Court Opinion

ID: 9496030
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:16:21.040634+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:19.989202
License: Public Domain

LOKEN, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I join the opinion of the court. But like Justice Powell, concurring in INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 221-24, 104 S.Ct. 1758, 80 L.Ed.2d 247 (1984), I believe the district court’s suppression ruling must also be affirmed on an alternative ground. Given the government’s important interest in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, I conclude that it was constitutionally reasonable for the INS agents to detain An-gulo-Guerrero for the limited purpose of questioning him about his citizenship, whether or not the agents had his consent or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Congress has granted broad powers to those who enforce our immigration laws, including the power “to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States [and] to arrest any alien in the United States, if [the agent] has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.” 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(1) and (2). Beginning thirty years ago, the Supreme Court considered the constitutional validity of these search and seizure powers in a series of cases involving stops and searches of automobiles that might be transporting illegal aliens. In Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 268, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973), the Court explained:
The Border Patrol conducts three types of surveillance along inland roadways, all in the asserted interest of detecting the illegal importation of aliens. Permanent checkpoints are maintained at certain nodal intersections; temporary checkpoints are established from time to time at various places; and finally, there are roving patrols such as the one that stopped and searched the petitioner’s car.
In Almeidar-Sanchez, a closely divided Court held that the warrantless search of a car stopped by a roving patrol violated the Fourth Amendment.
Two years later, the Court held in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 884, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975), that “[e]xcept at the border and its functional equivalents, officers on roving patrol may stop vehicles [to question occupants] only if they are aware of specific articula-ble facts ... that reasonably warrant suspicion that the vehicles contain aliens who may be illegally in the country.” In the companion case of United States v. Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891, 896-97, 95 S.Ct. 2585, 45 L.Ed.2d 623 (1975), the Court, applying Almeidar-Sanchez, held “that at traffic checkpoints removed from the border and its functional equivalents, officers may not search private vehicles without consent or probable cause.” But the Court expressly noted that the rule in Almeidar-Sanchez might not apply to checkpoint stops. Although the regularity of the procedures attending a checkpoint cannot “mitigate the invasion of privacy that a search entails,” the Court explained, “the differences between a roving patrol and a checkpoint would be significant in determining the propriety of the stop, which is considerably less intrusive than a search.” Ortiz, 422 U.S. at 895, 95 S.Ct. 2585.
One year later, the Court confirmed the importance of this distinction in United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976). The Court held that the Fourth Amendment is not violated when immigration agents, acting without consent or individualized suspicion, routinely stop automobiles at a permanent checkpoint away from the *453border with Mexico and refer a small percentage of the stopped vehicles to a secondary inspection area for routine inquiry into the occupants’ residence status.
In my view, this case is controlled by the Supreme Court’s analysis in Martinez-Fuerte. At the suppression hearing, the government placed in evidence a January 2002 internal INS operations plan explaining that, based upon preliminary surveillance of the twelve regularly scheduled buses stopping daily at the Ogallala rest stop, the INS Omaha District suspected “that this mode of transportation is regularly being utilized by a growing number of undocumented aliens and by organized smugglers to move groups of aliens through the United States via the 1-80 corridor [and] that the use of this mode of transportation has increased since security at Airports has been tightened.” Accordingly, the operation plan assigned nine INS agents to board each bus as it stopped at Ogallala on January 29 and 30, 2002, to determine the alienage of each passenger.
The operation plan reflects an agency decision to make the Ogallala bus stop a two-day temporary checkpoint at which bus travelers would be briefly questioned about their residence status. For Fourth Amendment purposes, the resulting intrusion was truly minimal. Unlike what occurs at an automobile checkpoint (whether permanent or temporary), the agents did not interrupt travel by stopping the buses. They were already stopped for a scheduled break. Without extending the stop or significantly interfering with the travelers’ break time, the agents briefly questioned the passengers about their citizenship. Compare Delgado, 466 U.S. at 224, 104 S.Ct. 1758 (Powell, J., concurring) (factory workers “diverted briefly to answer a few [survey] questions”). Such brief questioning regarding citizenship is a minimal intrusion on the bus travelers’ privacy interests compared to the government’s substantial interest in controlling illegal immigration. See Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. at 880, 95 S.Ct. 2574.
Not only was the intrusion minimal, the District operation plan, like the establishment of a permanent checkpoint, limited the discretion of INS agents in the field to select which bus passengers would be questioned. See Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 559, 96 S.Ct. 3074. In addition, although the Ogallala stop is a considerable distance from the border with Mexico, the operation plan established a nexus between the two-day questioning of bus passengers and the government’s substantial interest in controlling illegal immigration. In our highly mobile society, the government may reasonably choose to control illegal immigration by monitoring common routes that illegal aliens use to travel when seeking jobs in the interior. In that regard, the location of permanent and temporary checkpoints must be left largely to the discretion of INS officials, subject to judicial review of a particular stop for constitutional reasonableness. See Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 559 and n. 13, 96 S.Ct. 3074.
For these reasons, I conclude that the INS agents’ limited questioning of Angulo-Guerrero on the stopped bus was constitutionally reasonable, even if it was a brief, non-consensual seizure conducted without reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot.