Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Wednesday referred to as for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE chief Todd Lyons to testify earlier than Congress about an inside memo authorizing ICE officers to enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant.
Blumenthal despatched a letter to the chairs of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Judiciary Committee asking them to “immediately” name for the testimony following “a shocking anonymous whistleblower disclosure … detailing ICE’s new secret policy to ignore the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and enter private homes without a judicial warrant.”
The memo, which Blumenthal mentioned was despatched to his workplace in a whistleblower criticism, authorizes ICE officers to use drive to enter a residence based mostly solely on a extra slim administrative warrant to arrest somebody with a closing order of elimination. It breaks with longstanding steering meant to respect limits on authorities searches.
The Connecticut senator additionally despatched a letter Wednesday to Noem and Lyons, the performing director of ICE, writing, “The Fourth Amendment is a bedrock principle of our Constitution and an integral privacy protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, especially in the most intimate of settings, the home.”
Blumenthal mentioned within the letter to Noem and Lyons that the memo, asserting that immigration officers have these sweeping powers, ought to “appall every American.”
The Associated Press first reported on the interior memo.