( CNN ) -- In the cold , predawn hours of February 20 , 2007 , shortly after 4 a.m. , armed men stormed into the home I owned with my family and burst into my bedroom , shouting at me to show my hands . My husband had left for work , and our 4-year-old son began to cry with fright . I stumbled out of bed in my nightclothes to the family living area , terrified and confused . Two armed men were coming upstairs from our basement , having searched it without permission , and others were demanding that we tell them the location of my ex-husband , with whom I had not lived for several years . As I had reported to the immigration service on my daughters ' citizenship applications , I had been remarried for four years . The men acted as if they had the right to be in our home , but we knew to ask questions : Who were they ? Did they have a warrant ? They refused to identify themselves or show a warrant , and they put their hands on their guns when we tried to move . They interrogated my 12-year-old daughter and ordered my brother , a U.S. citizen since he was a teenager , to produce his papers . That 's when I realized the men were U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents . When they left , they threatened to return . The same scene was happening all over New York : Armed agents surrounding homes , pounding on doors and windows , ordering residents to open the door and storming in , sometimes damaging doors and walls , sometimes pointing guns as they entered . It did n't seem to matter to the agents whether they found the person they were looking for or if frightened people in the home could not produce papers . The agents arrested people even if they had n't been a target . The ICE agents had no judicial warrants ; instead , they claimed that the rudely awakened men , women and sometimes children in the homes had provided consent . We decided to sue and discovered that ICE had embarked on a nationwide program of warrantless immigration sweeps with names such as `` Return to Sender '' and `` Community Shield '' to invade private homes in search of undocumented immigrants . Last week , more than six years and many court battles later , our class-action suit Aguilar v ICE , which included 22 New York men , women and children , was settled in Federal District Court for a million dollars . ICE has also been required to change national training and policy to conform with existing law to avoid further abuses from home raids . We are proud of this accomplishment , even though we know that home raid operations have continued in the Obama era , most notably in Tennessee and Alabama , where Latinos report ICE engaging in the very same unconstitutional behavior that traumatized my family . During those raids in 2006 and 2007 , thousands of terrified people , mostly Latino , were pulled out of bed . ICE claimed it was looking for people not suspected of a crime , but merely those in violation of civil immigration laws . Although ICE was supposedly seeking fugitives -- people who may have evaded a deportation order -- most of the people they arrested had never had any encounter with the agency before . They were arrested because many ICE agents were operating under a quota policy that gave credit for arrests of any undocumented person , not just the target . Citizens and lawful permanent residents like us were not immune ; if ICE had an old address for someone they were looking for , that address was fair game . In the home of three of the other people in our case , ICE knew it had already deported the person it were seeking . But agents invaded anyway , storming inside after a 12-year-old girl opened the door in her pajamas . ICE invaded the home of another family in our case twice in little more than a year , because when agents did n't find their target the first time , they did n't bother to record the mistake . It seemed that being Latino , and nothing more , was enough to arouse suspicion . ICE declined to enter the homes of white residents who opened their doors in shock . Latino men and women were handcuffed before they were even asked about their status , and some agents even admitted to using the derogatory word `` wet '' to describe the Latinos they encountered . I studied the U.S. Constitution in order to naturalize . I knew that the government is not supposed to enter your home without a warrant or handcuff you only because you are Latino . But that night in 2007 , and in the months after , I lost a sense of hope in our government 's ability to make its own agents obey the law . The fact that ICE has agreed to some changes helps me regain that hope . As the country debates immigration reform and enforcement , we owe it to ourselves to hold ICE 's leaders and agents accountable and to make sure that they are subject to the same laws as everyone else . The opinions expressed in these commentaries are solely those of the writers .
Class-action suit brought by Adriana Leon requires ICE to change policy on home raids . Agents had stormed into Latino homes in middle of night , pulling people out of bed . Leon : ICE agents terrified families and did not have permission or warrants . Leon : ICE must be held to the same legal standards as everyone else to avoid abuses .