Opinion ID: 3065484
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Post-Indictment Activities2

Text: After the search of the Wilson Street Property, the government indicted Reyes-Bosque, Ramirez-Esqueda, and RivasPozos on six “brings to” counts and six “harboring” counts. Both Reyes-Bosque and Ramirez-Esqueda were released from custody after posting bail. 2 Ramirez-Esqueda objects to references to some of the following facts, because they were not presented at his trial. To the extent we refer to him in the following sections, we do not consider the facts against him in our analysis of the legal issues. 3208 UNITED STATES v. REYES-BOSQUE
On January 30, 2006, a Jeep Cherokee containing one smuggled alien, Jesus Aguila-Sandoval, arrived at 362 Wilson Street. At Reyes-Bosque’s trial, Aguila-Sandoval testified that Reyes-Bosque led him into Unit 4, where five other aliens were being held. The next morning, Reyes-Bosque told Aguila-Sandoval, “it was time,” led him back to the Jeep Cherokee, driven by Juan Contreras-Duarte and containing three other smuggled aliens, and told him to get into the trunk of the Cherokee. Border Patrol agents were conducting surveillance on Reyes-Bosque’s residence and also observed these activities. A Ford Explorer, which was also parked at 362 Wilson Street, pulled out of the driveway and ContrerasDuarte followed behind it in the Jeep Cherokee. ContrerasDuarte drove until he got to a dirt road a few miles before the Border Patrol checkpoint and pulled off the road. He had been in contact with Reyes-Bosque via cellular phones belonging to Reyes-Bosque. Agent Gamble, one of the Border Patrol agents conducting surveillance, approached Contreras-Duarte in the Cherokee after it stopped. While interviewing the vehicle’s occupants and making arrests, he observed the cellular phone and heard someone contacting it using the directconnect feature, asking “where are you,” several times. Those messages were sent using a cellular phone seized from ReyesBosque’s home.
Border Patrol agents executed a search warrant for Units 3 and 4 on February 3, 2006. Some of the items seized in this search included: (1) a ledger listing payments for “brinco,” which is slang for “jumping the border”; (2) the Nextel Blackberry cellular phone that was used during the January 31, 2006, event; (3) an invoice from Sprint indicating that ReyesBosque was the subscriber for both the Nextel Blackberry and the Motorola cellular phones, which were also used during the UNITED STATES v. REYES-BOSQUE 3209 January 31, 2006 event; and (4) a pay-and-owe-sheet listing smugglers who were owed money.
Even after the February 2006 search, Reyes-Bosque and Ramirez-Esqueda continued their participation in smuggling activities. For example, a Ford F-150 truck that RamirezEsqueda ostensibly sold to Reyes-Bosque was stopped in December 2006 after a high-speed chase and contained at least eight illegal aliens. Additionally, in late December 2006, a few weeks after allegedly selling Reyes-Bosque a Ford Windstar, Ramirez-Esqueda obtained a new license plate for the vehicle and registered it in his own name. Three weeks later, Border Patrol agents stopped that vehicle for transporting four illegal aliens. Between May 2006 and January 2007, there were two other alien-smuggling arrests involving vehicles registered to either Ramirez-Esqueda or Reyes-Bosque.