D.Kan.: Def consented to talk about his status and a fingerprint scan that confirmed he’d previously been deported

ICE officers were looking for a “certain alien” who was not the defendant who had been released from the county jail. They saw the defendant carry trash to the street receptacle and asked him if he’d seen the man in the picture they were looking for. Defendant didn’t speak English, so they asked in Spanish. He said that he hadn’t seen him in a couple of days. Because of his tattoos in Spanish and about Mexico, the officers asked him whether he was here legally or illegally. He answered illegally. They asked if he’d been deported before, and he said yes. They asked for a fingerprint scan which was done on a cell phone that immediately confirmed that from a government database. “Under the totality of the circumstances, the court concludes that a reasonable person in Mr. Hernandez’s position would have felt free to decline the officers’ request to talk and would have felt free to decline to answer questions or to end the encounter. The officers used no show of authority to suggest to defendant that his cooperation was required.” United States v. Hernandez-Esquivel, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155977 (D.Kan. Nov. 18, 2015).