The Safety of Home
Our nation’s legal tradition has long recognized the home as a special place of safety, privacy, and refuge.
For example, there’s a longstanding principle of self-defense in criminal law that permits the use of force to defend a home and its inhabitants. This principle is called “the castle doctrine.” It is a remarkable feature of our legal system that applies with equal force to all homes – from a single-room studio apartment to the sort of multi-room, multi-acre mansion more commonly associated with the term “castle.” Both are considered castles under the “castle doctrine,” and the people living in both are equally entitled to safety and security in their homes.
Another example comes from prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures found in the federal Constitution and all state constitutions. Under the Fourth Amendment to U.S. Constitution, people have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their homes. If law enforcement wants to search through a person’s private home without permission – or even bring a drug-sniffing dog to doorway – they need to get a search warrant signed by a judge.
As Justice Scalia noted in his majority opinion in Florida v. Jardines, “when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals.” And, like the castle doctrine, the protection against unreasonable searches of the home applies with equal force to mansions and apartments alike. Further, the protection is available for people who own their homes and people who rent.
ICE Undermines Safe Homes
These protections are key to letting people live freely in the safety and comfort of their own home. But here’s the problem: landlords often know private information about their tenants, including their immigration status. Even the most caring, supportive landlords who want to respect their tenants’ privacy could be bullied by coercive federal agents trying to get them to turn over information that could put their tenants’ safety – or even their lives – at risk.
Worse, unsavory landlords might use immigration status to pressure tenants not to report substandard or dangerous living conditions, or they might turn over immigration information to federal authorities because they find it easier than the legal eviction process. Tenant protection laws protect all of us, because we all have an interest in making sure that people are able to avoid homelessness and that we can all live safely in our own homes.
Maine has a solution: ICE Out of Our Homes
On July 29, Maine’s new “ICE Out of Our Homes” law goes into effect. This law prohibits landlords from disclosing certain personal and sensitive details about tenants, such as a tenant’s national origin, citizenship, immigration status, or alien registration number, among other details.
If a landlord breaks the law, there are clear penalties: the tenant can recover the actual damages they suffered or $1,000, whichever is greater, as well as reasonable attorney’s fees. And, the tenant can obtain a court order to prevent recurrence of the unlawful conduct.
If the federal government won’t protect people in Maine, then Mainers will look after one another – just like we always have.
We’re confident that if landlords know the law, they are going to follow it. And if federal immigration agents try to trick or bully landlords into disclosing personal information about their tenants, they’ll be told to come back with a valid judicial warrant – just like they would need for any other search of a person’s home.
When people sign a lease, they should feel confident that their sensitive personal information is safe and secure. Unfortunately, ICE agents cannot be trusted. They lied in January about their revoltingly titled “Operation Catch of the Day,” which they said was targeting the “worst of the worst.” But really, it turned our communities upside down while causing terror to our neighbors, our coworkers, and the kids with whom our kids go to school. Only 11 of the nearly 200 people arrested even had any criminal record. We’re representing one man who was swept up by ICE, put in fear for his life, and then let go.
Maine’s new ICE Out of Our Homes law is a response to the Trump administration’s lawless actions, and it will take effect alongside two other laws: ICE Out of Policing and ICE Out of Schools and State Healthcare. If the federal government won’t protect people in Maine, then Mainers will look after one another – just like we always have.
Nearly 100 years ago, Justice Brandeis observed in his dissent in Olmstead v. U.S. that the right to be left alone is “the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.”
The new ICE Out of Our Homes law establishes clear legal standards that protect everyone by ensuring people can follow the law rather than give in to the pressure or coercion from a rogue agency like ICE. In that way, it safeguards the right to be left alone against landlords, and government actors, who would intrude upon it.
Join the Fight to Get ICE Out of Maine
While the state of Maine only has the authority to regulate what is under its own jurisdiction, ICE Out laws will make every community safer.
However, these protections will only work if they're fully implemented. A wide range of public officials oversee many of the local systems affected by these laws, including county commissioners, mayors, police chiefs, superintendents, and sheriffs.
