{"id":2017,"date":"2008-07-21T19:43:29","date_gmt":"2008-04-24T08:13:41","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-24T08:13:41","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2017","title":{"rendered":"Merely being near an illegal alien is not reasonable suspicion of alien smuggling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Defendant was illegally stopped for suspicion of alien smuggling for merely being near an illegal alien. United States v. Varela-Delgado, 547 F. Supp. 2d 704 (W.D. Tex. 2008):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In fact, the only evidence of an immigration violation with any connection to Hernandez relates to Varela&#8217;s unlawful presence in the United States. However, this fact alone does not justify stopping and extensively detaining Hernandez because Varela had already been detained, and there was no evidence at the time that Hernandez knew of Varela&#8217;s illegal status. While courts are &#8220;reluctant to second guess the actions of law enforcement,&#8221; it is telling that neither Gomez nor Cardoza attempted to confirm Hernandez&#8217;s contention that the children were hers or that they were all United States citizens. See <em>United States v. Troop<\/em>, 514 F.3d 405, 2008 WL 134120, at *4 (5th Cir. 2008) (finding a search of a house unreasonable and noting that none of the agents appeared to believe reasonable grounds existed to justify the intrusion). The agents&#8217; inaction in this respect suggests to the Court that Hernandez was stopped for the sole purpose of obtaining her consent to search 2028 Pueblo Nuevo. 18 Upon review of all the facts and circumstances known to the agents prior to the stop, the Court finds no objective basis to constitute reasonable suspicion that any of the occupants in Hernandez&#8217;s vehicle were illegal aliens, or that Hernandez or her children were otherwise connected with alien smuggling or harboring. Thus, the Court concludes that the stop of Hernandez&#8217;s vehicle occurred in violation of the Fourth Amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On an appeal from a USMJ&#8217;s conviction of the defendant for misdemeanor marijuana possession of a civilian on a military base, the District Court finds that the defendant&#8217;s stop lacked reasonable suspicion. The USMJ also found it at the &#8220;outer limits&#8221; of reasonableness, but did not suppress. United States v. Winger, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32992 (D. Kan. April 18, 2008).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2017\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}