How have different federal circuits ruled on ICE use of administrative warrants to enter residences?

1. The immediate legal flashpoint: ICE’s 2025 memo and the scramble in lower courts

An internal May 12, 2025 ICE memo authorizing officers to use administrative warrants to force entry into residences sparked lawsuits and emergency district-court rulings, with critics saying the directive overturns decades of practice that required judicial warrants for nonconsensual home entry ^{[4] [2]}; at least one district judge in Minnesota found officers violated the Constitution when they entered a home without a judge-signed warrant and ordered release of a detainee after the arrest ^[1].

2. ICE’s defense: administrative warrants have a pedigree, agency says

Homeland Security and ICE spokespeople have defended administrative warrants by invoking long-standing immigration enforcement practice and claiming that courts and Congress have “recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement,” and that officers issuing administrative warrants have found probable cause and served people with final orders of removal ^{[5] [6]}; the agency’s statement to reporters reiterated that those served had already received due process and final orders of removal ^[1].

3. Judicial pushback and Fourth Amendment anchor points

Reporting and legal commentary stress that the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized the home’s special status under the Fourth Amendment—“physical entry of the home is the chief evil” in the Court’s language—and lower courts have often read that language to require judicial warrants absent consent or exigent circumstances, producing rulings that conflict with ICE’s new guidance ^{[7] [8]}. Whistleblowers and advocacy groups cite past ICE and DHS training that warned forced entry on administrative warrants risks constitutional violations ^[5].

4. Appellate contours: precedents that complicate remedies and doctrines

The appellate landscape is murky: scholars point to cases like Tun-Cos in the Fourth Circuit discussing limits on suing the federal government for Fourth Amendment violations, and to Abel, where the Supreme Court expressly declined to decide whether administrative warrants satisfy Fourth Amendment warrant requirements — leaving open both the constitutional question and the availability of damages remedies against federal actors ^[3]. That doctrinal tangle means a circuit split on the precise holding—constitutional invalidity of entry on an administrative warrant versus procedural limits on suits for relief—is entirely plausible but not cleanly mapped in the reporting ^[3].

5. What the reporting does — and does not — show about circuit rules

The available reportage documents district-court rulings finding constitutional violations, agency claims of lawful administrative practice, and appellate jurisprudence that has sidestepped the core Fourth Amendment question or constrained remedies, but it does not present a catalogued, circuit-by-circuit resolution showing a definitive split; in short, lower courts are wrestling with ICE’s memo and some have ruled against forced entry on administrative warrants, while higher courts have so far left major doctrinal questions undecided ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

6. Politics, precedent and the litigation path forward

Given ICE’s public posture, the constitutional stakes, and the Supreme Court’s past reluctance to squarely resolve administrative-warrant status, the issue appears headed for protracted litigation and likely appeals; observers quoted in the coverage predict that only higher appellate review can reconcile the tension between agency enforcement practices and the Fourth Amendment protections emphasized by district judges and constitutional scholars ^{[5] [3]}.