A Legal Tool for Holding ICE Agents to Account, Hiding in Plain Sight

[usonian]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/ice-lawsuits-states.html
Archived at https://archive.md/qCPmV

A proposal in a 1987 law review article (PDF) could address a gap that makes it all but impossible to sue federal officials for violating the Constitution.

The key to holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents accountable for constitutional violations may lie in a 1987 law review article by a young law professor named Akhil Reed Amar.

“I think it was a good idea then,” he said last week, “and it’s only taken more than half a lifetime for people to actually read the thing.”

The article has, in truth, been quite influential. It has been cited, for instance, in seven Supreme Court opinions. But it was also 96 pages long and touched on many issues.
snip

His central point for present purposes was that state legislatures can authorize lawsuits against federal officials for violating the Constitution. If that is right, such state laws would close an odd gap in federal law that — broadly speaking — allows such suits against state and local officials, like police officers, but not against federal ones, like ICE agents.

The TLDR?

“States can’t just generally regulate ICE conduct, because the federal government gets to regulate that,” he said. “But states can provide remedies against federal officials when federal officials violate federal constitutional rights.”

Glad that IANAL, I guess.

For background on this issue (ICE exceptionalism) please see:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220986886
Why Do Lawyers Want to Abolish ICE? (YouTube video with transcript and links to pertinent material)