United States v. Bautista-Silva, 567 F.3d 1266 (11th Cir. 2009)
The Defendant, who was charged with knowingly transporting five illegal aliens within the United States for private financial gain, moved to suppress evidence discovered by the border patrol agent during a vehicular stop, on grounds that the agent did not have the requisite “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity needed to support such a stop. . The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida granted the suppression motion, and the government appealed.
District court, in considering whether border patrol agent had reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, should not have engaged in “divide and conquer” analysis.
The agent’s decision to stop the defendant’s suburban was based on numerous factors that, in his professional experience, suggested that the vehicle contained illegal aliens. The District Court found that those facts were insufficient to justify a stop because they were “too commonplace to support [reasonable suspicion] or to be given meaningful weight in a ‘totality of the circumstances’ analysis.”
