{"id":61235,"date":"2025-06-10T07:08:25","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=61235"},"modified":"2025-06-10T07:08:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:08:25","slug":"arnold-porter-people-are-not-documents-texas-court-rules-that-administrative-inspection-warrants-cannot-be-used-for-immigration-raids-of-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=61235","title":{"rendered":"Arnold &amp; Porter: People Are Not Documents: Texas Court Rules That Administrative Inspection Warrants Cannot Be Used for Immigration Raids of Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Arnold &amp; Porter: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arnoldporter.com\/en\/perspectives\/blogs\/enforcement-edge\/2025\/06\/people-are-not-documents\">People Are Not Documents: Texas Court Rules That Administrative Inspection Warrants Cannot Be Used for Immigration Raids of Businesses<\/a> by Mohamed Al-Hendy, Lee M. Cortes, Jr., Ryan Hartman &amp; Murad Hussain:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) generally has the administrative inspection authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act (the Act) to 1) interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien, and 2) arrest that alien if ICE believes that he or she is in violation of any immigration law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his or her arrest. However, the Act does not give ICE the authority to enter private businesses to carry out its searches, interrogations, or arrests \u2014 and that is what it needed a Texas district court\u2019s blessing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On May 27, 2025, Judge Andrew Edison of the Southern District of Texas denied the United States\u2019 application for an administrative inspection warrant to \u201center a specific private business located within this district to search for and seize individuals who might be in the United States unlawfully, and to investigate a pattern or practice of employing unauthorized aliens.\u201d He offered three reasons for doing so: 1) the search would be \u201cinherently criminal,\u201d not administrative, because the owner(s) of the business might face criminal penalties for employing individuals without work authorizations; 2) administrative warrants \u2014 meant to examine documents or inspect hazards \u2014 cannot be used to search for people or investigate crimes; and 3) the warrant was impermissibly styled as a general warrant, which is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. In doing so, Judge Edison distinguished legal precedent that has long supported ICE\u2019s enforcement strategies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arnold &amp; Porter: People Are Not Documents: Texas Court Rules That Administrative Inspection Warrants Cannot Be Used for Immigration Raids of Businesses by Mohamed Al-Hendy, Lee M. Cortes, Jr., Ryan Hartman &amp; Murad Hussain:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative-search","category-immigration-arrests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61236,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61235\/revisions\/61236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}