The Constitution Strikes Back

Federal lawsuits are piling up against ICE agents, Customs and Border Protection, and Kristi Noem. The constitutional violations aren't ambiguous.

Quick civics refresher for anyone who slept through high school: The Fourth Amendment says the government can't search you, seize you, or break into your house without a warrant signed by a judge. Not a suggestion. Not a guideline. A constitutional requirement.

The ACLU just filed a federal class action in Minnesota. The defendants are the Trump administration, ICE, CBP, and the charges are suspicionless stops, warrantless arrests, and racial profiling. They're even detaining U.S. citizens. This isn't about rogue agents having bad days. The lawsuit alleges this is a policy.

Mubashir Khalif Hussen was walking to lunch in Minneapolis when masked ICE agents stopped him. He's 20 years old. He's a U.S. citizen. He told them so repeatedly. They refused to look at his ID, threw him in an SUV, drove him to a federal building, and detained him until he produced a photo of his passport card. Then they let him go. No apology. No explanation.

Chongly Thao got it worse. ICE agents smashed into his St. Paul home, dragged him outside in subfreezing temperatures wearing nothing but underwear and a blanket, and detained him at gunpoint. He's also a U.S. citizen. They only released him after verifying his identity.

Renee Nicole Good didn't get released. An ICE agent shot and killed her in Minneapolis on January 7. She was a U.S. citizen, too.

A whistleblower leaked a May 2025 DHS memo instructing ICE agents to use administrative paperwork—not judicial warrants—to force entry into homes. DHS never formally distributed the memo. Supervisors gave agents verbal instructions, let them view the document briefly,and then collected it back. The memo circulated like contraband.

When bureaucracies hide their own policies, they're admitting something. Legal directives get published in federal registers and training manuals. Illegal ones get passed around verbally and shredded. DHS even has official training materials saying warrantless home entries violate the Constitution. They knew exactly what they were doing.

That leaked memo is now Exhibit A. Courts tend to notice when agencies run secret operations contradicting their own legal guidelines. Consciousness of guilt, they call it.

ICE has already raided the wrong homes multiple times in 2025. Wrong addresses. Wrong people. Families traumatized. Constitutional rights obliterated. The memo DHS tried to hide makes every single one of those violations evidence of institutional policy rather than individual mistakes.

ICE agents are discovering they might face consequences. Last September, the Supreme Court ruled that agents can stop people based on how they look. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the decision everyone now calls "Kavanaugh Stops"—state-sanctioned detentions based on ethnicity, language, and job type. Racial profiling with a judicial stamp.

Jason Brian Gavidia learned what that means in practice. He's a U.S. citizen, born in Los Angeles, working at a tow yard when ICE agents handcuffed him, told him his REAL ID was fake, and detained him for over an hour. They confiscated his ID and never gave it back. What's he supposed to show them next time they stop him for looking Latino?

Stopping someone on the street isn't the same as smashing through their front door. The Fourth Amendment makes that distinction crystal clear. DHS ignored it anyway, then tried covering their tracks.

Federal agents followed orders their own agency knew were unconstitutional. That memo proves they weren't confused. Courts consider that when agents try to claim qualified immunity. Hard to plead ignorance when the evidence shows your bosses were running a cover-up.

And the legal trouble isn't limited to individual agents. When entire agencies create covert policies that contradict official training, that's institutional liability. Leadership authorized this. Leadership orchestrated it. Leadership owns it.

The legal path forward targets both individual agents and the agencies employing them. Agents lose qualified immunity protection when they knowingly violate clearly established constitutional rights. That secret memo proves knowledge. The contradiction between the memo and official DHS training materials proves the rights were clearly established. Individual agents can be sued. Agencies face institutional liability for systematic constitutional violations.

The Minnesota lawsuit names specific incidents, specific agents, and specific constitutional violations. Discovery will force DHS to produce internal communications about the memo's distribution and implementation. That process has already started.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

Copyright © 2026 Maria Santos Salinas for FRONTeras.

All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Sharing the original posts or links from FRONTeras on social media is allowed and appreciated.