Transcript of Breaking: Whistleblower Exposes Major Trump Administration Constitutional Violation

We have major news right now in a bombshell, absolute bombshell. Ice quietly changed its policies in 2025 in a new memo that's been released by NBC News to allow ICE agents to enter the home of you or anyone else without a judicial warrant, only needing what is called an administrative warrant. They didn't want you to know about this, but now it's come to light. Folks, they have likely been violating the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution for many months. And this is a major, major development. I can't overstate it. As a lawyer, and now as a journalist, we're going to break it down. Make sure to like, comment, share, and subscribe. Subscribe to my sub stack by clicking the link below. I know liking a video, even when you don't like the news may be counterintuitive, but it's how people get to know what is actually happening. It's how it spreads this video in the algorithm. So a new NBC News report outlines how a new policy instituted by ICE, shows that ICE agents are now allowed to forcibly enter a person's home on these so-called administrative warrants, which are very different from warrants where a judge is present with a request and approves it.

According to Todd Lyons, the document notes that detaining people in their residence is based solely on administrative warrants to change from past policies. Although the Department of Homeland Security has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders, DHS Office of General Counsel has recently determined that US Constitution, Immigration and Nationality Act, and immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose. The memo says that agents may arrest and detain aliens in their place of residence who are subject to a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals, or a US district Judge or magistrate judge. The memo says, under general guidelines, that officers and agents using a method called Form I-205 must knock and announce, and that in announcing officers, an agent must state their identities and purpose. Let's break this down a little bit. What is an administrative warrant? That is a good question. An administrative warrant is not issued by a judge. It's issued by the Department of Homeland Security or by an immigration judge. An immigration judge is not your typical Article 3 judge, like a district court judge or even a county court judge that you appear for a criminal case, for example.

There is a whole separate immigration criminal or immigration legal proceedings. And An immigration judge or just a Department of Homeland Security could authorize an administrative warrant. That gives the permission of ICE agents to arrest someone who is a non-citizen for immigration-specific violations. Traditionally and historically, it does not allow ICE officers to enter your home to arrest someone. Why is that important? Because administrative warrants are at a lower standard. They're specifically for immigration policy. But now what ICE is saying is that administrative warrants are essentially at the same level as judicial warrants. But the truth is, a judicial warrant is a higher bar to reach. You have to show that there is a reason, probable cause, to enter into someone's dwelling, to enter into someone's home, or that you have some type of exigent circumstance that you have to enter. It authorizes the search, the seizure of one's home. It is a complete step up. Well, now, and maybe since the memo was issued back in May, so I guess now for the past seven months, ICE officers have likely been violating the fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and most Americans don't even know about it, which is why I need your help to get this everywhere you can.

So like, comment, share, and subscribe. Now, this afternoon, I spoke with someone running for Congress. Her name is Paige Signetti. She's running for Congress in one of the most hotly contested races in the country, Pennsylvania aid. It's against Rob Resnahan. He's a Republican, been in the news for a lot of corruption lately regarding stock trading. She's the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania. I spoke to her about her race. I spoke to her about what she plans on doing to hold corruption accountable, because this right here is an example of corruption, what ICE is doing, because they did it in the dead of night, behind the scenes, months ago. And the only reason that people found out about it now is because a whistleblower gave it to Senator Richard Blumenthal, and now, NBC News has obtained it. I spoke to her. I want you to listen to this interview, but please make sure to like, comment, share, and subscribe. People need to know this. If you want to support my work, click the link below and subscribe to my sub stack today. More updates soon. Here's my interview. Super excited today to be joined by Paige Cognetti, who's running for Congress in Pennsylvania's eighth Congressional district.

Now, Paige, I really just want to jump right into it. Why should the folks of Pennsylvania elect you to Congress?

I am the Mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania. I first ran in 2019 on the heels of a corruption scandal. Unfortunately, one of many that we've had here in Northeastern, Pennsylvania. The Mayor of Scranton went to federal prison for extortion, and that set up a special election. I had been on the school board and had called in the attorney general to reform the school board back in 2018. Folks knew that I was somebody that could come in and push for push out corruption, make things work right for people, and also work on the finances. I just took my third oath of office last week. I'm very proud to continue to be mayor of Scranton. We've proven that government can work for people, that local government can be a force for good, that we don't have to have pay to play. We don't have to just hire our nephews in order to have a city. We can actually hire on merit, do the right thing, have transparency and technology. We can make things work for folks. We want to take that in the face of, sadly, a freshman Republican congressman who has clearly just wanted to profit off of his office.

2024, he actually wrote an op-ed in our local newspaper saying that Congressional stock trading was a sickening thing to do trading off your votes as something that should end immediately. Lo and behold, he gets into Congress and becomes one of the most prolific stock traders trading over 600 times in office last year. That type of behavior, profiting over your own votes, profiting off of people's pain in that he sold Medicaid provider stock, $130,000 worth of it just before he voted to slash Medicaid by $1 trillion. It's sickening itself. It's cynical. And folks here really don't like to see that. So we want to take our work to Congress from here in Spranton.

Well, I'm going to talk about Rob Resnahan, your opponent, in just a minute. But I got to ask you, you mentioned corruption, you mentioned pay to play. When you say When you say those words, to me, that just screams another day in Congress, right? That that's just another day in Washington, DC, for a lot of folks. What are you going to do to stop corruption in DC, in a way, drain the swamp, as some presidents might say?

As As mayor, I already came in. I wouldn't take donations from employees, certainly not from any corporate packs. We are doing the same thing on the Congressional campaign. When I got to the city, there was a mayor's car and a gas card and all these things that just seemed like just a recipe for disaster. You made sure to turn down all of those things and just do the job for the people as opposed to taking on all of the perks. Our campaign, again, no corporate pack money. We continue to advocate for a ban on stock trading, a real one, not what the current Congressional Republicans are playing with. There's a lot of things that I think people in Congress need to do to show people that they are willing to stand up. That includes taking Taking positions sometimes with the powers that be that maybe are uncomfortable. But I've been doing that as mayor for over six years. Not everyone likes that we don't do the pay to plan anymore. A lot of people have benefited from that. But I think there are a lot of people in Congress who bristle at that and don't want to be known for that, don't want that to be part of Congress.

I think there's a lot of really solid candidates for Congress that want to clear out the corruption and really start helping people trust in government again.

I have to ask, you mentioned the stock trading ban that you are in support of. There is that stock trading ban that's currently circulating among Republicans on Capitol Hill. What does a perfect stock trading ban look like to you?

A perfect stock trading ban, I'm not sure there is one. There's always going to be pitfalls. There's always going to be an argument, Well, we won't be able to get good people to run for Congress if they have to divest of everything. I don't know exactly how perfect it can get, but I know that it should not include a spouse loophole. That seems like this silly thing that the Republicans have in It certainly should not say that the stocks that you currently have, you can still trade. We've got to figure out what that looks like. Blind trusts are also something that I'm not sure that's exactly the silver bullet either, but we have to be able to put mechanisms in place where people are being true to the people that they represent. The financial disclosure has a lot in there. I think that if people are just really wanting to do the job, the best thing to do is to divest with your single stock holdings. Mutual funds are a great thing to be in. Index funds, right? Those perform very, very well. The stock trading, the day trading, it has no place in Congress.

If you want to be a private citizen, trade all day, do anything you want, have at it. But as a member of Congress, that is exactly why people hate politicians and why Congress has such a low favorability rating, why people hate Washington.

Well, I think another reason people hate Washington is because they feel like Washington doesn't actually get anything done. I tell I tell a lot of folks, if you want to get something done, go to your mayor, go to your city council person. So can you talk a little bit about some of the wins you've had on a local level that could translate to a federal level?

When we came in in 2020, we were a distressed city. We had a junk bond credit rating. Just a couple of weeks ago. S&p upgraded us for the third time. We now have an A minus. We have really, really improved. What that means for people who pay taxes is we can go and refinance our debt, just like you might refinance a student loan or get a second mortgage on your home, we can go get a better rate on the debt that we have, which saves the taxpayers a lot of money. We've been able to do that successfully before, saving millions of dollars for the taxpayers of Scranton. Now that we have that new credit rating, we're going to go back to our books, look at them and see what we can refinance. There's real savings there. Also having a positive A minus credit rating, at least, and hopefully we'll get upgraded again, lets people know that they invest in us. When we do go to the capital markets, we'll have buyers for that debt if we need to. Just general trust in the system. We have a really rapidly growing city. We have all sorts of bulldozers and cranes all over the city, new restaurants coming in, all sorts of things being built.

We have third-party validation through the SMP and through other mechanisms that say, Scranton is a place that you can invest in. The government is well run. They will be good stewards of your tax dollars, be good stewards as you build something with us. We class permit fees up to 70% in 2022. That's really helped with development, not just of commercial spaces, but also of housing. Almost a thousand new units of housing have been built under our watch. We're very, very proud of that. We certainly need more. We need more housing everywhere in America, but we're proud of the mix of housing that we've been able to help make sure it gets built, and then we have a lot more coming online.

Now, before I let you go, I do got to ask you, this race is one of the closest in the country. Your polling has you up about two points, or at least for initial polling has you up two points against Rob Reznan. Two-part question. Number one, do you need Republicans to win this seat? And two, if so, how are you going to win them over?

When I ran in 2019, I ran as an independent and continue to have support from Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in Scranton. When you run a city, you don't run it on party lines. You run it for the people and for the economic future of the city. I've shown that that's who I am, and that's how I lead here in Scranton, and I will be taking that case to the rest of the district. I think people really want folks that just get stuff done and that aren't ideological about the way they get things done, but are able to just work with the people whomever they are, whatever political party. I don't see political party when we're here in Scranton doing the work that we do. We work with everyone. I think that that is a really important thing as we move forward, not just in 2026, but as we go forward throughout these next years. We have a long way to go in the country of getting back together after a decade of a really, really deep division. But I think we can do it. And I think there are a lot of congressional candidates on the Democratic side who want to do that.

And I've met Republicans that are in Congress that want to do that. But you have to be genuine about your mission. You have to be genuine about who you are. We want to make sure that we have people in Congress who are going to be true to themselves. I have a long record in Scranton of being me, and it's not a partisan record at all.

Paige Cognetti, thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks, Erin.

Hey, folks. Erin Parnas here. Thank you so much for watching the Parnas Perspective. Please consider subscribing to support our work as we grow this independent news media entity into something that rivals mainstream every single day. Thanks so much, and I'll see you soon.