Opinion ID: 176473
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Aiding and Abetting the Brings To Offense

Text: Flores-Blanco was convicted of violating 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(ii), which punishes: Any person who, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has not received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever, such alien, regardless of any official action which may later be taken with respect to such alien.... It is undisputed that Flores-Blanco himself did not bring Portillo-Mendoza to the United States, but Flores-Blanco also was charged with aiding and abetting the brings to offense. See 18 U.S.C. § 2(a) (Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.). Flores-Blanco contends that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of aiding and abetting the brings to offense. In United States v. Lopez, 484 F.3d 1186 (9th Cir.2007) (en banc), we explained that under certain circumstances a defendant who does not physically transport aliens across the border may be held criminally liable for aiding and abetting a `brings to' offense. Id. at 1199. To convict under an aiding and abetting theory, the government must prove that the defendant willingly associated himself with the venture and participated therein as something he wished to bring about, id. (internal quotation marks omitted), in that the defendant knowingly and intentionally commanded, counseled, or encouraged the initial transporter to commit the `brings to' offense, id. at 1200. The brings to offense in this case ended when the guide in Mexico assisted Portillo-Mendoza over the border fence. See id. at 1191 (holding that the brings to offense ends when the person who transports the aliens to the country terminates his act of transportation and drops off the aliens in the United States). The government accordingly was required to provide evidence that sufficiently demonstrate[d] that [Flores-Blanco] was connected to conduct that occurred before the entry of [Portillo-Mendoza] to the United States. United States v. Reyes-Bosque, 596 F.3d 1017, 1036 (9th Cir.2010) (emphasis added). [7] We conclude that, when the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the government, a reasonable jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt the requisite extra-territorial connection in Flores-Blanco's case. Hernandez-Orellana, 539 F.3d at 1006. Having heard evidence of Flores-Blanco's hours-long coordinated surveillance of the border with Fernandez, his repositioning himself a short distance from the border fence as Portillo-Mendoza approached, and then his waving Portillo-Mendoza across, the jury could infer that Flores-Blanco willingly associated himself with the [smuggling] venture and participated therein as something he wished to bring about. Lopez, 484 F.3d at 1199 (quoting United States v. Zemek, 634 F.2d 1159, 1174 (9th Cir. 1980)). [8] The jury also heard evidence that, typically, the guide on the United States side is assigned the task of hiding the alien as quickly as possible and that none of the smugglers get paid until the alien reaches his final destination. Here, not long before the crossing, the smuggler on the Mexico side, speaking into his phone, urged [t]hat he not be let down, and soon thereafter he instructed Portillo-Mendoza to jump over the fence and run toward the person waiting on the other side. A reasonable jury could conclude from this evidence that Flores-Blanco actively encouraged the guide to send Portillo-Mendoza over the fence and that the Mexican smuggler would not have done so without first securing Flores-Blanco's agreement to guide Portillo-Mendoza into hiding. See United States v. Corona-Verbera, 509 F.3d 1105, 1119 (9th Cir.2007) (Circumstantial evidence may support a conviction as an aider and abetter.). Flores-Blanco's case is easily distinguished from Lopez and Hernandez-Orellana, where the evidence of pre-offense conduct by the defendants was insufficient to support a brings to conviction under an aiding and abetting theory. In Lopez, the defendant was contacted on the day she transported [several unauthorized aliens] only after the aliens were already in the country and the plan for the first person to pick them up had been frustrated by his arrest when he appeared at the designated location. 484 F.3d at 1200. We found irrelevant the fact that, after picking up the aliens, the defendant twice spoke to the person who might have been the initial transporter, and we rejected as speculative the government's other attempts to link the defendant's pre-offense conduct to the smuggling venture. Id. at 1200-01. Similarly, in Hernandez-Orellana, we reversed the brings to convictions of two defendants because, although the evidence showed that the defendants were involved in alien smuggling as a general matter, there was no specific evidence indicating that the defendants had encouraged and induced the smuggling of the two illegal aliens named in the indictment. 539 F.3d at 1006. Here, in contrast, all of the relevant conduct by Flores-Blanco took place before the offense was completed, and, as described above, there was sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that this conduct induced the smuggler in Mexico to deliver Portillo-Mendoza across the fence. Flores-Blanco's case is comparable to United States v. Singh, 532 F.3d 1053 (9th Cir.2008), where, on plain error review, we upheld a brings to conviction because, prior to the start of the offense, the defendant agreed not only to transport a smuggled alien within the United States, but also to bring[ ] the [alien's] passport back to the principals in Canada, thereby ensur[ing] the continued operation of the human smuggling conspiracy. Id. at 1061; see also Reyes-Bosque, 596 F.3d at 1036 (finding sufficient evidence of pre-offense conduct where a group of aliens had been brought to the house where the defendant operated an alien smuggling scheme and a ledger of smuggling-related activities seized from that house listed the name of one of the illegal aliens in that group). We accordingly reject Flores-Blanco's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence for his brings to conviction.