The killing of a citizen of the United States by a federal agent during a demonstration in Minnesota\u2019s Minneapolis city against Trump\u2019s crackdown on immigrants has caused outrage and triggered more protests.<\/p>\n
US citizen Alex Pretti, 37, is the second person fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents this month.<\/p>\n
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Videos of confrontations between ICE agents and Minneapolis<\/a> residents have flooded social media, showing some of the 3,000 officers who are deployed in the city\u00a0stopping, questioning and detaining\u00a0residents.<\/p>\n In one case, immigration agents escorted a US citizen \u2013 a grandfather of Hmong ancestry \u2013 out of his house in his underwear in freezing weather. In another case, the father of a five-year-old girl was briefly detained and zip-tied after he said a federal agent falsely accused him of not being a US citizen because of his accent. The agency is also under scrutiny for reportedly dispatching a five-year-old boy to knock on the front door of his home to lure relatives outside before agents then took the child into custody.<\/p>\n The events have led to protests<\/a> and prompted confusion over what ICE is legally allowed to do in public and private locations. Are there limits on when and how ICE can approach or detain people? Does the law differentiate between encounters in public and private spaces, such as a home? And is the Supreme Court becoming more tolerant of aggressive ICE actions?<\/p>\n Legal experts weighed in on the public\u2019s constitutional protections from immigration stops and detentions.<\/p>\n What rights do people have when approached by ICE?<\/p>\n Federal law gives immigration agents the authority to arrest and detain people believed to have violated immigration law. But everyone, including immigrants suspected of being in the US illegally, is protected against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Constitution\u2019s Fourth Amendment<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAll law enforcement officers, including ICE, are bound by the Constitution,\u201d said Alexandra Lopez, managing partner of a Chicago-based law firm specialising in immigration cases.<\/p>\n The Fourth Amendment doesn\u2019t stop ICE from trying to deport people who have broken immigration law, but it has traditionally constrained the agency. The more extensive an enforcement action is, the higher the bar for immigration officers to justify their actions.<\/p>\n For example, officers can question someone in a public place, but more extensive interactions \u2013 such as a brief detention that\u2019s not a formal arrest \u2013 require a \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d that someone has committed a crime or is in the US illegally, the Supreme Court has ruled.<\/p>\n Reasonable suspicion \u201chas to be more than a guess or a presumption\u201d, said Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor. To meet this standard, a reasonable person would need to suspect that a crime was being committed, had been committed, or would be committed.<\/p>\n Agents must meet a higher bar to arrest someone. They need \u201cprobable cause\u201d, which generally requires sufficient evidence or information to suggest a person has committed a crime.<\/p>\n What is a \u2018Kavanaugh stop\u2019?<\/p>\n Historically, the Supreme Court has ruled that racial or ethnic profiling is unconstitutional. But a recent opinion by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh gave ICE increased discretion to use race as a factor for stopping and questioning people.<\/p>\n In the Noem vs Perdomo case of 2025, Kavanaugh was one of six justices who voted to stay a lower court ruling in favour of plaintiffs challenging federal immigration enforcement tactics in Los Angeles, California. Kavanaugh wrote that \u201capparent ethnicity\u201d could be used as a \u201crelevant factor\u201d in determining reasonable suspicion as long as it was combined with other factors and not used on its own.<\/p>\n Before Kavanaugh wrote this, courts had \u201coften ruled that agents could not stop someone just because they \u2018looked like an immigrant\u2019 or were in a high-crime area\u201d, Lopez said. But if immigration officers follow Kavanaugh\u2019s guidance, \u201cit gives ICE a lot more discretion and justification to profile\u201d.<\/p>\n Critics of Kavanaugh\u2019s opinion \u201cargue that the \u2018relevant factor\u2019 language invites abuse, opening the door to ethnic profiling\u201d, said Rodney Smolla, a Vermont Law and Graduate School professor.<\/p>\n But Kavanaugh\u2019s opinion was not cosigned by other justices, and it came from a procedural ruling rather than a substantive one, so its legal impact might be limited. The Supreme Court \u201chas not made a definitive ruling on \u2018Kavanaugh stops\u2019 and their permissibility\u201d, said Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor.<\/p>\n Somin and other legal analysts have said Kavanaugh appeared to dial back his support for race or ethnicity as a factor when he wrote a different opinion several months later, in Trump vs Illinois, which stopped the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard in Illinois.<\/p>\n Do people\u2019s rights differ inside their homes versus in a public space?<\/p>\n The Supreme Court has generally\u00a0ruled\u00a0that, unless a resident grants consent, law enforcement cannot enter a private home without a warrant signed by a judge, which requires the government to provide evidence showing probable cause.<\/p>\n \u201cThis means a person inside the house generally need not open the door, need not converse with the agent, and may require the agent to slip the warrant under the door or hold it to a window,\u201d Smolla said. There are some exceptions, such as when an officer encounters a violent crime in progress or someone needing medical care.<\/p>\n Securing a judicial warrant is time-consuming and is typically reserved for high-priority cases in which people are suspected of crimes beyond immigration violations, Lopez said. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier for ICE to arrest individuals in public,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n