Opinion ID: 474302
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Presence of Articulable Facts and Reasonable Suspicion

Text: 17 The question of the appropriate standard of review applicable to the Board's finding that the Border Patrol agent had a founded suspicion for stopping petitioner is unclear in this circuit. United States v. Magana, 769 F.2d 549, 550-51 (9th Cir.1985). Like the panel in Magana, however, we need not decide whether findings of founded suspicion are reviewable under the clearly erroneous standard or receive de novo review; under either standard of review, petitioner's detention was based upon a founded suspicion of unlawful activity. See id. at 551. 18 Petitioner argues that the basis for the Border Patrol agent's belief that he was an illegal alien--his physical appearance and the fact that he slowed down upon approaching the pick-up truck and then continued on at a speed of forty-five miles per hour--was insufficient to justify his detention under Brignoni-Ponce. Although the facts selected by petitioner, standing alone, may not meet the Supreme Court's standards for a reasonable detention, see Nicacio v. INS, 768 F.2d 1133, 1137 (9th Cir.1985) (Hispanic-looking appearance and presence in an area where illegal aliens frequently travel are not enough to justify a stop to interrogate the occupants of a vehicle), resolution of this question is unnecessary. Petitioner has ignored the facts articulated by the Border Patrol agent which were known to him prior to the detention. The record shows that at the time of petitioner's detention and arrest, agents of the Border Patrol were engaged in approaching and interrogating persons who resided in buildings in the Wapato area based on information from various sources, including official channels, that the area was highly populated by undocumented aliens from Mexico. The arresting officers were also aware that some of these aliens would flee from their housing units in automobiles to avoid interrogation by the officers engaged in their ongoing investigation, and that 500 undocumented aliens had been seized in that area during that week. 19 It was in light of these additional circumstances that the immigration judge and the Board concluded that the fact that a person who appeared to be an alien slowed down to ten miles an hour and then accelerated to a higher speed after passing a border patrol vehicle, constituted a sufficient objective basis for a reasonable suspicion that the car contained undocumented aliens. As the Supreme Court stated in Brignoni-Ponce, the test for lawful vehicle stops by roving patrols is awareness of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion that the vehicles contain aliens who may be illegally in the country. 422 U.S. at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2582 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). We have noted that [a]n agent's experience might make a situation suspicious to him which to the untrained or experienced eye would pass unnoticed or seem innocent. Nicacio v. INS, 768 F.2d at 1138-39; see also Magana, 769 F.2d at 553 (trained officers entitled to combine objective facts with permissible deductions to form legitimate basis for suspicion). In the instant case, the arresting agent was entitled to draw the inference that petitioner was an illegal alien fleeing from a housing unit in the Wapato area in order to avoid interrogation. 20