Jaime Solis-Solis v. William Barr

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS SEP 9 2020
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
JAIME ERNESTO SOLIS-SOLIS, AKA No. 19-72138
Jaime Ernesto Solis,
Agency No. A213-020-392
Petitioner,
v. MEMORANDUM*
WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General,
Respondent.
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
Submitted August 13, 2020**
Pasadena, California
Before: O'SCANNLAIN, CALLAHAN, and COLLINS, Circuit Judges.
Jaime Ernesto Solis-Solis petitions for review of the Board of Immigration
Appeals’ (BIA’s) order dismissing his appeal and affirming the Immigration
Judge’s (IJ’s) denial of his motion to suppress alienage evidence in his removal
proceedings. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252 and we deny the
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
petition.
Solis-Solis raises two challenges to the BIA’s order in his petition for
review. First, Solis-Solis argues that the agency’s I-213 document—a form
wherein agents summarize the evidence and their interactions with a suspect—was
not admissible at his removal hearing because it contains contradictions that render
it inherently unreliable. Specifically, the I-213 form states that the vehicle stop
occurred “near” his residence and “[a]t [the] time” that Solis-Solis was observed
leaving the house, whereas Solis-Solis and the driver of the vehicle both testified at
the hearing that the vehicle was stopped more than a mile away and around forty
minutes after they left the residence. Neither the IJ nor the BIA considered these
discrepancies significant enough to render the I-213 inherently unreliable. We
agree. While the descriptions in the I-213 could be clearer, the evidence does not
compel the conclusion that there was a contradiction that rendered the form
inherently unreliable.
Second, Solis-Solis argues that the evidence resulting from the vehicle stop
should have been suppressed at his hearing because the government lacked
individualized reasonable suspicion to justify the stop. “An officer may make an
investigatory stop if he is aware of specific, articulable facts which, together with
objective and reasonable inferences, form a basis for suspecting that the particular
person detained is engaged in criminal activity.” United States v. Hernandez-
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Alvarado, 891 F.2d 1414, 1416 (9th Cir. 1989); see also 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(b)(2)
(immigration officer may “briefly detain” a person on “reasonable suspicion” that
he or she “is an alien illegally in the United States”). Here, the agents were
conducting an operation that individually targeted Solis-Solis as a criminal alien,
and stopped the vehicle in which he was a passenger after observing him leave his
residence and following him. Thus, the agents had “specific, articulable” facts
from which their reasonable suspicion for stopping the vehicle may be rationally
deduced. See id. at 1416 (“Permissible deductions or rational inferences must be
grounded in objective facts and be capable of rational explanation . . . .”). Solis-
Solis argues that the agents had not verified that he was indeed the passenger in the
vehicle before it was stopped. However, the agents did not need to know for
certain that the vehicle passenger was Solis-Solis. They only needed to be able to
infer from the facts that there was a reasonable probability that the passenger was
Solis-Solis, and the facts here gave rise to such a probability. See Kansas v.
Glover, 140 S. Ct. 1183, 1187 (2020) (“[T]he level of suspicion the standard
requires is considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the
evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable cause.” (quoting Prado
Navarette v. California, 572 U.S. 393, 397 (2014))).
The agency did not err by concluding that the I-213 form was not inherently
unreliable and that the government was able to establish reasonable suspicion for
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the vehicle stop under these circumstances. Solis-Solis’s petition for review is
DENIED.
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