Court Opinion

ID: 9476544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:58:33.476409+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:22.613941
License: Public Domain

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in Judge Reavley’s excellent opinion, and append these comments merely to note that I would prefer the approach taken by Chief Judge Clark, at least as to searches for illegal aliens, if I believed it were open to us.
As both Judge Reavley and Chief Judge Clark demonstrate, there is a compelling national interest in workable measures for the control of illegal immigration along our southern border. A nation that cannot control its immigration is “to that extent subject to the control of another power.” Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581, 9 S.Ct. 623, 629, 32 L.Ed. 1068 (1889). We should be slow to “convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.” Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 69 S.Ct. 894, 911, 93 L.Ed. 1131 (1949) (Jackson, J., dissenting).
Given the automobile exception to the warrant clause, see Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925); California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 105 S.Ct. 2066, 2068-70, 85 L.Ed.2d 406 (1985), the provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a) and 8 C.F.R. § 287.1(a)(2), and the general reasoning employed to sustain appropriately located fixed checkpoint stops and questioning for immigration control purposes without individualized suspicion, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976), I would have thought that vehicular searches for illegal aliens under like conditions also met the requirements of the Fourth Amendment without the necessity of a prior warrant for the particular checkpoint. Moreover, use of such a warrant seems to undesirably stretch the meaning of the warrant clause, given its language and history. See Griffin v. Wisconsin, — U.S. -, -, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 3168-71, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987).
Nevertheless, I am unable to read United States v. Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891, 95 S.Ct. 2585, 45 L.Ed.2d 623 (1975), as being limited to fixed checkpoints similar to that at San Clemente. Rather, Ortiz seems to me to hold that at all “traffic checkpoints removed from the border and its functional equivalents, officers may not search private vehicles without consent or probable cause.” Id. at 2589. See also Martinez-Fuerte, 96 S.Ct. at 3087 (“checkpoint searches are constitutional only if justified by consent or probable cause to search”). Ortiz’s only qualification to its search prohibition is for instances where a warrant has been issued for the checkpoint, 95 S.Ct. at 2589 n. 3, on analogy to the suggestion of the five Justices in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 2540, 2543-45, 2547, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973), respecting warrants for roving patrols in particular areas. It seems plain that the concerns arising from the language and history of the warrant clause are somewhat less strongly implicated in the case of a fixed checkpoint than for a roving area patrol.
Thus, I conclude that we are not free to adopt Chief Judge Clark’s persuasively reasoned view, and that Judge Reavley’s path is the one we must follow.