Opinion ID: 3014155
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Immigration and Customs

Text: We review checkpoint searches by “applying [a] balancing test, ‘weigh[ing] the public interest against the Fourth Amendment interest of the individual.’” United States v. Pollard, 326 F.3d 397, 411 (3d Cir. 2003) (quoting United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 554 (1976)). See also United States v. Hyde, 37 F.3d 116, 122 (3d Cir. 1994) (balancing the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the degree to which routine customs searches promote legitimate governmental interests). The checkpoint at issue in this case is a border checkpoint.3 “It is axiomatic that 2 Mora-Santana asserts that the twenty minutes he spent waiting in line before reaching the checkpoint constitutes an illegal seizure. This contention is utterly without merit. Waiting in line at a customs and immigration checkpoint may be an inconvenience, but it emphatically is not a seizure. Even if it were a seizure, however, twenty minutes would not have been unreasonable. See United States v. Flores-Montano, 124 S. Ct. 1582, 1587 (2004) (“We think it clear that delays of one to two hours at international borders are to be expected.”). 3 There is no question under this Court’s precedent that the territorial border between the U.S. Virgin Islands and the United States is treated the same as an international border for the purposes of Fourth Amendment scrutiny. See Hyde, 37 F.3d at 122. (“we perceive the interest of the United States in warrantless searches without probable cause at this ‘internal’ border to be little different from its interest in such searches at its international borders”). And while Hyde addressed only the government’s interest in establishing customs checkpoints, we recently explained that the nature of the checkpoint, i.e., whether customs or immigration, does not alter our analysis. Pollard, 326 F.3d at 414 (“the Government clearly has as great an interest in interdicting aliens as it does in regulating customs”). 4 the United States, as sovereign, has the inherent authority to protect, and a paramount interest in protecting, its territorial integrity.” Flores-Montano, 124 S. Ct. at 1586. Accordingly, “searches made at the border, pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border.” United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 616 (1976). See Flores-Montano, 124 S. Ct. at 1585 (quoting Ramsey with approval). In Hyde we upheld the constitutionality of suspicionless, customs checkpoints at the airports in the Virgin Islands, Hyde, 37 F.3d at 123, and in Pollard we upheld the constitutionality of suspicionless, immigration checkpoints at those same airports. Pollard, 326 F.3d at 413. We need not repeat our analyses here. Nor need we devote much attention to Mora-Santana’s argument that combining two legal checkpoints – immigration and customs – into one checkpoint somehow renders that checkpoint illegal. Mora-Santana relies on Edmond in support of his argument, but we find Edmond inapposite. In Edmond, the Supreme Court invalidated searches conducted by the City of Indianapolis at suspicionless, drug-interdiction checkpoints within the United States. The Court declined “to suspend the usual requirement of individualized suspicion where the police seek to employ a checkpoint primarily for the ordinary enterprise of investigating crimes.” Edmond, 531 U.S. at 44. Border checkpoints, however, are not implicated by this holding, and the Court recognized as much: “It goes without saying that our holding 5 today does nothing to alter the constitutional status of . . . border checkpoints[.]” Edmond, 531 U.S. at 47. See also United States v. Montoya De Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 538 (1985) (“Consistent[ ] . . . with Congress’ power to protect the Nation by stopping and examining persons entering this country, the Fourth Amendment’s balance of reasonableness is qualitatively different at the international border than in the interior.”). If anything, the combination of customs and immigration functions into a single checkpoint lessens the intrusion upon individuals by subjecting them to one, rather than two, “seizures” and potential searches. And the combination of customs and immigration functions can in no way be said to indicate any diminishing of the government’s interest in border control. Cf. Pollard, 326 F.3d at 414 (“Although there are differences between customs interests and immigration interests, we see no reason why the balancing test would yield different results when applied to [either].”). Accordingly, the dual-function immigration and customs checkpoint at the St. Thomas airport is unquestionably proper.