Six Minnesotans filed suit Thursday against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security after masked agents broke into their homes without judicial warrants in December and January during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement effort.
The lead plaintiffs are Garrison Gibson and his wife, Teyana Brown. Gibson, a native of Liberia, was home with Brown and their school-age daughter and niece on Jan. 11 when ICE agents smashed their door with a battering ram.
Gibson, Brown and four other plaintiffs are asking a federal court in Washington, D.C., to block enforcement of a May 2025 memo in which Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons purports to give agents the authority to enter homes with only an administrative warrant from ICE, not a judicially approved warrant as the law has long required.
“Without any notice and comment or reasoned explanation, DHS has now abandoned its longstanding policy in favor of a new one that tramples the Fourth Amendment rights of individuals and families across the country, including noncitizens with immigration status and citizens of the United States,” attorneys with the Protect Democracy Project and ACLU of Minnesota argue in a civil complaint.
In 2009, immigration officials handed Gibson a removal order based on a minor marijuana conviction that has since been expunged. But the government has allowed Gibson, 39, to live and work in the United States as long as he checks in regularly with ICE, which he has done.
After U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan ordered Gibson’s release from detention, Gibson and Brown recounted at a Jan. 17 news conference how the agents used a battering ram to smash open their door. Brown recorded video of the raid in which she can be heard repeatedly asking the agents to show her a warrant.
The paper that one of the agents produced did not include a judge’s signature. It was an administrative warrant signed by DHS Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer Ariel Valdez. Administrative warrants only allow agents to arrest someone during an encounter in public. They do not permit entry into a person’s home without their consent.
In his memo, Lyons cites no case law or constitutional authority to enter private homes without judicial warrants, only legal guidance from the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel.
The lawsuit references testimony from former ICE attorney and instructor Ryan Schwank, who told a Senate subcommittee on Feb. 23 that his supervisor showed him the memo “in secret” and ordered him not to discuss or take notes on it.
The plaintiffs allege that ICE leaders strictly controlled access to the memo because they recognized that it is “flagrantly unconstitutional.”
“Instruction on the Home Entry Memo itself was conducted under a veil of secrecy,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys write. “While trainees were instructed to follow the memo, none of the instructions were written down, nor was any record of what was taught maintained by the instructors.”
The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Abdulkadir Sharif Abdi and his wife Rhoda Christenson. Abdi, a native of Somalia, was given an order of removal in 2001 but, like Gibson, immigration authorities allowed him to stay under an order of supervision that requires him to check in with ICE regularly.
Abdi was home on Dec. 1, 2025, when he answered a knock at his apartment door.
“Thinking the knock was from apartment maintenance personnel, Abdulkadir opened the door.” the lawsuit alleges. “When he saw the immigration agents, he quickly tried to close it. But before he could close the door, the agents rushed into his home.”
The agents did not have a judicial warrant, but arrested Abdi inside his home and shipped him to a county jail in Nebraska, where he was locked up for 18 days until a judge ordered that he be released. Abdi also alleges that while in federal detention, jailers denied him access to his nebulizer medication that he needs to help him breathe.
Jeyli Salguero and her father Alfredo Salguero are also suing ICE and DHS. According to the civil complaint, about 10 masked and heavily armed agents broke into their Oakdale, Minn., home without a judge’s approval on Jan. 14 in search of Jeyli’s older half-brother, who did not live there.
“Jeyli watched as her father stepped out of his bedroom into the kitchen where he was immediately confronted by masked men in military-style uniforms with assault rifles in their kitchen. The agents pointed their rifles at Alfredo and yelled at him to put his hands in the air.”
The agents arrested Alfredo Salguero, who has temporary protected status, and held him in detention for three weeks before an immigration judge ordered his release on bond. They also arrested Jeyli’s sister Astrid, who had been in the United States legally while pursuing an asylum application, and flew her to a detention facility in Texas.
“After enduring horrible conditions for several weeks and with the prospect of continuing to do so indefinitely, Astrid acquiesced to DHS’s efforts to remove her from the United States.”
MPR News requested comment on the lawsuit from ICE and DHS.
