Kristi Noem Says ICE Agents ‘Doing Everything Correctly’ In Minneapolis

WASHINGTON – Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday brushed aside a question about ICE agents potentially, and routinely, violating the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by approaching people on streets or going to their homes to demand proof of their U.S. citizenship.

During an exchange with reporters at the White House, one reporter asked Noem if she is comfortable with federal immigration agents and officers “violating people’s Fourth Amendment rights by asking for papers without reasonable suspicion.”

“Every single action that our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years,” said the DHS secretary. “They are doing everything correctly.”

The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures by the federal government. It reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

It has long been understood to mean law enforcement can’t enter your home without a warrant signed by a judge, can’t force you to answer questions, and can’t target you based solely on your appearance or the language you speak.

Noem’s claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are following standard protocols is a stark contrast to the video footage, photos and eyewitness accounts of agents’ violent behavior and haphazard targeting of people in cities nationwide.

Nowhere has this been more obvious than in Minneapolis, where state officials are already suing the federal government for its ICE surge allegedly violating the First and Tenth Amendments of the Constitution.

A masked ICE officer here last week fatally shot an American woman, Renee Good, as she was trying to drive her vehicle away. On Sunday, without a judge’s authorization, agents rammed down the door of a woman’s home and pushed their way inside. On Tuesday, more masked ICE agents were captured on film dragging a Minnesota woman from her car and hauling her away as she shouted that she was a disabled, autistic person trying to get to a doctor’s appointment.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) told HuffPost on Tuesday that people in her Minneapolis district are living in “complete terror” as thousands of ICE agents swarm the region and indiscriminately target residents at gas stations, supermarkets, on street corners and at their homes.

They are literally going “door-to-door” to question Latino and East African residents, said Omar, despite having no legal authority to do so.

“You’re supposed to find people who have removal orders. So why are you at every door?” asked the representative. “They also have no authority to talk to you and I.”

But if ICE agents are illegally targeting and detaining people, who can stop them?

“No one,” said Omar. “We are at a moment, I think, that nobody could ever think about, and like, there are no guardrails. There are no answers.”

During her comments Thursday about ICE agents’ violent behavior, Noem claimed “over and over again in litigation in the courts, we’ve proven that they’ve done the right thing.”

It’s not clear what litigation Noem is referring to, though. In November, a U.S. appeals court temporarily blocked a federal judge’s call to release hundreds of Chicago-area immigration detainees.

Separately, when the plaintiffs in a use-of-force case involving ICE agents this month sought to have the case dismissed, the judge brought up last week’s fatal shooting in Minneapolis and asked for more time to assess ICE agents’ use-of-force tactics against protesters in Chicago.

“It doesn’t give me much comfort in reading news reports that someone who — in some news reports, anyway — was described as a legal observer was shot yesterday in Minneapolis,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said last week. “So that is my concern.”

The American Civil Liberties Union filed its own class-action lawsuit on Thursday against the Trump administration, and it alleges Fourth Amendment violations. It was filed on behalf of three Minnesotans challenging the administration’s policy of “racially profiling, unlawfully seizing, and unlawfully arresting people without a warrant and without probable cause.”

“The government can’t stop and arrest people based on the color of their skin, or arrest people with no probable cause,” Kate Huddleston, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “These kinds of police-state tactics are contrary to the basic principles of liberty and equality that remain a bedrock of our legal system and our country.”

Despite ICE agents clearly stoking fear and violence in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump is signaling he has no interest in trying to ease tensions. To the contrary, he is now threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to justify sending military troops into the region to quell the growing protests.

“No plans to pull out of Minnesota,” Noem confirmed Thursday.

Asked if she thinks there are any cases where ICE agents in the state have gone too far, the DHS secretary said federal immigration enforcement agents are “following the law and running their operations according to training.”

She ignored a question about whether she is now advising all Americans to carry proof of citizenship.