Opinion: Our 4th Amendment rights are endangered like never before

ICE officers at the home of a suspected undocumented immigrant File photo courtesy ICE Suppose the police want to get illegal drugs off the streets of California So they begin stopping pedestrians at gunpoint shoving them against walls frisking them and searching their belongings They also force their way into random houses including yours maybe to search for drugs The police would likely seize particular drugs and arrest specific dealers this way But the great majority of people frightened humiliated and invaded would be entirely innocent Can the police do that The Constitution provides a clear answer No The Fourth Amendment is clear The right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated It allows only searches with a warrant issued upon probable cause supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized In short it means you ve got a right to be left alone by the police unless they present evidence to a judge showing there s a strong chance you ve committed a crime and the judge issues a warrant This was no small matter for the founding fathers Indeed the King of England s defilement of such rights was one of the driving forces behind the American Revolution itself as Chief Justice John Roberts explained in a ruling The Fourth Amendment was the founding generation s response Roberts wrote to laws which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity Such abuses are no longer ancient history In the name of fighting chaos and an imaginary crime wave Trump has launched a broad assault on our Fourth Amendment rights especially by an increasingly militarized ICE The impact has been especially hard felt in states like California which accounts for the one of the highest numbers of ICE arrests so far this year But it s being felt all over Take Chicago for example where Trump openly proclaimed that the city was about to find out why it s called the Department of WAR Among other contemporary abuses ICE commandos there conducted a military assault on a five-story apartment building There was no attempt to persuade a judge that anyone in the building let alone everyone was likely a criminal Without a warrant TIME magazine revealed ICE agents dropped from Black Hawk helicopters onto the roof and worked their way through the building kicking down doors and throwing flash bang grenades rounding up adults and screaming children alike detaining them in zip-ties ICE seized everyone in the apartment building Agents pointed guns in the faces of terrified citizens handcuffed them and held them for hours Photos of the aftermath informed TIME show toys and shoes littering the apartment hallways that were left in the chaos as people were pulled from their beds Trump has informed military leaders of his intent to use our cities as training grounds for our military The Chicago apartment building action occurred the same day Is that what they re training for In newest months a series of national demonstrations have embodied the theme No Kings Aptly so One of the complaints listed against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power The assault in Chicago was what the framers of our Constitution feared and what they hoped our Bill of Rights could thwart But a Constitution is not self-defending As Trump muses over an unconstitutional third term summarily executes alleged drug agents without a trial or even an arrest and invokes pretend uprisings to justify federalizing the National Guard the danger is real and imminent But we defeated a king once And if we all recognize the danger and are prepared to stand up for our democracy we can do it again Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney longtime social activist and author His writing can also be unveiled on his Substack Reasoning Together with Mitchell Zimmerman