FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT GREGORIO PEREZ CRUZ, No. 15-70530 Petitioner, Agency No. v. A095-748-837 WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. OPINION On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted September 5, 2018 San Francisco, California Filed June 13, 2019 Before: Marsha S. Berzon and Michelle T. Friedland, Circuit Judges, and Daniel R. Dominguez, * District Judge. Opinion by Judge Berzon * The Honorable Daniel R. Dominguez, United States District Judge for the District of Puerto Rico, sitting by designation. 2 PEREZ CRUZ V. BARR SUMMARY ** Immigration Granting Gregorio Perez Cruz’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the panel held that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were not permitted to carry out preplanned mass detentions, interrogations, and arrests at a factory, without individualized reasonable suspicion, and reversed and remanded to the BIA with instructions to dismiss Perez Cruz’s removal proceedings without prejudice. During the execution of a search warrant for employment-related documents located at the factory where Perez Cruz worked, he was detained, interrogated, and arrested for immigration violations, along with approximately 130 other workers. He was subsequently placed in removal proceeding and charged with entry without inspection. Based on statements he provided during his detention, ICE prepared a Form I-213, alleging that Perez Cruz had admitted that he was brought illegally into the United States as a child. The government also produced Perez Cruz’s birth certificate based on statements he provided in connection with the factory raid. Perez Cruz moved to terminate the proceedings or, in the alternative, suppress evidence, but the BIA concluded that his detention and interrogation violated neither the agency’s regulation nor the Fourth Amendment. ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. PEREZ CRUZ V. BARR 3 The panel first rejected the government’s contention that, even if Perez Cruz were otherwise entitled to suppression, the critical evidence in question constituted evidence only of “identity” and so was not subject to suppression under INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032 (1984). The panel concluded that this argument was flatly contradicted by Lopez-Rodriguez v. Mukasey, 536 F.3d 1012 (9th Cir. 2008), which held that evidence pertaining to alienage is subject to suppression, and expressly instructed that, however broadly identity evidence reaches, it does not include evidence pertaining to alienage. Concluding that Perez Cruz’s statements regarding his birthplace, and his birth certificate derived from those statements, constituted evidence of alienage—not identity—the panel rejected the government’s argument that the evidence was not suppressible. The panel next rejected the government’s contention that Perez Cruz’s detention was permitted by Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692 (1981), which held that a warrant to search for contraband founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to detain the occupants of the premises while a proper search is conducted. The panel held that ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals