New Dem proposal would restrict ICE's key tool to detain criminal illegal aliens

Republicans, who hold 53 seats in the Senate, require the help of at least seven Democrats to advance legislation over the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster.

But Democrats have conditions for their support.

Warrant requirements have surfaced as one of the many concessions Democrats have floated as a necessary safeguard to avoid detentions that have sparked public unrest in Minnesota. That's the position of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

"I think that's a basic requirement of the Fourth Amendment," Blumenthal said, referencing the Constitution's protections against government searches and seizures.

Scott Andrew Fulks, who runs a private law practice in Minnesota, explained that ICE operates through two different standards.

Like other law enforcement agencies, ICE must secure a judicial warrant from a judge to enter a person's home, an area safeguarded against random entry by the constitutional protections mentioned by Blumenthal.

"A judicial warrant would have to be signed, of course, by a judge and would allow them to forcibly enter a home if someone did not open up the door for them," Fulks explained.

But in public, Fulks explained that ICE can detain targets with a lower bar - the authority granted by an administrative warrant. Administrative warrants allow ICE to detain individuals who have received an order of removal and depend only on the status of the individual, Fulks said.

He noted that's where some of ICE's more visible confrontations come from.

Questions have emerged among Democrats about how loosely ICE is interpreting current requirements. Blumenthal noted that a leaked memo last week seemed to indicate ICE believed it had the power to enter personal residences without a judicial warrant.

Fulks noted that expanding requirements for judicial warrants for public apprehensions would slow down the administration's immigration crackdown on immigrants with a warrant order, which would only apply to individuals suspected of breaking federal law and shrink ICE's pool of possible detentions.

"Their messaging says they got 3,300 folks. Any person with a little bit of common sense knows that there are not 3,300 hardened [immigrants] with convictions in the state of Minnesota," Fulks said.

"If the ultimate end goal is to make sure that the current administration's numbers are as high as possible, then that should be the aim and the method to get that done."

Sen. Rick Scott, a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, said he would look to preserve the way the agency operates now.