You Are at a Crossroads: Stand with the Constitution or With Cruelty

Without judicial warrants, ICE detainers are illegal. If you obey them, you betray your oath of office and destroy the community trust you need.

I wore a badge for more than three decades. I served four cities, two of them as chief of their police. Each time, I raised my right hand and swore an oath. That oath was not to a mayor, not to a governor, not to a federal agency. It was to the Constitution of the United States.

That oath bound me to protect the rights of all people — and it did not bend with the political winds of the day.

Today, I am alarmed by what I see happening in our nation. Federal immigration agents are detaining people in our communities under the guise of “warrants” that are nothing more than internal paperwork. Mothers and fathers are being pulled from their families by masked agents in unmarked cars. Children are left behind, traumatized. Families are shattered. And you are being pressured to go along with it.

Let’s be clear: these are not judicial warrants signed by a judge. They are administrative forms signed by ICE officials themselves — paperwork. They do not meet constitutional standards for arrest or entry. They do not constitute lawful authority for you to act.

Yet ICE agents often expect you to help — to stand by as people are taken away without judicial oversight, or even to actively assist them.

That is not policing. That is complicity.

You know you are not required to obey unlawful orders. In fact, your oath demands the opposite. Courts have affirmed this time and again: the federal government cannot force local police to enforce immigration law. And when local agencies choose to comply with ICE detainers, they expose themselves to lawsuits for unlawful detention.

Studies show 70–75% of ICE interior arrests begin with local police cooperation via detainers. This is not about removing violent criminals from the streets. If someone commits a serious crime, our justice system has the authority and tools to act. No police officer disputes that. But that is not what ICE’s dragnet often looks like. More often, it targets hardworking people whose only “crime” is their presence. People raising children, paying taxes, caring for loved ones. People who are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

When you collaborate with ICE detentions absent judicial warrants, you destroy the trust you need to do effectively do your job. Witnesses go silent. Victims stay in the shadows. Many in your community retreat in fear. And when trust is gone, you become ineffective. Your job becomes more difficult, even more dangerous.

The IACP Code of Ethics is explicit: police officers are to protect the weak from oppression, to respect the constitutional rights of all, and to never employ unnecessary force. Tell me — what is more oppressive than tearing parents from their children without lawful authority and jailing them?

As a retired chief, I still believe what I always taught: the measure of a police officer in a free society is not blind obedience to power. It is fidelity to the Constitution and to the people they serve.

You are are not a pawn of federal administrators. You are the guardian of your community. And guardians do not hand their neighbors over to be disappeared in the night.

So when ICE comes without a judge’s warrant, you must stand firm. Protect your community. Uphold your oath of office. Refuse to be part of unlawful seizures. Tell them to take off their masks and identify themselves to those whom they are trying to seize. Just as you do when you make an arrest.

The future of policing — and the safety of our communities — depends on your courage.