With the threat of another partial government shutdown looming, Democrats are looking for ways to cut off funding and resources for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One demand in particular could cripple the Department of Homeland Security&#8217;s efforts to quickly apprehend and deport criminal illegal aliens.
As Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/26/government-shutdown-dhs-minnesota-00748628">reported</a>, one issue that has Democrats &#8220;<a href="https://x.com/cspan/status/2016606045645209974?s=20">coalescing</a>&#8221; is a new requirement that federal agents obtain judicial warrants — rather than the current standard administrative warrants — for immigration arrests. That move alone, according to several critics of such a measure, could bring immigration enforcement operations to a near standstill.
A source within Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed to The Daily Wire that requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests would create nearly impassable roadblocks for federal agents attempting to enforce the existing laws.
&#8220;There would be no more immigration arrests,&#8221; the source said. &#8220;It&#8217;s the functional equivalent of getting a warrant before issuing a speeding ticket. It’s the entire reason why ‘administrative’ arrests exist in the first place. If every single illegal alien who is charged with &#8216;Entry without Inspection&#8217; was treated like a criminal arrest then they would have, among other things, right to counsel provided by the United States would be impossible.&#8221;
Typically, immigration enforcement operates through the use of I-200 and I-205 civil <a href="https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/i-200_and_i-205_sample_annotated.pdf">administrative warrants</a>, which require only probable cause that the person is in the country illegally and can be deported. Requiring a judicial warrant instead would mean that Homeland Security would only be able to target illegal immigrants if they had then committed a federal crime after entering the country illegally — and even then, their hands would be tied unless and until they could convince a federal judge to sign off on a warrant.
&#8220;State &amp; local crimes would not apply. (Feds don’t enforce state &amp; local),&#8221; Fox News congressional correspondent Bill Melugin explained. &#8220;For instance, if an illegal immigrant gets arrested in Minnesota for a DUI crash causing great bodily injury (state crime) and bonds out of jail, ICE would not be able to target him for arrest because there would be no judicial warrant (not a federal crime). ICE would not be able to target anyone for just being in the U.S. illegally. They would have to wait for a federal crime to be committed, then a federal judge would have to sign off on probable cause for arrest.&#8221;
ICE agents do occasionally use judicial warrants, primarily for illegal aliens who have been deported previously and have re-entered the United States illegally anyway — a federal felony under <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1326">8 U.S.C. § 1326</a>. But the majority of the illegal aliens currently being targeted for arrest and removal have not been previously deported.
Another federal official spoke with The Daily Wire and raised the possibility of another complication: the infrastructure is not equipped to handle a massive influx of judicial warrants for routine immigration arrests.
&#8220;There is currently not a structure in the federal government to add millions of judicial immigration warrants. On top of that it would exclude all visa overstay cases and other administrative cases where there isn&#8217;t a corresponding criminal law. This effort is being pushed to roadblock the deportation agenda of the president.&#8221;
But as former Missouri State House Speaker <a href="https://alec.org/person/tim-jones/">Tim Jones</a> told The Daily Wire, the Democratic push for judicial warrants is more likely a backhanded effort to secure mass amnesty for millions of illegal aliens — many of whom entered the United States during former President Joe Biden&#8217;s term.
Jones explained that because illegal immigration itself was considered a civil violation, any illegal alien who had not committed additional federal crimes after entering the United States would effectively be off limits to ICE agents: &#8220;They&#8217;re using this to backdoor mass amnesty,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And they&#8217;re willing to shut down the government in order to get their way.&#8221;
And because federal agents could not obtain judicial warrants based on state crimes, he said that the only places where ICE detainers would ever be honored would be in the places where they already are being honored: in red states, where local and state law enforcement generally cooperate with the federal government in the enforcement of immigration law.
Several sources within ICE concurred with Jones, telling The Daily Wire, &#8220;It basically provides amnesty to millions. It’s telling people that you can reside safely in the US as long as you stay out of trouble. It will remove immigration officials from the streets. Fed courts would be slammed with cases if we have a repeat of the Biden admin and you have to charge millions with&#8221; <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325">illegal entry</a>.
So-called &#8220;sanctuary states,&#8221; Jones observed, would quickly become literal sanctuaries, because without the cooperation between federal immigration enforcement and local and state authorities, illegal aliens could commit state-level crimes with impunity, knowing they would never be at risk of deportation.

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