A door to an apartment on the floor in the hallway of 7500 South Shore Drive. Photo provided by Maira Khwaja, Invisible Institute.
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With what we have seen so far about the raid in Chicago, the government has moved from people’s cars to their homes in conducting illegal searches and seizures and wholesale violation of people’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Photo of Chicago apartment after the raid: The Triibe
DHS has provided no evidence that people who live in the raided apartment building had “ties” to Tren de Aragua. DHS has provided no identities of the arrestees or those in the apartment building who were ousted from their apartments and “detained.” CNN reported that most of those seen “detained” outside the building during the raid were Black.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is supposed to protect people in this country from unreasonable searches and seizures by government officials. This has over the years been interpreted to mean that searches of people’s homes, including apartments, cannot be conducted without a warrant issued by a judge. Probable cause must be provided to a judge to get a search warrant. No probable cause has been produced to justify the searches and arrests carried out by federal agents during the Chicago raid. Saying that the building’s premises were “tied to” a criminal gang is not probable cause.
Then we have the issue of this word “detain,” which in the context of the raid on the Chicago apartment building means that people were put in handcuffs and held by federal agents without being provided due process of law, including search or arrest warrants, or access to lawyers before they were questioned.
It appears from multiple reports that the people living in the building were required by federal agents to produce identification papers, including drivers’ licenses and birth certificates. A resident of a nearby building who witnessed the raid told WBEZ News, “Stuff was everywhere. You could see people’s birth certificates and papers thrown all over. It was wicked crazy.”
Americans are not required to carry proof of their identity or citizenship on their person. Being required to produce identity or citizenship papers is an illegal search unless there is probable cause that someone is in the country illegally or has committed a specific crime. The agents involved in the raid on the apartment building had no probable cause to believe that the people in their apartments were not citizens. They could not see through the doors that they kicked in. They had no probable cause to believe that crimes had been committed in the apartments, or that there were crimes in progress. They kicked in the doors without knowing who was in the apartments or what their immigration status was or if they had arrest records.
On every level, the raid in Chicago was illegal from beginning to end. The people who lived in those apartments had their privacy invaded and their rights under the Fourth Amendment violated. Apparently, those who were “detained” during the raid were not released until they provided proof of identity and citizenship.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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