N.D.Ga.: ICE officers investigating a domestic flight and surveilling off-loading had RS

ICE officers were somehow drawn to watch a “quick turn” flight from California to a Dekalb County, Georgia airport. Their investigation revealed the pilot had been involved in multiple similar quick turn flights. Surveillance was set up at the airport, and duffle bags were removed from the airplane and put into a vehicle. A stop of the vehicle was conducted. After recounting all of the investigation and the surveillance, it was apparent there was reasonable suspicion for the stop of the vehicle. United States v. Goldenshtein, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35262 (N.D. Ga. February 22, 2011)*:

In short, although the government concedes that the U-turn was not in fact illegal, the stop of defendants’ vehicle was justified by reasonable suspicion based on information obtained through the agents’ collective investigation and surveillance. The investigating agents and officers assembled numerous objective facts and circumstances that, taken together, created more than a mere hunch that the defendants were smuggling contraband. Goldenshtein, who had made at least one recent “quick turn” flight, was flying an aircraft rented from a group with a prior history of supplying airplanes that had been interdicted, from California to Atlanta along a known smuggling route, landed at night near or after the time the flight line was due to close, did not allow ramp agents to touch his bags, which were too bulky, heavy, and numerous to appear to be a normal pilot’s luggage, and loaded those bags into a car driven by Akselrod, which appeared minutes after Goldenshtein landed and made a phone call. Once Officer Laird had stopped the defendants, Akselrod’s inability to provide his address or describe his Atlanta residence, despite his claim to have lived there for six months, provided additional justification for extending the detention for the purpose of conducting further investigation. This further investigation took place promptly, as Officer Summe and Rocky were at the scene of the stop, and the entire encounter, from traffic stop to the discovery of the marijuana and the defendants’ arrest, took place in less than ten minutes. All of the law enforcement conduct was well within the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment, and therefore defendants’ motions to suppress are due to be denied.