Court Opinion

ID: 9494879
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:49:06.921196+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:40.752753
License: Public Domain

RAWLINSON, Circuit Judge,
Dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The district court gave this instruction as to count three of the indictment:
That on or about January 24th, 2000, within the Southern District of California, the Defendant, Armando Hernandez-Garcia, with the intent to violate the immigration laws of the United States, knowing and in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien, namely Daniel Iba-nez-Pizano, had come to, entered, and remained in the United States in violation of law, did transport and move said alien within the United States in furtherance of such violation of law. (Emphasis Added).
The district court similarly instructed the jury on count four of the indictment which charged the same offense, but named alien Manuel Vargas-Amezcua as the alien transported.
The district court also instructed the jury on the elements of transporting illegal aliens in violation of section 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) as follows, in pertinent part:
In order for the Defendant to be found guilty of the charges in Counts 3 and/or 4, the Government must prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt:
First, that the person specified in the particular Count, Daniel Iba-nez-Pizano and/or Manuel Vargas-Amezcua, was an alien on January 24th, 2000;
Second, that on January 24th, 2000, Daniel Ibanez-Pizano and/or Manuel Vargas-Amezcua was not lawfully in the United States;
Third, that the Defendant knew or was in reckless disregard of that fact that Daniel Ibanez-Pizano and/or Manuel Vargas-Amezcua was an alien who was not lawfully in the United States;
Fourth, that on or about January 24, 2000, the defendant knowingly *1141transported or moved Daniel Iba-nez-Pizano and/or Manuel Vargas-Amezcua within the Southern District of California with the specific purpose of helping him remain in the United States illegally; and,
Fifth, that the Defendant acted with the intention of violating the immigration laws of the United States.
The third element of the charge requires the Government to prove either; one, that the Defendant knew that the specified alien was an alien who had not received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States; or that the Defendant acted in reckless disregard of the fact that the specified alien was an alien who had not received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States....
The court instructed on official restraint as follows:
In order for the defendant to be found guilty of the offenses charged in Count 3 and 4, the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant transported the aliens who were not lawfully in the United States. Each count requires proof that the alien had entered the United States. (Emphasis added).
An alien who is under “official restraint,” although physically present on American soil, has not entered the United States in the legal sense. Thus, if the aliens in the white van were continuously under “official restraint” from the time that they crossed the border until they were apprehended, they had not entered the United States within the meaning of the statutes under which the defendant is charged in the indictment.
“Official restraint” means that the aliens were effectively deprived of their liberty and prevented from going at large within the United States.
In order for an alien to be deemed not to have yet entered the United States under this rule of law, the alien must be under the official restraint at all times during and subsequent to the alien’s physical entry into [sic] the United States [sic] soil. However, an alien who is able to exercise his free will subsequent to physically crossing the border is not under official restraint. Constant observation and surveillance of the alien by an agent who is reasonably able to apprehend the alien after the alien has crossed the border constitutes official restraint. The constant surveillance must be of such a degree that it would prevent the alien from escaping into the general population of the United States.
It is for you, as the finders of fact, to determine whether the Government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the aliens were not continuously under “official restraint” from the time that they crossed the international border until their apprehension.
In making that determination, you may consider whether the aliens were under surveillance by authorities, whether that surveillance was continuous, the distance the authorities were from the aliens, the amount of time the aliens were physically present within the United States prior to apprehension, the distance the aliens traveled into the United States, the characteristics of the area in which the aliens crossed the border, and any other factor that bears on the issue.
Under normal circumstances, a conviction for violating section 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) requires proof that: 1) an alien has come to, entered or remained in the United States in violation of the law; 2) the defendant *1142either had personal knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard of the fact that the alien had unlawfully come to, entered or remained in the United States; 3) the defendant transported or moved or attempted to transport or move the alien within the United States; and 4) the defendant acted in furtherance of the alien’s violation of the law.
However, the Government concedes that the jury was not instructed that Hernandez-Garcia could be convicted if the aliens with Hernandez-Garcia had merely “come to” the United States. Instead, the jury was expressly instructed that in order to convict Hernandez-Garcia the jury would have to find that the undocumented Mexican nationals “entered the United States.”
The majority holds that the official restraint instructions were superfluous “because to come to the United States is a step subsumed by ‘entry’.” (Emphasis in the original). However, this reasoning is circuitous because entry can only be found if there is an absence of official restraint. See United States v. Ruiz-Lopez, 234 F.3d 445, 448 (9th Cir.2000).
The majority’s holding also ignores the fact that the indictment charged that the aliens “had come to, entered, and remained in the United States.” (Emphasis added). Hernandez-Garcia was constitutionally entitled to have each element of the offense presented to the jury in the instructions. See McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. 257, 269-70, 270 n. 8, 111 S.Ct. 1807, 114 L.Ed.2d 307 (1991); see also United States v. Wiseman, 274 F.3d 1235, 1241-42 (9th Cir.2001).
The official restraint instructions are problematic for an additional reason not discussed by the majority: they were erroneous. They required observation “by an agent who is reasonably able to apprehend the alien,” a concept which appears nowhere in this circuit’s jurisprudence. Equally important, the instructions allowed the jurors to consider other factors we have not recognized, including:
“... the distance authorities were from the aliens, the amount of time the aliens were physically present within the United States prior to apprehension, the distance the aliens traveled into the United States, the characteristics of the area in which the aliens crossed the border and any other factor that bears on the issue.” (Emphasis added).
Faced with these nebulous and erroneous instructions, I cannot comfortably rely on any finding of entry made by the jury in this case. In Ruiz-Lopez, we explained that to “enter” or be “found” an alien must be present in the United States free from official restraint. 234 F.3d at 448. Official restraint is construed “broadly to include constant government surveillance of an alien, regardless of whether the alien was aware of the surveillance or intended to evade inspection.” Id. (citation omitted). “If a government official 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 — even if his arrest occurred at a point well past the port of entry— because the alien was under official restraint the whole time.” Id. Notably, we did not require surveillance by the same agent who apprehends the alien.
The evidence presented at trial indicated that the aliens with Hernandez-Garcia were under constant surveillance either by the Pilot or Agent Serna from the time they crossed the border until the time of the arrest. The aliens, therefore, could not have entered the United States. Because the aliens had not entered the United States, Hernandez-Garcia could not have been guilty of transporting them *1143within the United States. Accordingly, I would REVERSE.