A Department of Homeland Security unit embedded with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 4, 2025 (Image: Shutterstock)
A newly surfaced Trump administration memo has been deemed "outrageous," per an analysis from Bloomberg, for paving the way to turn federal agents into "an all-powerful police force" for the president.
The memo, first reported on by the New York Times, pertains to officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and authorizes them to make arrests of anyone they suspect of being undocumented, without the need for a warrant and without providing any proof that the individual is a flight risk. Breaking down the details for Bloomberg, legal scholar Noah Feldman decried the memo as an attempt not merely to exploit "loopholes" in the system, but to fundamentally rewrite the law itself.
"The directive, contained in a memo obtained by the New York Times, reverses long-standing ICE policy and effectively renders the warrant requirement itself empty," Feldman wrote. "Coming on the heels of another legally indefensible memo, which purported to allow ICE agents to enter the homes of suspected undocumented people without a judicial warrant, the new policy shows that ICE isn’t just exploiting legal loopholes to create massive sweeps. Instead, it reveals an agency actively attempting to change the legal landscape to turn itself into an all-powerful police force."
According to Feldman, ICE was previously authorized to make warrantless arrests under two circumstances. The first was when an officer directly witnessed someone making an unlawful crossing at the U.S. border. Given the nature of ICE's nationwide mass deportation agenda, he noted that this circumstance is essentially irrelevant. The second instance would be, as he noted earlier in his piece, when an office “has reason to believe” that someone is in the U.S. with undocumented status and “is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”
Feldman argued that this new memo stems from a 2025 Supreme Court ruling that "disasterously eroded" the protections afforded by the law to individual rights. In the decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that officers were permitted to make arrests based on "reasonable suspicions," which could include factors such as their ethnicity or the language they spoke, two factors that did not previously meet the standard for probable cause.
The memo broadens the definition of a flight risk for ICE officers, allowing them to arrest anyone who is "likely to escape," meaning anyone who might not be expected to remain at the scene of a stop by the time an arrest warrant is obtained.
"Since just about anyone would walk away from an ICE arrest if they could (at least under current circumstances), it follows from this interpretation that anyone stopped by ICE is 'likely to escape' — and therefore may be subjected to warrantless arrest," Feldman explained.
He later added: "I realize all these legal technical details are a lot. So let me put it simply. Under the new memo, ICE agents can detain anyone they think might be undocumented, based on factors like ethnic appearance, language, and where you happen to be hanging out when they stop you. Once they’ve stopped you, they can claim to have probable cause that you’re undocumented (for example, because you don’t have proof of citizenship on you). Then the officers can simply arrest you, without a warrant. The total package amounts to a sweeping authorization for ICE agents to roam the streets, grab just about anyone they want, arrest and detain them."