In this episode of the Let's Find Common Ground podcast, the Common Ground Committee team looks at the growing movement of bridge builders pushing back against the toxic polarization that separates us.
The Third Amendment protects against being forced to house the military. It may also apply to ICE.
Hotels across the country are housing ICE agents as they carry out violent raids, detention operations, and street abductions.
Of course people are pushing back. Activists have been calling for boycotts of hotel chains like Marriott and Hilton that cooperate with ICE, arguing that businesses should not be providing material support for an enforcement regime built on mass detention, deportation, and brutality.
The government seems offended that anyone would even object. When one Hilton-branded hotel reportedly refused to host ICE agents, the backlash from the government was unhinged, with the Department of Homeland Security yelling on social media that it was “unacceptable.”
As if private businesses are obligated to support armed state violence. As if saying no to ICE is somehow unreasonable or even traitorous.
It’s easy to dismiss the backlash as ideological, performative, or just another episode of internet outrage. But underneath it is a much older and much more serious question—one that sounds dusty until you think about how modern law enforcement actually works: What are the limits on the government’s ability to force private space into service for coercive state power?
That question sits at the heart of the Third Amendment—the one most people have forgotten about if they ever knew what it was at all.
The Third Amendment prohibits the government from forcing people to “quarter,” or house, soldiers in their homes during peacetime without consent.
The Founders were responding to very specific British abuses in the decades leading up to the American Revolution. The British Parliament’s Quartering Acts required colonists to house troops and provide them with supplies, including, specifically “with diet, and small beer, cyder [sic], or rum mixed with water.”
The 1765 Quartering Act prevented British troops from being housed in private homes, but it also required colonial legislatures to provide quarters for soldiers to be lodged in, including barracks, inns, and ale houses—basically the Marriotts of the day. Later, in 1774, Parliament enacted another quartering act that required private homes to quarter British soldiers and allowed royal governors—the Crown’s appointed executive officials in the new colonies—to find places to house British soldiers in “uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings.”
And, according to the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan organization for constitutional education, there were reports of the British military forcing their way into private homes during the French and Indian War.
The colonists hated it, of course. They were deeply suspicious of standing armies operating among civilians and relying on civilians for housing, supplies, and logistics: George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton all loudly opposed it. Standing armies were invasive, expensive, and coercive. They hated it so much that they listed it as a grievance in the Declaration of Independence—and then enshrined their objection in the Bill of Rights.
The Third Amendment reflects a simple principle: The government does not get to commandeer private space for enforcement just because it’s convenient. (The fact that the newly formed United States promptly ignored this principle when it came to Native Americans is deeply relevant hypocrisy.)
It’s easy to dismiss the Third Amendment as irrelevant today: No one is stuffing ICE agents into your mom’s spare bedroom and demanding that she serve them weak mojitos—yet.
This particular amendment has never been the basis of a Supreme Court decision, and modern lower courts have waved it away as inapplicable to modern policing. (As recently as 2015, a federal court in Mitchell v. City of Henderson ruled that Third Amendment protections didn’t apply because local police officers are not soldiers.)
But that dismissal depends upon pretending that modern law enforcement bears no resemblance to a standing domestic army—a pretense that gets harder to maintain given the ongoing events in Minnesota.
ICE is formally a civilian—not military—agency with a law enforcement component tasked with enforcing immigration laws. In reality, it operates as a paramilitary force. Agents conduct coordinated raids, deploy tactical units, carry military-style weapons, and work hand-in-hand with local police departments that have themselves been heavily militarized over the last several decades.
These aren’t rogue actions: They’re protocol. The Trump administration has framed this work not as immigration or law enforcement, but as combat—against “invasion,” “criminal aliens,” and “alien enemies“—and ICE agents are behaving accordingly.
In Minnesota, that posture has resulted in extraordinary violence. The ICE agent who killed Renee Good earlier this month was immediately shielded from public accountability while the administration smeared her and her wife to justify the killing.
A 21-year-old said he was left blinded in one eye after agents fired a projectile into his face at close range. That same week, agents threw flash-bang grenades into a car carrying six children, including a six-month-old baby who reportedly stopped breathing and had to be revived by his mother, who performed CPR.
So when ICE agents operating this way need “quartering,” the relevant question is not whether they technically qualify as “soldiers.” It’s whether the function they serve—as armed agents of the state deployed against civilian populations—triggers the same constitutional concerns the Third Amendment was designed to prevent.
Housing ICE agents is not a neutral act. It is part of the logistical spine of Trump’s detention-and-deportation machine. ICE does not operate in isolation; it relies on a vast network of private contractors, detention centers, transportation providers, and lodging to function at scale.
Hotels provide staging ground, proximity, and rest and resupply for agents conducting raids that funnel people into detention facilities. Lodging is infrastructure. And when that infrastructure is treated as something civilians or private businesses are expected to provide automatically, the consent that the Third Amendment requires has already been abandoned.
Which brings us to the Hilton mess.
When Hilton stripped a local hotel of its franchise following reports that the property declined to host ICE agents in early January, individuals reportedly began canceling Hilton Honors accounts in protest. It sent a clear message: Declining to provide private space for armed federal agents is no longer treated as a neutral business choice—it’s a provocation.
That framing mirrors the government’s response.
The Department of Homeland Security melted down on social media accusing Hilton of siding with “murderers and rapists” and deliberately undermining federal law enforcement.
Setting aside that most of the people DHS is detaining aren’t murderers and rapists—indeed, 73 percent have no criminal conviction, according to the TRAC Immigration database—in what world is a private business required to cooperate with law enforcement by housing them?
That is precisely the dynamic the Third Amendment was written to reject.
Private actors are not obligated to materially support state violence. Hotels are private businesses. They get to decide who they lodge and under what conditions. Declining to house ICE isn’t sabotage or resistance—not really. It’s the ordinary exercise of property and contract rights in the face of an increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement apparatus.
The reason the Third Amendment feels outdated is because we’ve normalized everything it warned against: heavily armed agents operating inside communities, private space pressed into service for enforcement, and government officials acting offended when anyone refuses.
It’s also impossible to ignore how selective this alarm has been. Law enforcement operating aggressively inside Black and brown communities has been normalized for decades—raids, checkpoints, militarized policing treated as background noise rather than the constitutional crisis it is. That reality has rarely triggered serious concern about standing armies or coerced cooperation.
But when those same tactics show up in places like Minnesota, where the people affected are more likely to be white—with the visibility and connections to power that can bring—the discomfort suddenly sharpens.
What’s changed isn’t the conduct. It’s who is being subjected to it—and who is now being asked to quietly accommodate it.
The Third Amendment was not written for a world in which federal agents routinely move through civilian communities battering and brutalizing them, supported by infrastructure that private actors are not permitted to refuse to provide.
What we are seeing now is not the law being enforced, but yet another constitutional boundary being worn down through normalization—first in Black and brown communities, and now everywhere else. Hotels are not required to help that happen any more than private citizens are.
And the government doesn’t get to act offended when hotels—and the Constitution—tell it no.
Opinion: Hotels Have a Constitutional Right Not To House ICE Agents was originally published by Rewire News Group and is republished with permission.
Congress may open with prayer, but it is not a religious body. Yet religion is something that moves so very many, inescapably impacting Congress. Perhaps our attempts to increase civility and boost the best in our democracy should not neglect the role of faith in our lives. Perhaps we can even have faith play a role in uniting us.
Philia, in the sense of “brotherly love,” is one of the loves that is part of the great Christian tradition. Should not this mean Christians should love our political opponents – enough to create a functioning democracy? Then there is Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.” And Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” The flesh could be seen as a politics of ego, or holding grudges, or hating opponents, or lying, or even setting up straw men to knock down; serving one another in the context of a legislative body means working with each other to get to “yes” on how best to help others.
Getting to “yes” in today’s political environment in Congress has been difficult. Yet it has happened with bipartisan majorities passing legislation. Last session, with a slight margin for Democrats in the Senate and a slight majority for Republicans in the House, the numbers necessitating some coming together, an omnibus appropriations bill passed by a bipartisan majority kept the government open. A foreign aid bill passed by a bipartisan majority funded Ukraine in the war of naked aggression by Russia, Israel in its right to exist, Gaza's humanitarian aid, and Taiwan as it faces a China that believes it is part of China. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was extended by a bipartisan majority for two more years, making sure that the United States continues to have authority to monitor foreign terrorists, but also under continual oversight much greater than before FISA was enacted at all.
Is there a Christian position on any of this, yes or no? I would say a qualified “no.” I do not doubt the faith of anyone who comes to contrary positions that I believe in. Yet I do think there is room in today’s politics for more brotherly love, reasonableness as a virtue, and exercising our freedom such as to “serve one another.” Perhaps we can go beyond numbers as the only reason for bridging differences; perhaps a kind and still voice can play a role, too.
Throughout my career in public service, I have engaged with the Religious Right and the lesser-known Religious Left. Both are actually very strong in their own ways. What seems to be missing is a Religious Center. This center could be Center-Right or Center-Left. For me, what I want is a religious movement willing to try to get to “yes” on every issue – so long as the end position is reasonable. This does not mean capitulating to everything. Just that “no” is not the only position.
I think of the organization Bread for the World when I worked in the US House of Representatives during the George W. Bush administration. People of faith showed up in our office with a stack of letters and “asks” that both Republicans and Democrats could support. One was the funding of Millennium Challenge Accounts, a competitive program that awards funds to developing nations that govern justly, invest in people, and promote economic freedom. Another was the funding of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). President Bush had called for the creation of these programs, and Democrats agreed.
A religious coalition of the Center-Left and Center-Right on select issues could do tremendous good for our country. Imagine more respectful dialogue and good compromises. The religious coalition would not appeal solely to a party’s base. Only to love of all (Democrat or Republican), reasonableness for all (Republican or Democrat), or serving each other (Republican and Democrat). I can imagine what this looks like – and maybe you can too. I hope what we see is less a country torn apart and more a country of the best in leadership.
Scott Miller is a graduate of Widener School of Law, a former chief of staff in Congress, and the author of 'Christianity & Your Neighbor's Liberty.
"Vote Here" sign
In 2025, state legislatures enacted at least 31 restrictive voting laws, the second-highest total since the Brennan Center began tracking this legislation in 2011. At the same time, state legislatures enacted at least 30 expansive voting laws, in a departure from recent years, when the country saw significantly more expansive laws enacted in a given year than restrictive laws. Thirty of the 31 restrictive and all 30 expansive laws will be in effect for the 2026 midterms, and parts of the remaining restrictive laws will also be in effect.
Between January 1 and December 31, 2025:
Following a presidential election that was rife with voting-related conspiracy theories, 2021 set the record for the most restrictive voting laws passed by states since the Brennan Center began tracking them. Yet in 2025, states enacted almost as many laws despite the 2024 presidential election results being unchallenged. This suggests that passing laws to make it harder for eligible Americans to vote is an ongoing policy project in some of the states rather than a reaction to a one-time event. Notably, however, only one of last year’s restrictive laws is as sweeping as omnibus restrictive laws enacted in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and Texas in 2021.
In another departure from 2021 and other recent years, the number of restrictive laws enacted last year outnumbered the expansive laws. In 2021, states enacted at least 62 expansive voting laws, more than double the 30 expansive laws enacted in 2025. Indeed, every other year from 2021 through 2024 had at least 1.5 times as many expansive laws enacted as restrictive ones.
This roundup also looks ahead to what may happen in 2026. Some states allow legislators to pre-file bills for the following year’s session in the fall, and some states permit legislators to carry over pending bills from one year to the next. Although some states’ legislative sessions are shorter in even-numbered years and a few legislatures won’t meet, the pre-filed bills and carryovers provide an indication of what changes to election laws may be coming with federal elections looming in November.
Restrictive Legislation
Between January 1 and December 31, 2025, at least 16 states enacted 31 restrictive voting laws.[9] That tally includes two Ohio laws that were not part of our October roundup: one enacted after the publication of our previous roundup[10] and one enacted last March.[11] Thirty of those laws and parts of an omnibus law in Utah are set to be in effect for the 2026 midterms.[12]
States That Enacted Restrictive Voting Laws in 2025 Map
The newly enacted law in Ohio does not allow election officials to count mail ballots received after Election Day except for military and overseas voters’ ballots.[13] Kansas, North Dakota, and Utah passed similar laws in 2025.[14] Previously, these 4 states allowed mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted so long as they were received within a set period after Election Day. Recent research on the changes to the Ohio receipt deadline suggests that thousands of otherwise valid votes in the 2024 election would not have been counted under the new rules.
These laws come alongside litigation seeking to prohibit states from counting mail ballots received after Election Day, including a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court this spring. Currently, 30 states allow at least some ballots received after Election Day to count.[15]
State lawmakers have sought to limit mail voting for years, and 2025 was no exception. At least 7 states passed 8 laws restricting mail voting,[16] headlined by a Utah law that, among other things, eliminates universal mail voting starting in 2029.[17] Since the 2020 election, 27 states[18] enacted 52 laws[19] restricting mail voting.
As covered in the October 2025 roundup, restrictive laws in 2025 also featured trends such as tightening existing ID requirements for voting or registration, as well as expanding the use of unreliable data to update state voter rolls in ways that are likely to remove eligible voters.
Restrictive Voting Laws Enacted in 2025 Table
Election Interference Legislation
Between January 1 and December 31, 2025, at least 7 states enacted 8 election interference laws.[20] All are on track to be in effect this November.
States That Enacted Election Interference Laws in 2025 Map
The 8 laws include legislation enacted by Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah granting partisan state officials power over local election administration that could allow them to influence election outcomes.[21] Iowa’s law, for example, grants the secretary of state wide discretion to take over county-level recounts.
Elsewhere, Indiana and New Hampshire both enacted laws that could seriously hamper election administration by instituting flawed ballot-counting requirements.[22]
Election Interference Laws Enacted in 2025 Table
At least 25 states enacted 30 expansive voting laws in 2025.[23] All the expansive laws were discussed in our prior roundup, and all are slated to be in effect for the midterms.[24] Common themes included expanding voter registration opportunities, mail voting access, and ballot accessibility for voters with disabilities.
This is the second-lowest number of expansive laws passed in the last five years. The year with the lowest total (2022), however, also had far fewer restrictive laws (11). This is the first time since at least 2021 that there were more restrictive laws than expansive ones. The expansive laws enacted each year during that period outnumbered restrictive laws by at least 1.5 times.
A constitutional resolution that the Nevada Legislature passed in a special session in November is not included in our expansive law count. NV S.J.R. 1 would enshrine in the state’s constitution several existing provisions that provide broad voter access, including universal vote-by-mail. For the state’s constitution to be changed, the amendment must be approved by next year’s legislature and then by voters in the 2028 general election.
Ballot Measures
Although we don’t track ballot initiatives, voting-related initiatives can still affect voters and access to the ballot box, and we do track legislation that can result in ballot measures. In October, we reported on several upcoming ballot measures, including one in Maine that would have been among the most restrictive changes to voting laws this year.[25] Among other things, it would have eliminated automatic mail voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, banned prepaid postage for mail ballot return envelopes, expanded opportunities for frivolous challenges to voter eligibility, and required voters to show photo ID to vote in person or by mail. In November, 64 percent of Maine voters rejected that ballot measure.
Looking Ahead to 2026
Some state legislatures pre-file bills at the end of one year for consideration in the next. Likewise, many state legislatures carry over bills introduced but not passed in one year’s session to the next. At the start of this year’s sessions, both the pre-filed bills and the carryovers are pending in their respective legislatures. The substantive trends in the pre-filed and carryover legislation resemble those seen in recent years.
Pre-filed Legislation
At the end of 2025, legislators in at least 13 of the 32 states that allow pre-filing for this year’s upcoming sessions had pre-filed 113 voting bills. This is up from the 82 pre-filed voting bills at the end of 2023.
Of the pre-filed bills, at least 6 bills in 4 states are restrictive. Each extends common trends from the 2025 legislation. For example, a Missouri bill[26] would require Americans to show a passport or birth certificate when registering to vote. The Brennan Center has tracked similar legislation, including in our last roundup, and explained how such show-your-papers policies disenfranchise eligible American voters. A pre-filed bill in Arizona would shorten the deadline for returning mail ballots by hand and require voters to present ID when returning a mail ballot,[27] and a Virginia bill would shorten the mail voting period by 15 days.[28]
Missouri is the only state in which legislators pre-filed election interference bills before the end of 2025, totaling 2. The first[29] requires hand counts of almost all ballots in the state,e and the second[30] creates an office within the Secretary of State’s office with extensive power to investigate alleged violations of election law. Such investigations are normally done by district attorneys.
On the other hand, there are 15 pre-filed bills in 5 states that would expand voting access, including constitutional amendments in Virginia that would automatically restore voting rights upon release from incarceration for people with felony convictions.[31] Bills in Arizona would establish both automatic and same-day voter registration,[32] while one in Alabama would expand disability access by allowing voters to designate someone to deliver their absentee ballot application.[33]
Carryover Bills
Of the legislation that will carry over into the 2026 legislative session, 187 bills in 23 states would restrict voting access. Seventy-eight of these would curb access to mail voting, 59 would create stricter ID requirements for in-person voting or registration, and 37 would either require voters to provide a passport, birth certificate, or similar document to register or expand voter purges in ways that are likely to remove eligible voters.
Thirty-six election interference bills are carrying over in 17 states, including 11 that would institute hand-counting procedures that often result in inaccurate results. Hand-counting some ballots is a useful way to verify results, but using this method improperly or to tally all ballots leads to more errors than machine counting, especially when done on compressed timelines. Of these 11 bills, 4 would require all ballots to be counted by hand, 2 would permit local officials to order a full hand-count, 2 would permit political parties to decide which ballots are hand-counted, and the remaining 3 would institute similarly flawed hand-counting approaches.
Of the 258 expansive carryover bills in 24 states, 66 would make it easier to vote by mail, 18 would require more voting materials in non-English languages, and 35 would restore voting rights to some people with past criminal convictions. While 36 states allow for carryover bills, one-third of this year’s expansive carryovers (72) are in New York, similar to 2024.
U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem during a meeting of the Cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House on January 29, 2026 in Washington, DC.
On January 8, 2026, one day after the tragic killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, held a press conference in New York highlighting what she portrayed as the dangerous conditions under which ICE agents are currently working. Referring to the incident in Minneapolis, she said Good died while engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
She compared what Good allegedly tried to do to an ICE agent to what happened last July when an off-duty Customs and Border Protection Officer was shot on the street in Fort Washington Park, New York. Mincing no words, Norm called the alleged perpetrators “scumbags” who “were affiliated with the transnational criminal organization, the notorious Trinitarios gang.”
Norm said that following the shooting, DHS “began to target every single last person who is affiliated with them.” All that was pretty standard fare for our Homeland Security Secretary.
What was not standard fare was that she delivered remarks while standing behind a podium bearing the phrase “One of Ours, All of Yours.” Above that phrase was the Department of Homeland Security’s logo
“One of Ours, All of Yours” is not the kind of promise law enforcement agencies typically make. Indeed, its website proclaims that ICE will “protect America” and “preserve national security and public safety.”
Noem left that language behind and substituted a threat of collective punishment.
Constitutional democracies provide due process and determine guilt through trials conducted according to strict procedures. Whatever our political differences, Americans should treasure and defend that commitment and lobby Congress to ensure that ICE adheres to it.
In contrast, collective punishment was a tactic used by the Nazi’s during World War II. As one commentator notes, the phrase “One of Ours, All of Yours” evokes “the Lidice Massacre in June 1942, where Nazis retaliated for…(the) assassination (of a high-ranking figure in the German SS) by wiping out the Czech village.”
“SS forces,” they continue, “shot nearly all men over 14, sent women to Ravensbrück camp, and scattered children…. They then razed the site, killing about 340 in a symbol of terror tactics.”
Let’s be clear, collective punishment is never justified, not even to deter violence directed at an individual. It corrodes democratic life and is explicitly prohibited by international humanitarian law.
For example, Article 33 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War says that “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”
As Professor Shane Darcy observes, in a just society, “an individual may be punished for acts or omissions only where there is personal wrongdoing on that person’s part; that is to say, one person cannot generally be punished for the acts of another.” But Noem seems to be less interested in doing justice than in using ICE to instill fear.
America should be better than that.
“(L)egions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president,” Pro Publica’s J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam argue, “cross(es)… a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE…has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force.”
And what do we make of Noem’s use of the phrase “One of Ours, All of Yours”? It is not the first time that members of the Trump Administration have invoked or alluded to things that would once have been taboo in American politics.
But no more.
“Several high-profile political leaders have,” Professors David Collinson and Keith Grint observe, “in recent months been seen apparently dabbling in Nazi allusions. In many cases, dog whistle messages send oblique signals to supporters. These are pitched at a frequency that most listeners can’t hear but are meaningful to those seeking confirmation of their own views.”
Recall Elon Musk’s straight-arm salute during rallies to celebrate the inauguration of President Trump for a second term. Steve Bannon did the same thing during the annual conference of the Conservative Political Action Committee.
And the president himself has used language associated with the Nazi regime when he calls political opponents “vermin” and accuses immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country”.
Let me be clear, I do not mean to suggest that Noem, Musk, Bannon, or President Trump are Nazi sympathizers. What seems clear, however, is that they are offering a vision of a society inexorably divided between insiders and outsiders and friends and enemies.
The vision of ICE they offer is as an enforcer of those boundaries, operating with impunity.
It is one thing for a leader to communicate to those who work under her that she will have their backs. It is quite another thing to talk in ways that instill terror in the population that ICE serves.
The United States has had a serious problem of illegal immigration, and we need to address the consequences of that problem. But we don’t need to do so by pitting Americans and residents of this country against each other or encouraging ICE agents to regard migrants as a less-than-human threat.
We need to address our problems in ways appropriate to a constitutional democracy.
The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti should remind us that no one can be safe unless we do so. Kristi Noem’s embrace of collective punishment takes us in a different direction.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
