The question over the use of administrative warrants has already arisen in court. Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, accused the Trump administration of ignoring the Fourth Amendment in a ruling last month ordering the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, from an immigration detention center in Texas. The two have since returned home to Minneapolis.
Biery said the administration was treating the Fourth Amendment like a “pesky inconvenience.”
“Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster,” Biery wrote. “That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”
In that same opinion, Biery also pointed to the Fifth Amendment, which provides for due process rights. The judge wrote that the father and son “seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law.”
