Today’s NYT reports on reckless pre-dawn raids by immigration officials in New York. Excerpt:

“These were like dragnets being cast over entire houses,” said Nadia Marin-Molina, director of the Workplace Project, an immigrant advocacy organization in Hempstead that has gathered many of the complaints.

The complaints echo a federal lawsuit filed last month in Manhattan contending that immigration agents unlawfully force their way into the homes of Latino families in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches.

“We have been inundated with calls,” said Cesar Perales, director of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the lawsuit. “People are terrified by these indiscriminate raids.”

It is a familiar tale of agents bursting into homes when the occupants are asleep and without having done sufficient investigative work in advance of the raid. Such tactics produce unnecessary violence. Sometimes the residents, understandably, think their home is being invaded by criminals.