A top Justice Department official says President Trump’s administration is well within the law when federal agents arrest fugitive migrants in their homes without first obtaining a judge’s signature — no matter how loudly Democrats complain.
Chad Mizelle, chief of staff and acting associate attorney general at the DOJ, told Breitbart News that administrative warrants are legally sufficient when dealing with migrants who already have “Final Orders” of deportation. These individuals, he said, are fugitives under the law.
“In cases of fugitives, courts have recognized that administrative warrants are perfectly okay” for home arrests without a judge’s signature, Mizelle said.
The policy applies only to migrants who have already received full due process in court and were ordered deported. Over the past few decades, more than one million migrants have been ordered removed but remained in the United States. During that time, successive administrations and lawmakers failed to enforce immigration law, effectively ignoring the civil rights of American citizens in the process. Apparently, enforcement was considered optional.
Democrats now claim outrage over the policy, which allows ICE to pick up fugitives — including violent migrants — at known locations without waiting for judicial warrants that can take time and are often blocked by judges hostile to deportation. Instead, ICE uses administrative warrants issued by agency attorneys.
Mizelle entered the online debate directly, telling critics, “Read the en banc court’s decision in US v. Lucas. The court held, plain as day, admin warrants suffice for entering the home of a fugitive. Case closed.”
Rep. Ted Lieu of California fired back, arguing that Lucas involved an escaped prisoner and that the Fourth Amendment applies to non-citizens. Mizelle responded bluntly, saying that a migrant who has been ordered deported, exhausted all appeals, remains in the country, and evades law enforcement fits the definition of a fugitive. “Fugitive would be the word you’re searching for,” he said.
The legal issue will likely be argued in appeals courts and possibly the Supreme Court, a process expected to take at least a year. Even libertarian legal scholar Orin Kerr suggested the government’s position is not frivolous and could prevail, despite acknowledging competing interpretations of case law.
Meanwhile, Democrat-aligned judges are ordering ICE to release migrants shortly after arrest, Democrat politicians are withholding police cooperation, and activist groups continue to harass and obstruct federal officers in the streets. Law enforcement, it seems, is being treated as the problem rather than the solution.
Mizelle said the policy shift came after officials reviewed enforcement rules and realized they were unnecessarily restraining themselves. “Why are we handcuffing ourselves here?” he said. “There’s certainly some inside lawyers, Deep Staters, who for years have given bad advice.” After reviewing the law, DOJ lawyers concluded that administrative warrants were sufficient.
He explained that the Fourth Amendment does not require warrants in every case, only that searches and seizures be reasonable. Reasonableness depends on expectations of privacy. Migrants who are illegally present and already ordered deported, he said, have no legitimate claim to privacy because they are fugitives from justice.
Mizelle also accused activist groups of misleading migrants into thinking ICE cannot arrest them if they stay inside their homes. He said some migrants have gone as far as taunting agents from inside their houses, waving through windows or passing notes under doors, believing they are untouchable.
With the new policy, that assumption is over.
Under President Trump, immigration law is being enforced as written, not as activists wish it were. And as federal officers resume doing their jobs without political shackles, the message is clear: court orders matter, the law still exists, and hiding at home no longer makes fugitives immune.
