Immigration authorities require that the owners deliver leases, rental requests, forwarding addresses, identification cards and other information about their tenants, a sign that the Trump administration is aiming at helping in their impulse for mass deportations.
Eric Teusink, a real estate lawyer in the Atlanta area, said several clients recently received citations asking for complete files on tenants. A rental application can include labor history, marital status and family relationships.
The “two -page information” application citation, which Teusink shared exclusively with Associated Press, also requests information about other people who lived with the tenant. One, dated May 1, is signed by an officer of the Citizenship Anti-Franking Unit of the United States. However, it is not signed by a judge.
It is not clear how widely the citations were issued, but they could indicate a new front in the efforts of the administration to locate the people who are illegally, many of whom had to give the authorities their US addresses as a condition to initially enter the country without a visa. President Donald Trump largely ended the temporary status for people who were allowed in the country under his predecessor, Joe Biden.
The demands raise legal questions
Some legal experts and property administrators say that the demands raise serious legal questions because they are not signed by a judge and that, if the owners meet, they could risk violating the fair housing law, which prohibits discrimination based on the breed, color or national origin.
Critics also say that it is likely that the owners feel intimidated to comply with something that a judge has not ordered, all while the person whose information is requested can never know that their private records are in the hands of the immigration authorities.
“The danger here is an excess of comfort,” said Stacy Seicshnaydre, a law professor at the University of Tulane who studies the Housing Law. “The fact that an owner receives a summons does not mean that it is a legitimate application.”
ICE officers have long used citations signed by an agency’s supervisor to try to enter Casas. Defense groups have mounted the “know their rights” campaign to people to reject entry if they are not signed by a judge.
The citation reviewed by the AP is from the Directorate of Stranging and National Security of the USCIS, which, as ICE, is part of the Department of National Security. Although he is not signed by a judge, he threatens that a judge may have an owner in contempt of the court for not complying.
Tricia McLaughlin, a national security spokesman, defended the use of citations against the owners without confirming whether they are being issued.
“We are not going to comment on the tactics of the police surrounding the ongoing investigations,” McLaughlin said. “However, it is false to say that ICE citations can simply ignore. ICE is authorized to obtain records or testimony through specific administrative authorities.
Applications are new to many owners
Teusink said that many of its clients supervise multifamily properties and are accustomed to obtaining citations for other reasons, such as requests to deliver surveillance images or give access to the local police to a property as part of an investigation. But, he said, those requests are signed by a judge.
Teusink said his clients were confused by the latest citations. After consulting with immigration lawyers, he concluded that compliance is optional. Unless it is signed by a judge, the letters are essentially only an officer who makes a request.
“It seemed that they were in a fishing expedition,” Teusink said.
The real estate lawyer of Boston, Jordana Roubicek Greenman, said that a proprietary client received a vague ICE official last month requesting information about a tenant. Other local lawyers told him that his clients had received similar messages. She told her client not to call again.
Anthony Luna, the CEO of Coastline Equity, a commercial and multifamily properties administration company that supervises about 1,000 units in the Los Angeles area, said that the property administrators began to contact him a few weeks ago about the concerns of the tenants who heard rumors about the ice citations. Most do not plan to meet if they receive them.
“If they go after criminals, why are they not going through judicial documents?” Luna said. “Why do you need housing suppliers files?”
According to Lindsay Nash, Professor of Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Yeshiva of the University of Yeshiva in New York, which saw a significant increase under the increase in a significant increase under him, according to Lindsay Nash, Professor of Law at the Cardozo Law Faculty of the University of Yeshiva in New York. However, the owners rarely obtained them. The state and local police were the most common receptors.
ICE can enforce the summons, but first I would have to file a lawsuit in a federal court and obtain a judge to sign its application, a step that would allow the recipient of the citation that Raoeda said Nash. She said the recipients often comply without telling the person whose records are being disclosed.
“Many people see these citations, they think they seem official, they think that part of the language in them sounds threatening and, therefore, responds, even when, for what I can say, it seems that some of these citations have been excessive,” he said.
