Could this happen?

ANDREW NAPOLITANO (SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST): Yesterday, a whistleblower revealed the existence of an ICE memorandum authorizing ICE to break down front doors to arrest people — of homes — to arrest people without search warrants signed by judges.

This is a direct and profound violation of the Fourth Amendment, which expressly says people are entitled to be secure in their homes and that security can only be invaded by a search warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause of crime. I don't know if this has happened yet, and we haven't seen the alleged ICE memorandum —

MCBRIDE: Right, right.

NAPOLITANO: The Wall Street Journal reporter saw it, but they took it back from her. They didn't even let her make notes from it. So it apparently does exist. Whatever it is, it's a profound thumbing your nose at the Constitution, and I expect it would be prevented from being enforced by the first federal judge to look at it.

But the thought that ICE wants to break down doors without a search warrant is profoundly un-American, and has been un-American since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791.

MCBRIDE: All right. Well, we are -—

NAPOLITANO: Getting serious. Getting very, very serious.

MCBRIDE: It is very serious.

NAPOLITANO: Suppose they make a mistake. Suppose they break down the door of the wrong house —

MCBRIDE: The wrong door.

NAPOLITANO: That's why you have judges to intervene.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Trump administration is asserting new powers to forcibly enter the homes of people they are hoping to arrest without a criminal warrant signed by a judge, according to people familiar with the matter, including current and former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Over the summer, lawyers at ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, penned a secret memo expanding the authority by which agents may enter homes of immigrants with final deportation orders, the people said. 

Under the new legal basis, an administrative warrant showing the government has probable cause to believe a person is in the country illegally serves as enough of a basis to force entry. Administrative warrants are documents laying out ICE’s basis to make an arrest, but they have traditionally carried significantly less authority than warrants signed by a judge who has independently evaluated the underlying evidence.

For decades, immigration officials haven’t had the authority to search a person’s home without a judicial warrant, on the theory that such a move would violate the immigrants’ Fourth Amendment right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure.