American Street: "America Used to Mean Something Far Better Than That"

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law filed an amicus brief today in Chatrie v. U.S., the first geofence search case to reach the Supreme Court and the first major case addressing how the court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States applies to other kinds of location-tracking technologies. In the brief, the groups assert that police should not be able to conduct searches using geofence warrants, a novel and invasive surveillance technique that enables law enforcement to search for and locate unknown numbers of people in a large geographical area without reason to believe they were engaged in criminal conduct. Geofence warrants direct Google or other companies to hand over users’ location data from every cell phone or other device the company estimates was in a certain area during a certain time frame. These warrants are increasingly common, but they raise serious questions under the Fourth Amendment because they are dragnets, typically issued without police demonstrating reason to believe all the people who own those devices were involved in any crime. For example, a high-level analysis conducted by ACLU of Northern California of the types of places captured by law enforcement in geofence warrants across San Francisco revealed a troubling violation of our right to be secure in our homes and to be free from unreasonable search without probable cause. “A search that ensnares any number of innocent people just because they are nearby when a crime occurs is an unconstitutional fishing expedition that violates the Constitution. There are too many examples of these overbroad searches invading peoples’ privacy, including in homes, doctors’ offices, and churches. Courts should not allow them,” said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. This appeal comes after a federal judge in Virginia held that the geofence warrant in Mr. Chatrie’s case was overbroad and that investigators lacked probable cause for much of the data they obtained. The warrant tracked all Google location history users who were estimated to be within a 150-meter radius of a bank robbery in Virginia — an area as big as several football fields that encompassed residential buildings, businesses, and a church. The warrant also allowed police to obtain additional location information about individuals that were ensnared in the initial dragnet. The district court held that the government’s search warrant unconstitutionally left it to the officers and Google, and not to a judge, to decide what location and identifying information the company ultimately revealed, a clear departure from the neutral magistrate’s prescribed role under the Fourth Amendment. However, the court refused to suppress the illegally-obtained evidence on the grounds that the “good-faith exception” to the exclusionary rule — which allows evidence to be admitted when police reasonably rely on a facially valid warrant — applied. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was divided but ultimately allowed prosecutors to use the evidence it had gathered through the geofence search. Now, at the Supreme Court, the ACLU’s amicus brief argues that geofence warrants are never a permissible investigatory method under the Fourth Amendment. Geofence searches are unconstitutional general warrants that courts should categorically reject. “Allowing police to access your private search history just because you happen to be three football fields away from where they say a crime was committed is both absurd and dangerous. And most importantly, it’s unconstitutional: Virginians do not lose their right to privacy because they happen to be within an arbitrary radius set by police,” said Matthew Callahan, senior supervising attorney with the ACLU of Virginia. The amicus brief in Chatrie v. United States is part of the ACLU’s Joan and Irwin Jacobs Supreme Court Docket.

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union is demanding Congress take immediate action to end President Trump’s unconstitutional use of military force against Iran, until and unless Congress declares war on Iran or specifically authorizes the use of force. This comes after President Trump announced in the middle of the night that the U.S. and Israel were bombing Iran and called for the overthrow of its government. President Trump, who ran on ending America’s wars, also noted in his speech, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.” While the ACLU does not take a position on whether military force should be used against Iran, for decades the organization has been steadfast in insisting, from Vietnam through the war in Afghanistan, both wars in Iraq, the military action against Libya, and the ongoing use of force in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, that the Constitution is clear that decisions on whether to use military force require Congress's specific, advance authorization. “Last night, President Trump violated the Constitution when he didn’t even bother to ask Congress before bombing a country of nearly 100 million people,” said Christopher Anders, director of the ACLU’s Democracy and Technology Division. “Our founding fathers and the Constitution give war authority power to Congress, and Congress alone. It is what makes us a democracy, and ensures that our leaders fully consider the many costs of war — including the harm to human lives and rights, and any effects on global peace and stability — before sending American troops into danger. If President Trump wants to send American armed forces into conflict, he must make his case to the American people and their representatives in Congress. The commander in chief must follow the chain of command and that begins with we the people.”

On October 14, 2025, the United States military carried out an illegal missile strike that killed Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian men who were traveling by boat from Venezuela to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad and Tobago. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School filed suit on behalf of Lenore Burnley, Mr. Joseph’s mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Mr. Samaroo’s sister, seeking redress and accountability for these extrajudicial killings pursuant to the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute.

BOSTON, MA – Today, family members of two Trinidadian men killed in a U.S. missile strike in October are suing the U.S. government for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing. Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, were killed in one of the 36 strikes the Trump administration has launched against civilian boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. At least 125 people have been killed in these strikes since September 2025. On October 14, Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were returning from Venezuela to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad and Tobago when a missile struck their boat. Four other people also died in the strike. The plaintiffs are Lenore Burnley, Mr. Joseph’s mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Mr. Samaroo’s sister. They bring this case on behalf of surviving members of Mr. Joseph’s and Mr. Samaroo’s families. “Chad was a loving and caring son who was always there for me, for his wife and children, and for our whole family. I miss him terribly. We all do,” said Mr. Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley. “We know this lawsuit won’t bring Chad back to us, but we’re trusting God to carry us through this, and we hope that speaking out will help get us some truth and closure.” They bring their claims under two federal statutes: the Death on the High Seas Act, a law that allows family members to sue for wrongful deaths occurring on the high seas, and the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign citizens to sue in U.S. federal courts for violations of well-recognized human rights norms. “Rishi used to call our family almost every day, and then one day he disappeared, and we never heard from him again,” said Sallycar Korasingh, Rishi Samaroo’s sister. “Rishi was a hardworking man who paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again and to make a decent living in Venezuela to help provide for his family. If the U.S. government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him. They must be held accountable.” In the complaint filed today, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School, and the ACLU of Massachusetts detail why the boat strikes are “manifestly unlawful.” The U.S. is not engaged in an armed conflict, as the government has implausibly claimed, and even during wartime, these strikes would still be illegal under the laws of war, which constrain the indiscriminate and direct use of force against civilians and civilian vessels. “The Trump administration’s boat strikes are the heinous acts of people who claim they can abuse their power with impunity around the world,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel at the ACLU. “In seeking justice for the senseless killing of their loved ones, our clients are bravely demanding accountability for their devastating losses and standing up against the administration’s assault on the rule of law.” President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have publicly boasted about and published videos of the strikes — including the strike that killed Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo. However, the strikes’ victims have remained largely anonymous, seen only as specks on a screen. The Trinidadian Foreign Minister Sean Sobers told a local news outlet after the strike that “the government has no information linking Joseph or Samaroo to illegal activities.” “It is absurd and dangerous for any state to just unilaterally proclaim that a ‘war’ exists in order to deploy lethal military force,” said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “These are lawless killings in cold blood; killings for sport and killings for theater, which is why we need a court of law to proclaim what is true and constrain what is lawless. This is a critical step in ensuring accountability, while the individuals responsible may ultimately be answerable criminally for murder and war crimes.” Prior to his murder, Mr. Joseph lived with his wife and their three children in Las Cuevas, Trinidad. To support his family, he often traveled to Venezuela to fish and for farmwork. On October 12, he called his wife to let her know that he had found a boat ride home from Venezuela and would see her in a couple of days. On October 14, his wife and Ms. Burnley saw social media reports of a boat strike; fearing that the boat was his, they repeatedly called him, but got no reply. His family has not heard from him since. Mr. Samaroo was born in El Soccorro, Trinidad, where his elderly father, eight younger siblings, and two of his three sons still reside. His elderly mother lives nearby in San Juan. In 2024, he was released early on parole after serving a 15-year sentence for his participation in a homicide. Following his release, Mr. Samaroo moved to Las Cuevas, where he fished and worked in construction to support himself and his family. In August 2025, he let his family know that he was working on a farm in Venezuela, taking care of goats and cows and making cheese. He would call his family almost every day when he was in Venezuela, and in an Oct. 12 call with Ms. Korasingh, he told her he was returning home to Trinidad and would see her in a few days because their mother had fallen ill, and he wanted to help take care of her. That was the last time Ms. Korasingh or anyone else in the family heard from him. “Using military force to kill Chad and Rishi violates the most elementary principles of international law,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a Professor at Seton Hall Law School. “People may not simply be gunned down by the government, and the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary risk making America a pariah state.” Because non-citizens may bring admiralty claims in any federal court, the lawsuit was filed in Massachusetts, where the federal bench has a long history of deciding admiralty cases.“The administration's lethal boat strikes violate our collective understanding of right and wrong,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “Rishi and Chad wanted only to get home safely to their loved ones; the unconscionable attack on their boat prevented them from doing so. It is imperative that we hold this administration accountable, both for their families and for the rule of law itself.”