Teaching ICE “Knock & Talks” in Crimmigration

This week in Crimmigration, my students and I discussed (federal) interior immigration enforcement. We looked at ICE and the regulations that guide ICE’s questioning, detention, search, and arrest of noncitizens.

I assigned as reading my edited version of Kidd v. Mayorkas, __ F.Supp.3d __, 2024 WL2190981 (C.D. Cal) [segment 9.3 of my open-access Crimmigration casebook], a decision about “knock and talks” and civil immigration arrests in ICE’s Los Angeles Area of Responsibility. It’s a terrific case in which U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright takes ICE to task for entering onto curtilage without residents’ express consent when the agents’ objective is not to talk at all, but to make an immigration arrest.

I paired this reading with 3 minutes of the of the first episode of the Netflix docuseries Immigration Nation. Immprof Tania Valdez (GW) wrote a post for us almost four years ago now (!) about how to use this segment of footage to talk about the parameters under which ICE operates in the field. I was thrilled to finally be able to put her ideas into practice.

The two worked together beautifully. We had a lively discussion about consent, ICE holding themselves out as police, and administrative vs. judicial warrants.

-KitJ