WA experts explain legal limits on ICE, Border Patrol officers’ power

An immigration officer’s fatal shooting of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis Saturday has intensified questions about legal limits to federal agents’ authority. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson and state Attorney General Nick Brown joined others this week in declaring the actions of immigration officials, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, unconstitutional.

“We need immigration enforcement in this country, from my perspective, but we need to do it in a way that follows the damn law,” said Brown, a former U.S. attorney for Western Washington, at a Monday news conference.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has vociferously defended the conduct of immigration officials – including the ICE shootings of Pretti and Renee Good, also killed this month in Minneapolis – as legal and necessary.

Attempts to hold them accountable, Vice President JD Vance has suggested, are futile. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vance said after Good’s death, though he later said ICE officers could face discipline for violating policy or the law.

Immigration officials have ramped up arrests and detention in Washington state over the past year. State leaders and others are bracing for the possibility of an even more dramatic crackdown, which could lead to many more confrontations between federal agents and Washingtonians.

We wanted to know: How is the law supposed to govern such interactions? What are ICE and Border Patrol officers allowed to do and what kind of compliance is demanded of the people they are stopping and detaining?

We asked three legal experts to weigh in.

At home, the kind of warrant matters – at least it used to

The Fourth Amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures” and also establishes the right of people to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects.”

The amendment means law enforcement officers can’t force their way into your home and arrest you unless they have a warrant signed by a judge, according to Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Mary Fan, a University of Washington professor of criminal and immigration law. A judge’s signature is key because ICE uses what it calls “administrative warrants.”

“That’s just a piece of paper that one of their own officers has signed off on, saying, ‘Yeah, let’s go get this person,’” Adams said.

Yet, a May ICE memo, recently brought to light by The Associated Press, reveals officers are now being told administrative warrants are sufficient to enter the homes of immigrants issued final deportation orders.

Legal challenges are expected.

A warrant does not legally compel you to open the door

While a judge’s warrant gives immigration officers authority to enter a home, it doesn’t make refusing to open the door a crime, Fan said. That’s why many advocacy groups engaged in “know your rights” trainings advise people to keep the door shut.

“We’ve seen many instances where people have opened up their door a crack and said: ‘Can I see a warrant?’ ” Adams said. “And then the official basically just kind of barges their way into the room,” and later might say “Oh yeah, they opened it up and invited me in. And then it becomes the federal official’s word versus the word of the person who was standing at the door.”

Once inside, immigration officers often arrest not only the person they’re targeting but others in the house, Adams added.

While immigration officers rarely have judges’ warrants, he continued, if they possess one, they have the right to break down your door.

You don’t have to answer agents’ questions

People generally aren’t required to answer questions from immigration officers if stopped, Adams said. That’s because of the Fifth Amendment, which allows people to remain silent and protects them from being compelled to incriminate themselves.

However, officers can require drivers to identify themselves and produce a license, registration and proof of insurance.

Can officers demand proof of immigration status? Fan and Adams noted federal law requires some noncitizens, such as green card holders, to carry immigration documents with them. Fan said she hasn’t researched whether that means those documents must be produced on demand.

Adams said he knows of no case law that mandates people give agents such documents.

No judge’s warrant is needed to detain drivers

Immigration agents don’t need a judge’s warrant to stop people in their car – or, for that matter, on the street. But that doesn’t mean they’re legally allowed to make random stops. Officers are supposed to have “reasonable suspicion” for a stop, Adams and Fan agreed.

“But once you’ve been pulled over, they’ve already detained you, which means that at that point, you can’t evade arrest by simply refusing to roll down your window or open the car door, and that’s what we’ve seen happening over and over again,” Adams said.

The result: immigration agents break people’s windows, drag them out of the car or worse. An ICE officer ordered Good to get out of her car before she appeared to drive away and was shot dead.

There are squishy limits to immigration officers’ use of force

“You’re going to hate this,” Fan said when asked about the standard deeming violence excessive. “It’s unreasonableness under the totality of the circumstances. It’s a very amorphous standard.”

Specifically relating to deadly force, notes Elizabeth Porter, who teaches constitutional law at UW, U.S. Department of Justice policy says it should be used only when officers have a “reasonable belief” that it’s necessary to protect themselves or others from serious bodily harm.

Porter said it seems to her the officer who shot Good acted unreasonably, though she stressed that what’s needed in such cases are thorough, transparent and trustworthy investigations.

Even so, she said cases involving vehicles are more complicated than what appeared to be happening when Pretti was shot. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that fleeing cars may pose a threat justifying lethal force.

Pretti, who was on foot filming agents’ interactions with protesters, was already restrained and posed no danger when he was shot, in Porter’s view based on initial accounts. A licensed firearm owner, the nurse carried a gun in a holster and was not holding it, videos of the shooting showed.

Immigration officers are not immune from criminal charges

Can a federal officer claim immunity if they murder someone or commit another crime? No, Porter said.

The state or the federal government could prosecute. State prosecutors, however, might run up against Supremacy Clause, which renders officers immune from actions they take to implement federal law, even if those actions run afoul of state law.

“But that immunity is not unbounded,” Porter said. It protects officers if their actions are “necessary and proper” for their federal duties, federal courts have ruled.

Individuals who allege harm can bring civil suits against federal officials. Yet Porter noted a challenge: While a federal law expressly allows suits against state law enforcement officials, no such law exists to hold federal ones accountable.