FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

No. 03-30321 Plaintiff-Appellee,

D.C. No.

v.  CR-03-00037-a-JKS

JOSE GUADALUPE ZAVALA-MENDEZ,

OPINION Defendant-Appellant. 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Alaska

James K. Singleton, Chief Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

July 7, 2004—Anchorage, Alaska

Filed June 15, 2005

Before: Cynthia Holcomb Hall, Andrew J. Kleinfeld, and

Kim McLane Wardlaw, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Kleinfeld;

Dissent by Judge Hall

7117
COUNSEL

Kevin F. McCoy, Assistant Federal Defender, Anchorage,

Alaska, for the appellant. 

Jo Ann Farrington, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Anchorage,

Alaska, for the appellee. 

OPINION

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge: 

This is a “found in” case where the previously deported

alien presented himself at a border station. 

UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7119
Facts

Zavala-Mendez was a passenger in a car that crossed into

Alaska on the Alaska Highway from the Yukon Territory on

a January night. He had no right to enter the United States,

because he had been deported and the Attorney General had

not given him permission to reenter.1 At the border station

Zavala-Mendez lied and said he had a green card. But he gave

his true name, and it came up on the border station computer

showing that he had been deported. He was therefore detained

and driven to Anchorage, 430 miles away, where his fingerprints could be scanned and compared to the fingerprints in

his alien file. The prints matched. 

Zavala-Mendez was convicted of being “found in” the

United States after having previously been deported.2 He was

not indicted for attempting to enter the United States.3 His

only defense is legal, that he could not be “found in” the

United States when all he did after crossing the border was to

go straight to the border station and present himself for entry.

Like all American border stations, the Alaskan facility is

inside the United States, so by the time Zavala-Mendez got

there, he was already across the survey line that delineates

one country from the other. It was dark, and traffic is light on

the Alaska Highway in January. There are no lights along the

road except at the border, so the immigration inspectors can

see the headlights of cars approaching from miles away, and

drivers and passengers can likewise see the border from miles

away. Zavala-Mendez’s car was the first vehicle at the border

in four or five hours. 

The American border station facility is up a hill, a quarter

or half mile from the actual border, because permafrost pre1

See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1326(a) and (b)(2). 

2

8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). 

3

See id.

7120 UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ
vented building the facility closer to the border. The actual

border is at the start of the hill. It takes well under a minute

to drive at the speed limit from the treaty line between Canada

and the United States — marked by a concrete obelisk — to

the American border facility where federal personnel are sheltered from the extreme cold. A car is out of sight at the base

of the hill — where the surveyed border and obelisk are —

for perhaps a half second as it approaches the station, though,

of course, the light from the headlights would remain visible

in the dark. 

A driver can tell when he crosses the border because at the

surveyed border there are American and Canadian flags that

are lit up all night, a “Welcome To Alaska” sign, and a tourist

pullout next to the survey obelisk. The trees are also clear cut,

like a power line cut, along the border. Thus, any driver or

passenger paying attention would know that he was already

across the border when he got to the border station. 

As Zavala-Mendez’s car approached, an inspector looked,

as usual, through binoculars at the license plate, so that the

licence plate number could be typed into the computer. Mud

obscured the number. That got the inspector out of the station,

because water is not a liquid in that part of Alaska in January

and the highway does not throw up mud in winter. When the

car arrived at the station, one inspector checked the license

plate, and the other asked the driver for identifications. The

driver, the driver’s mother, and Zavala-Mendez all gave their

driver’s licenses. The computer flagged Zavala-Mendez, so he

was taken into custody. 

The district court denied Zavala-Mendez’s motion for a

judgment of acquittal,4 he was convicted at jury trial, and he

appeals. He raises a question as to jury instructions, but we do

not reach it because we conclude that he was entitled to have

his motion granted. 

4

See Fed. R. Crim. Proc. 29. 

UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7121
Analysis

We review a district court’s denial of a Rule 29 motion for

a judgment of acquittal de novo.

5

 The question we must ask

is whether the evidence is sufficient. Under Jackson v. Virginia,

6

the evidence is sufficient when, viewing the evidence in the

light most favorable to the government, “any rational trier of

fact could have found the essential elements of the crime

beyond a reasonable doubt.”

7

[1] Federal law makes it a crime for “any alien who—(1)

has been denied admission, excluded, deported, or removed or

has departed the United States while an order of exclusion,

deportation, or removal is outstanding, and thereafter (2)

enters, attempts to enter, or is at any time found in, the United

States.”

8

 We emphasize the “found in” phrase because that is

the only branch of the statute used in the indictment. ZavalaMendez was not charged with attempting to enter, so we need

not decide whether he could be convicted of that. 

[2] There are two relevant lines of authority regarding the

“found in” branch of the statute. One involves people who fly

to the United States from some other country, get out of the

airplane at the airport, and proceed directly to the customs

inspection counter where they present themselves. Though

our circuit has not spoken to cases such as this, two of our sister circuits have.9

 Our sister circuits agree that in such a case,

even if the person is a previously-deported alien without permission to reenter, he cannot be convicted of being “found in”

the United States (as opposed to attempting to enter). 

5United States v. McNeil, 320 F.3d 1034, 1035 (9th Cir. 2003). 

6

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979). 

7

Id. at 319 (emphasis removed). 

8

8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) (emphasis added). 

9

See United States v. Angeles-Mascote, 206 F.3d 529, 530-32 (5th Cir.

2000); United States v. Canals-Jimenez, 943 F.2d 1284, 1286-89 (11th

Cir. 1991). 

7122 UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ
Of course, in these airport cases, the alien is “in” the United

States in a physical sense as soon as the plane crosses into

American air space, often hundreds of miles before it reaches

the airport where it lands (say, a London to Chicago flight).

The alien is also “in” the United States when he walks on

American soil during the often lengthy stretch, through corridors and around corners, from the ramp out of the plane to the

customs counter. He is often out of sight because the corridors

usually go around corners, and, as a practical matter, the

crowd of departing passengers obscures the view. There is no

way that the immigration inspectors could see a disembarking

alien during his walk up the aisle of the plane, and unless they

had someone watching the ramp, the immigration inspectors

would not see the alien until he made his way through the

maze of corridors to the inspection counters. 

[3] The Eleventh Circuit in United States v. CanalsJimenez emphasizes the word “found” for why a “found in”

conviction cannot be sustained in this circumstance. “Found”

implies that someone else found the alien in the sense of discovering him, and that is not so where he voluntarily presents

himself:

The phrase “found in” is synonymous with “discovered in.” Any party who voluntarily approaches an

INS station cannot be said to have been found or discovered in the United States. Any alien who seeks

admission through a recognized immigration port of

entry might be guilty of entering or attempting to

enter the United States, but not of being found in the

United States. Congress added the phrase “found in”

to alleviate the problem of prosecuting aliens who

enter in some illegal manner.10

[4] The Fifth Circuit goes the same way in United States v.

Angeles-Mascote. The Fifth Circuit quotes the same para10Canals-Jimenez, 943 F.2d at 1287. 

UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7123
graph we do from Canals-Jimenez, and agrees that a person

is not “found” when he presents himself. In addition, the Fifth

Circuit takes account of the well established proposition that

a person is not “in” the United States until he is not only

physically present on our side of the border, but also enjoys

“freedom from official restraint.”

11

Our own circuit has not published any opinions on similar

airport “found in” cases. We have published numerous opinions, however, about previously deported aliens who sneak

back across the border.12 In those cases, where the aliens are

caught right at the fence, under the full gaze of human eyes

and electronic surveillance, we hold that they are not “in” the

United States enough to be “found in.”

13 If they get out of

sight for some substantial period, they are “in.”

14 We have

drawn fine distinctions between being momentarily out of

sight and being out of sight for a while.15

Much of the argument in this case focused on whether the

moment of time when the slope of the hill blocked the car

from the view of the inspectors at the border station was long

enough to make this case like an alien who, although out of

sight, walked up a box canyon from the border to the waiting

arms of the border patrol,16 or short enough to make it like the

alien who was out of sight for only a moment.17 We conclude

11Angeles-Mascote, 206 F.3d at 531. 

12See, e.g., United States v. Vela-Robles, 397 F.3d 786 (9th Cir. 2005);

United States v. Hernandez-Herrera, 273 F.3d 1213 (9th Cir. 2001);

United States v. Ramos-Godinez, 273 F.3d 820 (9th Cir. 2001); United

States v. Pacheco-Medina, 212 F.3d 1162 (9th Cir. 2000); United States

v. Martin-Plascenscia, 532 F.2d 1316 (9th Cir. 1976). 

13See Pacheco-Medina, 212 F.3d at 1165. 

14See Hernandez-Herrera, 273 F.3d at 1219. 

15See, e.g., Ramos-Godinez, 273 F.3d at 824 (discussing whether when

an alien who disappeared from view while crossing a canal and later an

abandoned lot was out of sight enough to be “found in”). 

16See Vela-Robles, 397 F.3d at 789. 

17See Pacheco-Medina 212 F.3d at 1163. 

7124 UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ
that that “surveillance” line of authority is not the appropriate

one. Those cases all deal with aliens who did not approach a

border station in the designated fashion, but who instead

climbed a fence, rafted a canal, or otherwise sneaked across

the border in some illegitimate manner. What we were doing,

when we granted relief to some of them, was extending the

concept that someone who is in the border station itself,

which is always on American soil, is nevertheless not “found

in” the United States because he is not yet free of official

restraint.18

[5] This case is not analogous to those cases where the

alien sneaked in, avoiding the border station, because ZavalaMendez proceeded on the designated course from the border

directly to the border station.19 Aliens who proceed directly as

instructed by signs or otherwise to the customs facility — be

it through an airport corridor, a government designated highway, or some other designated legitimate path — are not

sneaking into the United States. Instead they are presenting

themselves to American officials in the manner designated by

the United States government. An alien who crosses the bor18See id. at 1164-66 (holding that for an alien to “enter” the United

States for the purpose of being “found in,” the alien has to be free from

official restraint). 

19If this were a case involving fence jumping or some other evasive way

of sneaking into the country, the record would arguably still be insufficient

to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that Zavala-Mendez made it into

the United States free of official restraint. Though the dip at the base of

the hill would make it hard to see the car for a moment if it was light, in

the dark the headlights would not be out of sight even for an instant. And

even if, while the car was out of sight in the dip, Zavala-Mendez had managed to jump out of the car, he would have needed a snowmachine, or dog

team, or snowshoes or cross-country skis, and proper arctic gear, to have

a chance of successfully traveling up the survey line away from the border

station to someplace in the cold vastness where he might find a trail across

the border. Many people would rather be arrested and put in a warm jail

than leave the safety of “official restraint” and risk such a crossing of the

Alaska-Yukon border in January. See generally, Jack London, To Build a

Fire, in 76 The Century Magazine 525-34 (1908). 

UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7125
der on a government designated path on a highway should be

treated like the airport aliens, not the fence-jumping aliens.

Like the defendants in the airport entry cases, Zavala-Mendez

must be deemed not to be “found in,” because he proceeded

directly to the border authorities in the designated manner. 

Lying about his green card might have exposed ZavalaMendez to an “attempting to enter” conviction, but he was not

charged with that. He was charged with, and convicted of,

being “found in” the United States. To avoid a “found in”

conviction, he does not need the fine distinctions our cases

have developed in the fence jumping cases.20 It does not matter that the sight line to his car was blocked for perhaps a half

second, and it does not matter that his headlights were visible

without interruption for miles in the silent, empty, subarctic

night. He was not “found in” because he proceeded just as he

was supposed to from the border, on the designated path to

the customs inspection station, and presented himself to the

authorities at the station. Such a person is much more analogous to an alien who disembarks from an airplane and goes

to the inspection counter than to one who jumps a fence, and

thus is not “found in” the United States. 

20The dissent concedes that the Fifth Circuit, in Angeles-Mascote, distinguishes aliens who present themselves in the designated way at airports

from aliens who attempt to jump fences or otherwise sneak into the country, but argues that the Eleventh Circuit has moved away from CanalsJimenez in United States v. Gay, 7 F.3d 200 (11th Cir. 1993). We disagree,

with respect to cases like the one at bar. The alien in Gay got through the

border station by returning before the INS put his name into its database

of deported aliens. Id. at 201. He then stayed in the United States for three

years. Id. He did not get caught until he sought a security clearance from

the Customs Service to get into restricted areas of the airport and was

found to be an illegal alien during the security investigation. Id. Thus he

was found in the United States three years after getting past the official

surveillance. Zavala-Mendez never evaded detection and had no period of

time in the United States beyond the border station. Our analysis depends

not on Zavala-Mendez’s state of mind, i.e., what he thought, but rather on

what he did, presenting himself immediately at the designated place for

people entering the United States, as opposed to being “found in” the

United States after evading the border station. 

7126 UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ
[6] An alien who crosses the border at a designated location

and proceeds directly in the manner designated by the government to the border station where he then presents himself to

the authorities has not been “found in” the United States for

the purposes of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). Zavala-Mendez is entitled

on remand to have his motion for a judgment of acquittal

granted and his conviction vacated. 

REVERSED. 

HALL, Circuit Judge, dissenting: 

By implicitly incorporating an intent element into what is

essentially a strict liability crime, the majority’s decision

threatens to undermine a well-established line of Ninth Circuit

cases holding that an alien enters the United States for the

purposes of a “found in” conviction once he sets foot on U.S.

soil, unless he has been under constant surveillance from the

moment he crosses the border. Since Zavala-Mendez

remained “free[ ] to go at large and mix with the population,”

United States v. Hernandez-Herrera, 273 F.3d 1213, 1219

(9th Cir. 2001) (citation omitted), for a discernible, albeit circumscribed period of time, I would affirm the district court’s

denial of Zavala-Mendez’s Rule 29 motion for acquittal. I

respectfully dissent.

*****

Section 1326 sets forth three separate offenses a deported

alien may commit en route to the United States. A previously

deported alien violates § 1326 if he “enters, attempts to enter,

or is at any time found in, the United States.” 8 U.S.C.

§ 1326(a)(2). We have described being “found in” the United

States as a “passive state, not requiring proof of a voluntary

act.” United States v. Parga-Rosas, 238 F.3d 1209, 1214 (9th

UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7127
Cir. 2001) (quoting United States v. Salazar-Robles, 207 F.3d

648, 650 (9th Cir. 2000)). 

However, we have also developed a legal fiction, termed

the “official restraint doctrine,” which excepts from prosecution individuals who are technically present on United States

soil, but nonetheless “lack the freedom to go at large and mix

with the population.” Hernandez-Herrera, 273 F.3d at 1219

(citation omitted); Parga-Rosas, 238 F.3d at 1213; United

States v. Gonzalez-Torres, 309 F.3d 594, 599 (9th Cir. 2002).

The fiction originated in a century-old case in which Chinese

immigrants were tailed by officials from Canada into the

United States, and thereupon seized for violation of a statute

prohibiting them from being “found unlawfully” in the United

States. See Ex parte Chow Chok, 161 F. 627, 628-29

(N.D.N.Y. 1908), aff’d 163 F. 1021 (2d Cir. 1908). The official restraint doctrine thus provides that “mere physical presence on United States soil . . . is insufficient to convict [an

alien] of being found in the United States in violation of 8

U.S.C. § 1326. Rather, the government must also establish

that the alien entered the United States free from official

restraint at the time the officials discovered or apprehended

him.” United States v. Ruiz-Lopez, 234 F.3d 445, 448 (9th Cir.

2001) (citation omitted). An alien is deemed to be officially

restrained if, “after crossing the border without authorization,

he is ‘deprived of [his] liberty and prevented from going at

large within the United States.’ ” Hernandez-Herrera, 273

F.3d at 1218 (citation omitted). 

The “official restraint” doctrine is construed broadly by this

court. Ruiz-Lopez, 234 F.3d at 448. Thus, “[a]n alien does not

have to be in the physical custody of the authorities to be officially restrained.” Hernandez-Herrera, 273 F.3d at 1219.

“The restraint may take the form of surveillance, unbeknownst to the alien.” Pacheco-Medina, 212 F.3d at 1164

(quoting Matter of Pierre, 14 I. & N. Dec. 467, 469 (BIA

1973)). Authorities may be “restraining” an alien for a lengthy

period of time or a substantial distance. “If a government offi7128 UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ
cial has an alien under surveillance from the moment he

passes the port of entry until the moment of arrest, the alien

has not ‘entered’ the United States . . . because the alien was

under official restraint the whole time.” Ruiz-Lopez, 234 F.3d

at 448.

The majority’s conclusion derives primarily from two decisions of sister circuits, United States v. Canals-Jimenez, 943

F.2d 1284 (11th Cir. 1991), and United States v. AngelesMascote, 206 F.3d 529 (5th Cir. 2000). In each case, a defendant deboarded an international flight at a United States airport. Both defendants voluntarily proceeded to an

immigration officer and attempted to gain entry to the United

States, whereupon they were apprehended and ultimately convicted for being “found in” the United States. CanalsJimenez, 943 F.2d at 1285-86; Angeles-Mascote, 206 F.3d at

530. The Eleventh Circuit held that the “found in” language

of § 1326 was inapplicable. Canals-Jimenez, 943 F.2d at

1288. “Section 1326 applies only to situations in which an

alien is discovered in the United States after entering the

country surreptitiously by bypassing recognized immigration

ports of entry . . . .” Id. See also Angeles-Mascote, 206 F.3d

at 531 (“Any party who voluntarily approaches an INS station

cannot be said to have been found or discovered in the United

States.”). However, this language in Canals-Jimenez was later

determined to be mere dicta. See United States v. Gay, 7 F.3d

200, 202 (11th Cir. 1993) (“[T]he Canals court was merely

using a surreptitious entry as the most obvious example of an

illegal entry which would not be detected by immigration

officials, and after which an alien who had illegally entered

might be ‘found in’ the United States . . . . Thus, we conclude

that the reference in Canals to surreptitious entry is mere dicta

and is not controlling.”). 

Even assuming that the Fifth Circuit’s pronouncement in

Angeles-Mascote does not suffer from the same questions

regarding its continuing vitality as does the Eleventh Circuit’s

decision in Canals-Jimenez, its analysis is implicitly underUNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7129
mined by our caselaw. Like our sister circuits, we have “construe[d] [official] restraint broadly.” Ruiz-Lopez, 234 F.3d at

448. We have not, however, dispensed with the concept of

“restraint” altogether. Instead, we have adhered closely to the

stated requirement that, in order to constitute official restraint,

an alien must be subjected to constant surveillance. See

United States v. Ramos-Godinez, 273 F.3d 820, 824-25 (9th

Cir. 2001) (“[W]hen the defendant has managed to evade

detection, even for a brief period, we have held that the defendant had ‘entered’ the United States.”). Thus, in HernandezHerrera, a defendant-alien was deemed to have been free

from official restraint although he was being persistently

tracked into an area of dense brush from which there was no

hope of escape. 273 F.3d at 1216. We held that Hernandez

had not been “continuously surveilled” because “he was no

longer visible” to the government official “once he entered

the thick brush.” Id. at 1219. Likewise, Zavala was not visible

to the Alcan agents as he drove the quarter-mile from the

physical border to the Inspection Station. During that time,

even if there had been “no hope of escape” from the densely

forested area encompassing the route between the border and

Alcan,1 Zavala was “exercising his free will within the United

States” in such a way that he did not enter the country under

any official restraint. Id. 

Nor does the relatively short distance between the U.S.-

Canadian border and the Alcan Port of Entry, and correspondingly short duration required to traverse it, militate in favor of

the majority’s conclusion. In Hernandez-Herrera, there was

no suggestion that the defendant was able to elude capture

while in the thick brush for any significant period of time. Id.

at 1216. Similarly, in United States v. Castellano-Garcia, 270

F.3d 773 (9th Cir. 2001), we determined that an alien had not

been under constant surveillance because he introduced no

1There was no testimony which would liken the forested area outside

Alcan to the “dense brush” from which there was “no hope of escape” in

Hernandez-Herrera. 273 F.3d at 1216. 

7130 UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ
evidence which suggested that “he was under constant observation by governmental authorities from the moment he set

foot in this country until the moment of his arrest.” Id. at 775.

Instead, Castellanos had been discovered serendipitously by

an immigration officer, without the aid of any sensor or other

detection device, approximately 100 yards from the U.S.-

Mexico border. Id. at 774-75. We held that, in light of the

dearth of evidence to suggest that Castellanos had been identified at the precise moment he crossed the border, the “free

floating speculation that he might have been observed the

whole time” was insufficient to undercut the government’s

position. Id. at 776.2 As such, Castellanos was “free to migrate

into the general population for some time, and was not under

constant observation during that period.” Id. at 775. 

In Ramos-Godinez, we were confronted with a defendant

who was observed crossing the border, but temporarily

evaded surveillance when he crossed a 360-feet wide concrete

canal which was obscured from the border patrol agent’s field

of vision, and when he entered an abandoned lot. 273 F.3d at

824. “[A]lthough law enforcement was in serious pursuit of

Ramos-Godinez and his companions, he was not under ‘constant observation by governmental authorities . . . .” Id. at 824-

25 (quoting Castellanos-Garcia, 270 F.3d at 775). During

those brief periods of detachment, “Ramos-Godinez was exercising his free will.” Id. at 825. The facts elicited by Zavala

present no more of a case than did those in CastellanosGarcia and Ramos-Godinez. Zavala entered the United States

unbeknownst to the Alcan agents, and remained undetected

for approximately one-quarter of a mile into U.S. territory.

2Compare Ruiz-Lopez, 234 F.3d at 448-49 (holding that evidence

adduced by government was insufficient to carry burden because the

arresting official, whose standard practice was to closely monitor all individuals attempting to cross the border at the Tecate processing center,

could not recall the precise circumstances of the arrest; since Ruiz may

have been under constant surveillance from the moment he crossed the

border, no rational juror could conclude that Ruiz was free from official

restraint). 

UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7131
The fact that he proceeded directly to the inspection station

did not render him officially restrained. 

The situations in which we have found constant surveillance which may be construed as official restraint do not aid

Zavala. In Pacheco-Medina, the defendant and two others

were detected by a surveillance camera as they attempted to

scale the fence guarding the U.S.-Mexico border. Pacheco’s

two associates were apprehended immediately upon reaching

the ground, while Pacheco was chased from the moment he

landed. Pacheco left the agent’s sight for only a “split second

as he rounded a corner,” and was captured within a few yards

of the border. Pacheco-Medina, 212 F.3d at 1163. We found

that Pacheco had been under “constant surveillance” because

“[h]e was in the clutches of the authorities . . . and had no

opportunity to get free of them.” Id. at 1165. In contrast, Zavala was not identified until he had traversed the quarter-mile

between the border and the inspection station. The fact that he

drove directly to Alcan does not alter the fact that during that

quarter-mile, he was free to exercise his will by absconding

into the dense forest surrounding the road, and was therefore

free from official restraint. 

Zavala entered the United States unnoticed by the officials

at Alcan. Testimony at trial indicated, in fact, that the physical

border was completely shielded from the view of the Alcan

Port of Entry. From the time that Zavala crossed the border

into the United States until the moment he was first observed

by the Alcan agents, Zavala was free “to go at large and mix

with the population.” Hernandez-Herrera, 273 F.3d at 1219.

That he drove directly to the inspection station and presented

himself for review may have been relevant to his state of

mind in a prosecution for attempted illegal entry; it is utterly

irrelevant to the question of whether he had “entered” the

United States for the purposes of being “found in” the country

illegally. Since he was not under constant surveillance from

the moment he entered the U.S. until the moment of his arrest,

viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the gov7132 UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ
ernment, a rational trier of fact could easily conclude that

Zavala was not under the “official restraint” of governmental

authorities. I would, therefore, affirm the district court’s

denial of Zavala’s Rule 29 motion for acquittal.

UNITED STATES v. ZAVALA-MENDEZ 7133