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Administration Officials Believe Order Lets Immigration Agents Enter Homes Without Warrants
It remains unclear whether the Trump administration will apply the law in this way. But such an interpretation, experts say, would infringe on basic civil liberties.
Trump administration lawyers have determined that an 18th-century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant, according to people familiar with internal discussions.
The disclosure reflects the Trump administration’s aggressive view of presidential power, including setting aside a key provision of the Fourth Amendment that requires a court order to search someone’s home.
It remains unclear whether the administration will apply the law in this way, but experts say such an interpretation would infringe on basic civil liberties and raise the potential for misuse. Warrantless entries have some precedent in America’s wartime history, but invoking the law in peacetime to pursue undocumented immigrants in such a way would be an entirely new application, they added.
Any lawyer who "determines" that warrantless searches are OK should be disbarred, and in an ideal world, sent to Gitmo for a while.
The AEA was passed in 1798. The people who passed it had been involved in drafting and ratifying the constitution and the Bill of Rights less than a decade prior. If Congress wanted to eviscerate the 4th Amendment with warrantless searches, they would have said so. Even the hardest of hard core originalists couldn't make that case.
