The Fourth Amendment Protections That Apply During Immigration Sweeps—For Citizens and Noncitizens Alike

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The Fourth Amendment does not say “citizens.” It says “the people.” Courts have spent decades arguing about what that phrase means in the immigration context, and the answer they’ve reached is complicated, tiered, and, for many people currently living through federal immigration sweeps, practically unenforceable.

The difference between the constitutional protection that exists on paper and the one that exists in practice has never been more visible than it is right now in Minnesota.

Operation Metro Surge is the Trump administration’s intensive immigration enforcement campaign. It deployed thousands of federal agents across the Twin Cities beginning in December 2025. It has produced documented shooting incidents—including the fatal shootings of Renée Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026—and reported cases of excessive force involving property damage to vehicles and homes. It has also produced a jurisdictional standoff in which the federal government has blocked Minnesota state officials from looking into its own agents’ conduct.

The constitutional questions this raises are not abstract. They are about whether the Fourth Amendment means anything when the executive branch controls both the enforcement and the inquiry.

What follows maps what the Fourth Amendment requires during immigration enforcement operations, applies that framework to the specific incidents in Minnesota, and examines what remedies remain after recent Supreme Court decisions have narrowed the paths for holding federal agents accountable.

Who Counts as “The People”: The Tiered Constitutional Framework

The Fourth Amendment protects “the people” against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez established that this phrase applies to persons with “substantial connections” to the United States.

The practical result is a tiered system. A U.S. Citizen has the full Fourth Amendment in any encounter with law enforcement. A lawful permanent resident, someone with a green card, has been understood by most courts to have the same protections as a citizen. Visa holders similarly have Fourth Amendment coverage.

An undocumented immigrant who has been physically present in the United States has these protections under most courts’ readings. The scope can vary, though, based on length of presence and strength of connection to American life. A recent border crosser with no established presence sits in the most disputed constitutional territory of all.

A tourist on a valid visa, an undocumented immigrant who has lived in Minneapolis for fifteen years, and a U.S. Citizen who happens to be present when agents arrive may all find themselves subject to enforcement action. The protections that apply to each differ not just in scope but in what options are available when those protections are violated.

The type of encounter matters too. A brief investigatory stop, what courts call a Terry stop, requires only reasonable suspicion. An arrest requires more. A home entry requires the most: a judicial warrant, meaning one signed by a judge or magistrate based on probable cause, not an administrative form approved by an agency supervisor. These rules apply regardless of immigration status.

ICE does not need probable cause that someone committed a crime. It needs probable cause that someone is “removable,” a civil (non-criminal) finding, meaning it’s treated like a regulatory violation, not a crime. Unlawful presence in the United States is a civil immigration violation; the act of improper entry, however, is a separate federal criminal offense.

ICE may briefly detain individuals based on reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence, but a civil immigration arrest requires probable cause of removability — a higher standard. Lower bar does not mean no bar, though. A seizure is still a seizure, and it still has to be reasonable.

The Home Entry Problem: Administrative Warrants Don’t Cut It

The Supreme Court’s decision in Payton v. New York established decades ago that law enforcement cannot enter a home to make an arrest without a judicial warrant, unless there’s an emergency, like someone fleeing or evidence about to be destroyed. That rule applies to ICE just as it applies to local police. It applies to citizens and noncitizens alike.

In May 2025, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo claiming that ICE agents could rely on administrative warrants, called I-205 forms, to enter homes and conduct arrests. An I-205 is not signed by a judge. It is approved by an ICE supervisory officer. Legal scholars and advocacy groups argued the policy violated Payton. A California federal court has since concluded that administrative warrants do not authorize ICE officers to enter homes to make arrests. The administration has proceeded with home-entry operations during Operation Metro Surge using these forms anyway.

The approximately 50 documented cases of property damage during Operation Metro Surge, agents allegedly smashing car windows and breaking down doors, need to be understood in this context. If the warrant used to justify entry is constitutionally flawed, the force used to carry out that entry is also unconstitutional. The key question is not whether the officer used the crowbar carefully, but whether the officer had constitutional authority to be there in the first place.

One incident illustrates the stakes: ICE agents broke a car window while the driver’s wife and one-month-old infant were inside, trapping them in the damaged vehicle with broken glass. In another case, agents allegedly extracted a man from a vehicle and struck his head repeatedly with a steel telescoping baton. This resulted in eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages. ICE’s official account claimed the man “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall” while handcuffed. Dr. Lindsey C. Thomas, a forensic pathologist consulted by the Associated Press, said publicly that the injuries’ extent and severity were inconsistent with a fall or self-inflicted harm; HCMC physicians spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The Deadly Force Standard: What Graham and Garner Require

Graham v. Connor (1989) held that all excessive force claims arising from arrests or seizures must be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness standard. Three primary factors guide that analysis: the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to officers or others, and whether the suspect is actively resisting or trying to escape arrest. Judges apply these factors from the officer’s perspective at the moment force is used, without the benefit of hindsight.

Tennessee v. Garner, decided four years earlier, addressed deadly force specifically. A Memphis police officer shot and killed a fifteen-year-old boy fleeing from a burglary. The boy was unarmed and posed no clear threat. The Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not permit deadly force to prevent escape unless the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a threat of death or serious physical harm to the officer or others. If possible, a warning must be given first.

Apply those standards to the killing of Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old American citizen shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026. On the first Graham factor, the severity of any crime: witnesses and officials stated Good was present as a legal observer with no criminal or immigration violation, a characterization the federal government disputed. The competing accounts of her role remain unresolved.

On the second factor, immediate threat: DHS Secretary Kristi Noem characterized Good’s actions as domestic terrorism, alleging she was attempting to run over a law enforcement officer and weaponizing her vehicle. But eyewitness accounts and video analyses by the New York Times and ABC News indicated Good was maneuvering away from agents, and confirmed that Ross fired while standing to the side of the vehicle — a position inconsistent with an imminent threat from an oncoming car. On the third factor, active resistance: Good was sitting in a vehicle and trying to drive away. Fleeing in a vehicle, without additional facts suggesting danger, does not generally justify deadly force under existing case law.

The Alex Pretti shooting, on January 24, 2026, involves similarly disputed facts. Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, was lawfully carrying a firearm under a valid Minnesota permit when Border Patrol agents tried to apprehend someone nearby. The federal government’s account stressed his gun ownership. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin used the phrase “massacre law enforcement” in characterizing Pretti, though the sources do not confirm she specifically cited his firearm possession as the basis for that claim.

Bystander video showed a different story: agents pepper-sprayed Pretti while he was standing, tackled him to the ground, and then fired approximately ten shots, including multiple shots into his back, after his gun had already been taken by an agent. ProPublica identified the agents involved as Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez. Under Graham, whether Pretti posed an “immediate threat” at the moment shots were fired is a question that a court should be answering. At that moment, he was disarmed and pinned to the ground. No court has been asked to answer it.

If state law permits open carry and an individual has a valid concealed carry permit, can the mere fact of lawful gun possession, separate from any threatening act, justify deadly force? Constitutional scholars across the political spectrum have suggested the answer should be no. How courts will ultimately handle that question in the law enforcement context remains genuinely unsettled.

The Remedies Gap: Constitutional Rights Without Enforcement Mechanisms

The practical ways of enforcing Fourth Amendment rights against federal immigration agents have been largely dismantled.

The main federal remedy for constitutional violations by federal officers has traditionally been a Bivens claim. It is named after a 1971 Supreme Court decision that recognized a judge-created right to sue federal officers for constitutional violations — a right not written into any statute. Unlike state and local officers, who can be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, federal officers were never explicitly covered by that statute — a gap Bivens filled for fifty years.

In 2022, the Supreme Court effectively closed that gap in the other direction. In Egbert v. Boule, the Court held that Bivens does not extend to Fourth Amendment excessive-force claims against Border Patrol agents in new contexts.

The impact on Operation Metro Surge victims is direct: neither Renée Good’s family, nor Alex Pretti’s family, nor the victims of the documented excessive force incidents can bring a Bivens suit against the agents responsible. This is not because their claims are weak, but because the Supreme Court has decided that federal courts cannot create the remedy.

The Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act, introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2025, would create a Section-1983-style private right of action against federal law enforcement officers for constitutional violations. As of early 2026, it remains unenacted.

State tort law — wrongful death, assault and battery, false imprisonment — is theoretically available but faces serious obstacles. Federal officers can claim Supremacy Clause immunity, though, arguing that their actions were authorized by federal law and therefore beyond state reach.

The legal test requires showing the officer was acting within federal authority and in a manner “necessary and proper” to fulfill federal duties. If a court finds the conduct was unreasonable or unauthorized, immunity does not apply. The burden of proving that falls on the person suing, the victim’s family, or the state prosecutor.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has said she is exploring criminal charges in the Good and Pretti cases, while Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has focused on civil litigation related to the operation. Supremacy Clause immunity is again relevant here. State courts may be blocked from prosecuting federal officers who can show they were performing lawfully authorized duties. The barrier is not impossible to overcome, but it is real.

In the Good case, DOJ leadership overruled career prosecutors who had opened an investigation and instead opened an investigation into Good’s widow. In the Pretti case, DOJ opened a federal civil rights investigation. More than a dozen federal prosecutors in Minneapolis and Washington resigned in protest. The executive branch controls both the agents accused of violations and the investigative process — a structural conflict the current situation has made impossible to ignore.

Injunctive relief remains possible. Attorney General Ellison, along with Minneapolis and Saint Paul, filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Operation Metro Surge. A federal judge declined to issue a preliminary injunction. The judge did acknowledge that the plaintiffs had made “a strong showing that Operation Metro Surge has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking, consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans.” The case continues.

For noncitizens specifically, there is one additional gap worth naming plainly: the exclusionary rule does not apply in immigration proceedings. In INS v. Lopez-Mendoza (1984), the Supreme Court held that evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches can still be used against a noncitizen in removal proceedings. An undocumented immigrant subjected to an illegal search during Operation Metro Surge cannot challenge that evidence in immigration court. The only path is a separate civil suit. As discussed above, Egbert has largely closed that path too.

Constitutional protections that exist in name for noncitizens are hollowed out by the absence of practical enforcement mechanisms. A citizen subjected to an unlawful search or seizure faces a difficult road to accountability. A noncitizen subjected to the same intrusion faces a road that is, in most circumstances, a dead end.

Quotas, Bonuses, and Structural Incentives Toward Constitutional Shortcuts

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act appropriates $170 billion over four years for immigration enforcement. It includes signing bonuses of up to $20,000 for new ICE agents who commit to five years of service, with additional retention bonuses of up to $15,000 annually also available. It sets a confirmed goal of one million deportations annually and, according to analysts, links student loan forgiveness to deportation-related benchmarks — though the precise statutory mechanism warrants review of the bill’s legislative text.

The federal government has created a pay structure in which an agent’s financial wellbeing, debt relief and bonus pay alike, is linked to the volume of people deported. No court has yet addressed whether this structure creates systemic pressure toward Fourth Amendment violations, though the legal framework for doing so already exists.

In City of Canton v. Harris, the Supreme Court held that a local government’s deliberate indifference to the risk of constitutional violations can create institutional liability — a standard requiring that the need for training be so obvious that policymakers effectively chose to ignore it. That standard covers poor training or policies that predictably lead to violations. Legal scholars have argued that financial incentive structures tied to specific enforcement outcomes can make up a “policy” that creates systematic pressure toward constitutional shortcuts.

The Monell doctrine holds cities and agencies legally responsible for constitutional violations caused by their own policies or practices. It has been applied this way to local law enforcement.

The quota structure may not cause any individual officer to knowingly cut constitutional corners, but organizational pressure does not need to be conscious to be real.

If speed and volume of deportations affect an agent’s pay, the incentive is to move fast and use whatever warrant is at hand. The incentive is also to escalate force rather than spend time on de-escalation that might result in fewer arrests.

The American Immigration Council’s analysis of the bill’s enforcement provisions flags this structural concern explicitly. If the 50 documented excessive force cases reflect a pattern rather than isolated incidents, the question becomes legally significant.

Racial Profiling and the Unresolved Circuit Split on Appearance-Based Stops

Multiple witness accounts from Operation Metro Surge described ICE agents detaining people based on appearance, accent, or perceived national origin. Agents discovered only after detention that those individuals were U.S. Citizens or had lawful status.

In United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, the Supreme Court held that Border Patrol officers could consider apparent Mexican ancestry as one factor in deciding whether to stop a vehicle, but could not rely on appearance alone. The Court wrote that “the likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor, but standing alone it does not justify stopping all Mexican-Americans to ask if they are aliens.”

The Ninth Circuit addressed this directly in United States v. Montero-Camargo. Judge Reinhardt, writing for the majority, argued that allowing officers to consider Hispanic appearance as a factor effectively authorizes racial profiling. Officers will inevitably lean on the easiest factor rather than doing the more careful analysis Brignoni-Ponce theoretically requires. The Ninth Circuit held that race may not be used as a factor in determining the reasonableness of a Border Patrol traffic stop.

The Supreme Court has never resolved the conflict between these two approaches. Whether appearance-based stops are legal depends on which part of the country you’re in. Operation Metro Surge has operated across jurisdictions with different legal baselines.

The American Immigration Council has documented how this unresolved split among federal appeals courts leaves people in different states with meaningfully different protections against ethnic profiling during immigration enforcement.

Witness accounts from Minneapolis included reports of agents demanding proof of citizenship from people of color and targeting neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants of particular ethnicities.

Whether any of these practices crossed the constitutional line depends on which legal framework applies — a question without a uniform national answer.

What Comes Next, and What Remains Unresolved

The Minnesota Attorney General’s lawsuit challenging Operation Metro Surge is ongoing. The Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act sits in committee. DOJ opened a federal civil rights investigation into the Pretti shooting but, in the Good case, overruled career prosecutors who had opened an investigation and instead opened an investigation into Good’s widow. Meanwhile, the federal government continues to claim exclusive jurisdiction over evidence that state prosecutors have a court warrant to access.

The specific legal question that will likely define the next phase of this litigation is whether Supremacy Clause immunity blocks state prosecution in the Good and Pretti cases. Federal officials are entitled to immunity if they were carrying out their legal federal responsibilities in a lawful way and their specific actions were necessary and proper to carry out those duties — or if the official had an objectively reasonable belief the conduct was necessary — but not if their actions violated federal law or were unreasonable in fulfilling those duties.

Whether shooting a legal observer who was maneuvering her vehicle constitutes carrying out their legal federal responsibilities in a lawful and necessary manner is exactly the kind of factual and legal question that courts exist to resolve. The federal government’s strategy of blocking state investigation prevents the question from ever reaching a court.

Egbert also left one question genuinely open: whether Congress will act. The Supreme Court clearly invited Congress to create a law giving people the right to sue for constitutional violations by federal officers. Congress has not done so. The Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act would do exactly what the Court suggested. Whether it moves forward depends on political will that, as of early 2026, is not evident in the legislative calendar.

That the Fourth Amendment applies during immigration sweeps is not in serious legal dispute. What Operation Metro Surge has made impossible to ignore is a different question: whether a constitutional right that cannot be enforced is still meaningfully a right. Renée Nicole Good had Fourth Amendment protections. She was killed, the federal government blocked the investigation, and DOJ declined to act. The Supreme Court’s Egbert decision closes off the civil remedy her family might otherwise have pursued. The Amendment applied. The accountability did not follow. That gap is the actual constitutional crisis here, and it is one that no court has yet been asked to close.

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