A federal lawsuit filed yesterday charges that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement unlawfully force their way into the homes of Hispanic families in the New York area without court warrants or other legal justification, sometimes pushing down doors in the middle of the night, in search of people who do not live there.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court in Manhattan as a class action, accuses the immigration agency of conducting the raids in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches, harming citizens and legal residents of the United States as well as foreigners here illegally.

The 15 plaintiffs — all but one are residents of Suffolk County and seven of them are United States citizens — describe abusive predawn raids on their homes this year by armed immigration agents. They seek an order prohibiting I.C.E. from conducting home raids until the agency develops clear guidelines to end unlawful entries, and unspecified damages.

According to the complaint, the raids are part of a program called Operation Return to Sender that was started in 2006 to arrest and deport “fugitive aliens” or immigrants previously ordered to leave the country. But, the lawsuit contends, “the agents regularly raid homes where the fugitive is not present and could not reasonably have been believed to be present.”

The complaint contends that “the unstated goal of these raids is to gain access to constitutionally protected areas in hope of seizing as many undocumented persons as possible” to meet annual arrest quotas recently increased by the agents’ superiors to 1,000 per fugitive team, up from 125 arrests in 2003. Mark Thorn, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the New York region, said that he was not familiar with the lawsuit, and that the agency does not comment on litigation.

But earlier this year, agency officials vigorously defended the program, while acknowledging its imperfections, in response to questions about the early-morning raid on Feb. 20 on the East Hampton, N.Y., home of the Aguilar and Leon family. All members of that family are either United States citizens or, in the case of one of the children, a legal resident awaiting naturalization.

Five members of the family, including Adriana Aguilar and her mother, Elena Leon, are now lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“We would like to find fugitive aliens at 100 percent of the locations we go to, but it’s not an exact science,” Christopher Shanahan, director of the New York field office of the agency’s Detention and Removal Operations, said at the time. Mr. Shanahan, who could not be reached yesterday, is a defendant in the lawsuit along with his superiors in Washington.

The lawsuit, filed by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the international law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, contends that Mr. Shanahan was either personally involved in the raids, or “grossly negligent in managing the training and activities” of the agents under his supervision.

It cites recent reports by the Office of the Inspector General of Homeland Security that criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the inaccuracy of its database of fugitives and lack of agent training. In 2004, agency officials required that 75 percent of the fugitives each team arrested be “criminal aliens.” But that requirement was dropped in January 2006, when the goal was changed to 1,000 arrests per team.

In the case of Ms. Aguilar’s family, immigration agents burst into their home in East Hampton to hunt for an illegal immigrant without a criminal record — Ms. Aguilar’s ex-husband, who had not lived in the house since 2003, when they divorced and he was ordered deported.

After detaining and questioning the frightened family members, including Ms. Aguilar’s 12-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, the complaint said, the agents threatened to return.

In an account disputed by agents at the time, the complaint contends that another plaintiff, Nelly Amayo, was arrested in her East Hampton home when she demanded to see a search warrant. It says agents twisted her arm and eventually left her in her nightclothes in Manhattan.

Another raid was in a rooming house in Mount Kisco, N.Y., where David Lazaro Perez and other residents were awakened about 4 a.m. March 18 by agents who did not show a search warrant. The complaint said agents took his wallet containing $700 and that it was returned without the money.