Your Rights During Federal Immigration Enforcement Encounters

Last updated 2 weeks ago. Our resources are updated regularly but please keep in mind that links, programs, policies, and contact information do change.

On January 7, 2026, Renée Nicole Macklin Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent while sitting in her car on a Minneapolis street. She was 37 years old. She was a U.S. citizen. Within hours, the Department of Homeland Security called the encounter “an act of domestic terrorism.” This characterization immediately raised concerns about the government framing anyone who challenges enforcement as a terrorist threat.

The shooting triggered over one thousand protests nationwide that weekend. The Trump administration has deployed two thousand federal agents to Minneapolis-St. Paul alone as part of what officials describe as “the largest operation ever.” The old priorities—focus on serious criminals, deal with everything else later—are gone. The largest group of people in ICE detention now has no criminal record whatsoever.

Your constitutional rights continue to exist and apply to everyone on U.S. soil.

Rights That Apply to Everyone on U.S. Soil

The government’s rules that protect your rights apply to everyone here, no matter your status. Not citizens alone. Everyone.

You have the right to privacy—the government can’t search you or take your things without good reason. You don’t have to say anything that could get you in trouble.

The single most important protection: you have the right to remain silent. You don’t have to answer where you were born, how you entered the country, or your status. You don’t need to explain yourself or prove anything.

This right exists whether you’re a U.S. citizen or undocumented. Whether you speak English fluently or need an interpreter. Whether the questioning happens at your front door, your workplace, or on the street.

Your silence cannot be used against you. Officers can’t point to your refusal to answer as evidence of wrongdoing or as grounds to assume you’ve violated the law.

Say clearly: “I am exercising my right to remain silent.” Then stop talking.

The second protection: you have the right to speak with an attorney before answering or signing anything. Say: “I would like to speak with an attorney before I answer any questions.” That request must be honored.

ICE officers may present papers that waive your right to a hearing or authorize immediate deportation. Signing without legal review can result in removal from the country within days, with no opportunity to present defenses or claim ways you might be able to stay in the country or avoid deportation.

If you don’t speak English, you have the right to interpretation services. Don’t sign anything you don’t fully understand.

What ICE Can Do and Cannot Do

Federal authorities operate within defined legal boundaries.

The critical distinction: There are two types of warrants. One is signed by an ICE officer. The other is signed by a judge.

A warrant signed by an ICE officer (not a judge) does not give officers legal authority to enter your home or search private areas of your workplace. Only a warrant signed by a judge can authorize such entry, and the warrant must specifically name you and describe what can be searched.

Many people see any document labeled “warrant” and assume they must comply.

At your home, this distinction becomes everything. ICE cannot legally enter your residence without your permission unless they present a valid warrant signed by a judge. When officers arrive at your door claiming they have a warrant, ask them to slide it under the door or hold it up to a window. Read it without opening the door.

Look for a judge’s signature. When it’s signed by an ICE officer, you can legally refuse entry. Tell them: “I do not consent to a search” and “I would like to speak with an attorney.”

Should officers enter without your permission and without a valid warrant signed by a judge, don’t physically resist—that could subject you to criminal charges. State clearly that you did not consent to entry and that you’re exercising your right to remain silent. That statement on record may prove decisive when the search is later challenged in court.

In public spaces, officers can operate without any warrant—streets, parks, commercial establishments open to the public. They can approach you, identify themselves, and ask.

You don’t have to answer. Remain silent and request an attorney even in public.

At workplaces, in public areas—lobbies, customer service areas, dining rooms—ICE can operate without a warrant. In private employee-only areas, they cannot enter without either your employer’s permission or a warrant signed by a judge. When ICE attempts to enter break rooms, locker rooms, or restricted offices, your employer can deny them access.

Officers cannot stop you based on racial or ethnic characteristics. However, a 2025 Supreme Court decision made it unclear whether agents can stop people based on how they look. Critics argue the ruling effectively legalized racial profiling by permitting stops based on how someone looks, the language they speak, where they live, and the work they do.

The principle that enforcement cannot be based purely on appearance without additional factors providing actual reason to believe you’ve done something wrong remains embedded in the constitutional rule against unreasonable searches.

At Your Home: Maximum Protection

Your home receives the highest level of constitutional protection. Officers cannot enter without a valid warrant signed by a judge. The warrant must specifically name you and describe what can be searched.

When officers appear at your door, you’re not required to open it. Speak through the door or a window. Ask them to slide any warrant under the door so you can examine it before deciding to let them in.

When it’s a warrant signed by an ICE officer, you can legally refuse entry. When it’s a warrant signed by a judge, the analysis becomes more complex—this is where having consulted an attorney in advance becomes invaluable.

Don’t open the door reflexively. Once it’s open, officers can potentially observe grounds for detention in plain view inside your home. Opening the door makes it psychologically much harder to refuse to answer or assert your protections.

Stay inside. Speak through the closed door. Don’t consent to entry without a warrant signed by a judge.

Should officers enter without consent and without a valid warrant signed by a judge, make clear you didn’t consent and exercise your right to remain silent. Document their presence when you can do so safely—badge numbers, names, time and date.

Teach children and household members this principle. Many ICE operations occur when primary household members are away, leaving children or elderly relatives at home. Make sure family members understand they should not open the door to anyone claiming to be ICE or federal officers. They should close the door and call an attorney or emergency contact.

At Your Workplace: Mixed Protections

In public areas of a workplace—customer service areas, retail floors, offices open to customers—ICE can operate without a warrant and can approach employees or customers.

In employee-only spaces, ICE cannot legally access employee-only areas without employer permission or a warrant signed by a judge. When officers attempt to enter break rooms, locker rooms, or restricted offices, your employer can refuse them access. Officers cannot force entry.

For employees, when ICE officers appear in public areas of your workplace, exercise your right to remain silent and request an attorney. You don’t have to answer about your status. You don’t need to show identification proving citizenship, though you may show state-issued ID to demonstrate identity.

When detained or arrested, ask officers to allow you to contact a lawyer. Make this request clearly and repeatedly.

Employees should know in advance where company leadership can be contacted quickly when ICE officers appear. Employer advocacy in the moment can sometimes prevent detention.

Employers cannot legally be required to provide employee information to ICE without a valid warrant signed by a judge. A warrant signed by ICE doesn’t compel such disclosure. Employers can legally request a warrant signed by a judge before providing employee names, addresses, or documentation.

In Public Spaces: Limited but Real Protections

When officers encounter you in public—on the street, in parks, at transit stations, in commercial establishments—your Fourth Amendment protections are more limited than at home or in private workplace areas. But they’re not nonexistent.

ICE can approach you and initiate conversation without any warrant. They can ask about your citizenship and status. You have no legal obligation to answer. Remain silent and request an attorney.

You don’t need to provide documents or evidence of legal status. When you’re a U.S. citizen, stating clearly “I am a U.S. citizen” can sometimes resolve the encounter quickly.

Officers cannot detain you indefinitely based on suspicion of violations. They must have actual reason to believe you’ve committed a crime or violated the law to initiate a stop. Once a stop has occurred, the detention must be reasonably brief. Any search of your person—patting down clothing, looking through pockets, examining your bag—requires probable cause.

You have the right to record and document what government agents are doing. This right applies to U.S. citizens, journalists, and ordinary people documenting government activity.

Officers cannot legally confiscate your phone, delete recordings, or prevent you from filming. They cannot require you to stop recording as a condition of allowing you to leave.

When officers order you to stop recording, you can calmly state: “I am exercising my right to record this encounter” and continue filming. Recording cannot involve physical interference with the operation. You must remain at a safe distance that doesn’t obstruct the officers’ activities.

The documentation you create can become decisive evidence when there’s later dispute about what occurred during the encounter, particularly in cases involving allegations of excessive force or constitutional violations.

After Detention: What Happens Next

When ICE detains you, an entirely separate legal framework comes into operation.

After ICE takes someone into custody, officers must provide information about the grounds for detention and must inform the person of their right to contact a lawyer and their right to contact their home country’s consulate. The detained individual has the right to contact a family member or attorney to notify them of the detention. Officers are legally required to facilitate this communication.

Under federal law, individuals detained during proceedings generally have a right to a bond hearing to determine whether they should be released pending the outcome of their case.

The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the categories of individuals subject to mandatory detention without bond hearings initially. The administration argues that certain criminal convictions or other factors render individuals ineligible for bond consideration.

Federal courts, particularly in the Second, Third, and Ninth Circuits, have recognized that holding someone for a long time without a hearing violates their right to a fair process. A 2001 Supreme Court ruling established that detention beyond six months requires a hearing. Indefinite detention without realistic prospect of removal violates the right to a fair hearing.

For detained persons, preserving the ability to contact an attorney is life-changing. An attorney can request a bond hearing, can advocate for release pending proceedings, and can begin developing defenses to deportation. Attorneys describe cases where prompt legal contact resulted in detention lasting days rather than years.

United We Dream operates a hotline at 1-844-363-1423 that individuals can call when detained or when family members are detained, providing immediate referral to attorneys and community support.

The detainee locator system at locator.ice.gov allows family members to search for detained relatives using name and date of birth—often the initial step in locating someone detained by ICE.

Changes in ICE Enforcement Priorities

The Trump administration’s expansion of operations represents a significant shift from rules about who ICE should focus on that governed earlier administrations.

Under previous administrations, including the initial Trump administration and the Biden administration, ICE officers were provided with priorities directing them to focus on immigrants with serious criminal convictions. The principle was “worst first”—concentrate resources on the most serious cases while other action waited.

Former Acting ICE Director John Sandweg explains: “Agents were told, ‘Focus on the worst. Worst first. Get the worst bad guys off the street, we’ll deal with everything else later.’ Those rules are gone.”

Under current guidance, the largest group of individuals in ICE detention now consists of immigrants with no criminal record whatsoever. From President Trump’s reelection through May 4, 2025, forty-four percent of arrested immigrants had criminal convictions. Thirty-four percent had pending charges. That means twenty-two percent had neither convictions nor pending charges.

Attorneys report that clients who have lived in the United States for years without incident, working steadily and supporting families, now face detention and removal proceedings based on old violations that would have been deprioritized under previous guidance.

Federal courts have begun pushing back. Over three hundred federal judges have rejected the Trump administration’s effort to broadly expand mandatory detention, ordering releases or bond hearings in over sixteen hundred cases. Judges across the country have ruled the expanded mandatory detention policy unlawful or unconstitutional, pointing to concerns about the right to have your case heard and the prolonged detention of people not charged with crimes.

Despite widespread judicial resistance, the mandatory detention policy remains in effect nationwide because cases are largely challenged individually rather than through a single national injunction. This creates a situation in which action can continue while legal challenges work their way through courts—a process that can consume months or years.

A new law lets ICE hold people even for very minor arrests, without conviction. At least one federal court has ruled this Act cannot apply retroactively to people detained before it was enacted, but the issue remains subject to ongoing litigation.

The Minneapolis Shooting and Immunity

The January 2026 killing of Renée Good has crystallized several ongoing legal debates about constitutional protections during operations.

Vice President J.D. Vance asserted that the ICE officer who shot Good enjoys “absolute immunity” from state prosecution—a claim legal experts immediately disputed.

Federal law does not support the notion of “absolute immunity” from state prosecution. Rather, federal law provides that when conduct was “authorized by the law of the United States,” then state prosecution may be barred. But this requires a fact-specific analysis rather than blanket protection.

Multiple legal experts have noted that an old legal rule, dating to 1890, requires a judge to decide whether what the officer did was actually legal before protection from prosecution can apply.

The question of whether shooting someone in a vehicle constitutes “authorized” federal conduct under law remains an open question, not a settled matter of absolute protection.

The ACLU has filed emergency motions in federal court seeking to restrain ICE and other federal officers from “continuing to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights” of Minnesota communities, arguing that federal officers are targeting peaceful protesters and observers with unconstitutional tactics including unwarranted pepper spraying and unfounded arrests.

The motion before U.S. District Court Judge Kate Menendez requests a court order to stop federal responses during ongoing ICE operations. These legal challenges represent an effort to use federal courts to establish that First Amendment protections—including the right to observe and protest government operations—cannot be suppressed through aggressive ICE tactics.

State-Level Responses: New Accountability Mechanisms

California State Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 747, the “No Kings Act,” seeks to strengthen laws by allowing Californians to sue federal officials for violating First, Fourth, or Fifth Amendment protections, including violations related to searches, seizures, excessive force, and action based on race or political identity.

Similar measures are being introduced in New York and other states in direct response to the Minneapolis shooting.

These legislative efforts reflect a judgment that existing federal law doesn’t provide sufficient mechanisms for accountability when federal officers violate constitutional protections. State law should fill the gap by allowing state courts to hear cases against federal officers.

Legal scholars have argued that states can create their own laws to hold federal agents accountable, because the Constitution is the highest law. Acts violating the Constitution are not authorized by federal law and therefore don’t override state law protections.

Preparation Steps to Take Now

Lawyers nationwide are advising clients to undertake specific preparatory steps now, before ICE encounters occur, rather than waiting until an emergency unfolds.

This preparation includes:

Create an emergency contact list with phone numbers of attorneys, family members, and organizations. Phone numbers should be memorized rather than stored only on a phone, because a detained person may have limited access to their phone.

Many communities are distributing “know your rights” cards that individuals can carry in their pockets—cards that state clearly their right to remain silent and their right to speak with an attorney. These cards can be referenced during an encounter even when fear or language barriers make it difficult to remember protections in the moment.

Attorneys are advising families to create safety plans that address what will happen when a family member is detained. These plans should identify which family member will be responsible for contacting an attorney, what information will need to be provided to locate the detained person, who will provide care for children when a parent is detained, and what financial resources will be available for legal representation.

Families are being advised to compile and organize important documents in advance—prior visas, approval notices, birth certificates, marriage certificates, residence documentation—so that when detention occurs, these materials are accessible to attorneys and can be presented at bond hearings.

Organizations like the National Immigration Law Center are providing templates for safety planning, helping families think through these scenarios before crisis occurs.

An attorney reviewing your case before ICE contact occurs can identify potential vulnerabilities, discuss ways you might be able to stay in the country or avoid deportation, and develop a strategy tailored to your specific circumstances.

For individuals with old removal orders, prior criminal matters, or other complications in their history, such consultation can be particularly valuable because an attorney can identify requests to reopen a closed case or other legal strategies that might not be obvious.

Documentation and Community Response

The “ICE Out For Good Weekend of Action” that mobilized over one thousand events nationwide in response to the Renée Good shooting highlights the role of documentation and community rapid response in constraining government overreach.

Organizations are training community members on how to legally and safely observe and document ICE operations, emphasizing that documentation of officers’ conduct creates accountability and provides evidence when constitutional violations occur.

These documentation networks represent a form of community self-protection through having multiple people watching and recording what happens. When multiple people are observing and recording, it becomes harder for officers to act in ways that depart from legal authority without accountability.

Lawyers report that documented patterns of constitutional violations—recorded instances of racial profiling, excessive force, or targeting of protected speech—create the foundation for lawsuits claiming violations and court orders stopping the conduct that can constrain future conduct.

Who This Affects

U.S. citizens have been wrongfully detained by ICE, held for hours or days despite presenting valid identification proving citizenship. Children who are U.S. citizens have been deported alongside their mothers, despite having fundamental constitutional and citizenship protections that should have prevented removal.

Citizens observing and documenting government activity have been targeted with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and arrest on dubious charges.

Enforcement of this scope and intensity affects the civil liberties of all Americans, regardless of status, because it creates a context in which government officers are operating with minimal accountability and with perceived backing from the highest levels.

For immigrants specifically, the expansion creates practical crises affecting millions of lives. An estimated six hundred thousand Venezuelans in the United States face potential deportation after the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status, which lets certain people stay in the U.S. for a set period, and linked removals to operations targeting President Nicolás Maduro, even though asylum cases for many of these individuals are paused and Venezuela remains on the U.S. travel ban list. Up to three hundred fifty thousand Haitians face similar threats as TPS for that population approaches expiration.

Workers can be detained while working, leaving families without income and children without parents. Workers detained during operations face wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and precarious employment that leaves them vulnerable to employer exploitation.

Residents of Minneapolis and other cities experiencing ICE surges describe persistent anxiety, fear of routine interactions, and disrupted daily life. Schools have closed due to federal activity. Businesses have been disrupted. Community members report that organizing to oppose ICE action or exercising First Amendment protections to observe operations has become frightening in a context in which federal officers are armed and action has resulted in deaths.

Constitutional Protections Remain in Effect

Despite the dramatic expansion of operations and the rhetoric characterizing encounters as responses to terrorism, the underlying constitutional framework protecting civil liberties has not fundamentally changed in law, even if the way these protections are actually being used has changed.

Your right to remain silent continues to exist. Your right to decline entry to your home without a warrant signed by a judge continues to exist. Your right to request an attorney continues to exist. Your right to record government activity in public spaces continues to exist.

What has changed is the environment and the practical implications of exercising protections. In a surge context, exercising your right to remain silent may result in detention pending deportation hearings rather than quick release. Requesting an attorney may delay your processing but also prevents you from waiving critical legal protections under pressure. Recording an ICE operation may place you at risk of confrontation with officers, even though the recording right itself is legal.

Understanding and exercising your protections in this environment requires both knowledge of the protections themselves and realistic appreciation of the context in which they’re being exercised. Attorneys emphasize that knowledge must be paired with strategic thinking about how and when to exercise protections, and that this is why consulting with an attorney in advance, before crisis occurs, can be so valuable.

The characterization of the Minneapolis shooting as “an act of domestic terrorism” by DHS raises concerns about this framing affecting civil liberties. The label doesn’t automatically strip people of constitutional protections.

Whether people observing or protesting operations can be characterized as terrorists depends on specific conduct—violence, threats, intentional property destruction—rather than mere observation or peaceful protest. Legal scholars at the University of Minnesota have emphasized that First Amendment protected speech—shouting at federal officers, documenting their activities, expressing disagreement with policy—cannot be punished through aggressive responses.

Yet the immediate application of a terrorism label to an incident involving civilian deaths and community response creates a rhetorical environment in which fundamental protections may be framed as complicity with “terrorism” rather than as lawful democratic participation.

What You Can Do

The constitutional protections governing encounters remain meaningful, yet the practical context in which these protections must be exercised has shifted dramatically.

For individuals facing potential ICE encounters, the most practical steps involve preparation rather than reaction. Knowing your protections in advance, consulting with an attorney before crisis occurs, maintaining emergency contact information, and creating family safety plans are reasonable responses to a documented environment.

Recognizing that you have constitutional protections regardless of status, understanding what ICE can and cannot legally do, and knowing how to exercise protections—remaining silent, requesting counsel, refusing entry without valid warrant—creates a foundation for navigating encounters with both legal protection and human dignity.

Individual exercise of protections, while important, is insufficient to address systemic concerns about scope and accountability.

Federal courts are beginning to push back against mandatory detention and tactics that violate constitutional protections. State legislatures are considering bills that would allow state court accountability for federal officers who violate protections. Organizations are mobilizing community response and documentation networks that create accountability through having multiple people watching and recording what happens.

These institutional and collective responses, paired with individual knowledge of protections and willingness to exercise them, create the foundation for meaningful protection of civil liberties in a changed and challenging moment.

The Constitution and the protections it provides don’t disappear because enforcement has intensified or rhetoric has hardened. They remain, waiting to be exercised by people who know they exist and understand their power.

That knowledge—providing it clearly, accessibly, and without qualification—is the foundation of government following the law instead of doing whatever it wants.

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