Over 2,600 students and legal academics have signed a letter calling on Congress to close a loophole to allow individuals to sue federal officers for violating the Constitution.
At a moment when lawless conduct by federal immigration agencies is facing increased public scrutiny following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, a coalition of law students is demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials be held to account for their violence across our nation.
What started as a late-night idea, inspired by an opinion essay by Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and professor Burt Neuborne, has become a nationwide movement. I worked with a group of Berkeley Law students, including my peers Zadie Adams, Isaiah Paik, Shree Mehrotra, and Kaylana Mueller-Hsia, and professors to write and circulate a letter to Congress calling for a federal equivalent of Section 1983 that would close a long-standing loophole and allow individuals to sue federal officers for constitutional violations.
Currently, Section 1983 allows individuals to sue state or local officers for constitutional violations, but not federal officials. A federal version of Section 1983 would allow people to hold federal officers accountable when their rights are violated. Our proposed bill preserves the original meaning of Section 1983 by eliminating qualified immunity, a doctrine that lets many officials escape accountability for constitutional violations. When Congress enacted Section 1983 in 1871, the law contained no qualified immunity defense; the Supreme Court created it more than a century later. We seek to mirror the original meaning of Section 1983 and extend those same accountability standards to federal officers.
Within days of starting this initiative, students across Berkeley and other law schools—such as the University of Minnesota, New York University, and Texas A&M—got involved and spread the word. As we shared the letter with our professors and law student networks, we were elated by how many others joined our call, shared it with their peers and colleagues, and pushed for others to sign on to the letter.
Within one week, our letter received over 2,600 signatures from legal academics, law students, and law student organizations across 109 law schools. This included 22 law student governments, 224 law student organizations, and 146 legal academics, including Dean Chemerinsky, Leah Litman, and Aziz Huq.
As law students, we can use our voices, legal knowledge, and skills to uphold the values of the US Constitution and protect human rights. This letter is just the beginning. You can read it below.
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Dear Members of Congress,
We, the undersigned legal academics, law students, and law student organizations, write to condemn the recent unlawful actions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These federal entities are brutalizing our immigrant neighbors, separating families, murdering our citizens, and wreaking havoc across our nation. We implore you to exercise your legislative authority, pursuant to Article I of the Constitution, to introduce and pass the Federal Officer Accountability Act. This act will create a legal remedy for individuals to sue federal officers for constitutional violations and provide an additional check on these federal agents.
Our country is grieving as we watch the horror of ICE’s actions in Minnesota and across our nation. Families and children are swept up in ICE raids on schools and hospitals, including Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old child arriving home from preschool. These raids can and do have deadly results. Thirty-six people have died in ICE detention since January 2025, most recently Victor Manuel Diaz and Geraldo Lunas Campos. Off-duty ICE officers have also been acting with impunity, killing US citizen Keith Porter Jr. in December. Since January 2026, ICE and CBP officers have already committed extrajudicial killings of US citizens, including Renée Macklin Good on January 7 and now Alex Pretti on January 24.
We are also alarmed by ICE’s position that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to noncitizens, enabling searches of homes without judicial warrants. As we grapple with these alarming events and the abuse of federal authority and office, we hold on to the fundamental promise of our Constitution, which provides equal protection under the law and secures due process for all persons.
As Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and Burt Neuborne, professor emeritus at New York University School of Law, explained in their recent opinion essay, there is currently no law that allows Americans to sue federal officers, including ICE and CBP agents, for violating the Constitution. Outside of federal and state prosecutions, there is no recourse available for the families of Renée Good or Alex Pretti. The Supreme Court has explained in Graham v. Connor and Tennessee v. Garner that the use of excessive force, including deadly force, violates the Fourth Amendment. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was briefly used to allow civil suits against federal officers, has been greatly limited. Since 1980, the Supreme Court has blocked every Bivens suit before it from going forward, reasoning that it is the legislature’s duty to enact laws that make federal officers civilly liable for constitutional violations.
Without the enforcement of the protections of our Constitution, the essence of the document is stripped of its power, meaning, and value. Congress should act swiftly and adopt a federal equivalent of Section 1983, creating a legal remedy for violations of the Constitution by federal officers. This would allow victims or their families to sue federal officers for excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. If federal officers are found to have used excessive force, they would not be protected by qualified immunity under our model law. This measure of accountability would encourage federal officers, including ICE and CBP agents, to be more careful in their resort to lethal force. It would provide a necessary check on excessive force and ensure we do not have more victims of excessive force, like Renée Good or Alex Pretti. And it would allow individual victims to vindicate their constitutional rights without the need for state or federal prosecutions, allowing recourse in times like these, where federal agencies may endorse and perpetuate the violent actions of individual officers. Following the lead of Dean Chemerinsky and Professor Neuborne, we propose the following text for the Federal Officer Accountability Act, which is modeled after the text of 42 U.S. Code § 1983 and includes an additional provision to abrogate qualified immunity in excessive force cases:
Every person who, acting under the authority or the color of federal law, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.
Any federal officer found to have used excessive force in violation of the Constitution shall not be protected by qualified immunity.
Notwithstanding the divisions in our nation at this moment, we urge Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to pass the Federal Officer Accountability Act. By passing this Act enabling suits against federal officers for constitutional violations, you can meet this moment, deter future extrajudicial violence by federal officials, protect your constituents, and protect our nation. This Act reflects our core American principle that no one, including federal officials, is above the law. We implore you to act quickly.
You can view the full list of signatories to the letter here.