## Facts

- Quevara-Mata and five other immigrants lived in a rented room in a house on Long Island, New York.
- At approximately 5:00 a.m., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents went to the house and repeatedly banged on the front door and rang the doorbell to gain entry.
- After another person living in the house opened the front door, the agents proceeded inside the home.
- The agents broke through the immigrants’ locked bedroom door where Quevara-Mata and the others were staying.
- The agents were armed and in uniform.
- The agents did not have a warrant.
- ICE agents questioned, searched, and detained the six immigrants.
- The immigrants were taken to a detention facility, where they were held and interrogated before being released about 12 hours later.
- Before release, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged the immigrants as removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
- In removal proceedings, the immigrants sought suppression of evidence obtained during the operation, arguing that ICE’s conduct amounted to an egregious violation of their constitutional rights.
- The immigration judge concluded the immigrants made a prima facie case of an egregious constitutional violation and ruled they were entitled to suppression of evidence collected during the arrest.
- The case then came before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in connection with DHS’s challenge to the immigration judge’s suppression ruling.

## Issues

1. Whether the immigrants made a sufficient prima facie showing that ICE’s warrantless entry and forced opening of a locked bedroom door constituted an egregious constitutional violation permitting suppression in removal proceedings.
2. Whether, given the manner of entry and detention described, evidence obtained during and after the arrest should be excluded as unlawfully obtained in the removal cases.

## Decision

- The matter reached the BIA after DHS sought review of the immigration judge’s ruling granting suppression based on a prima facie showing of an egregious constitutional violation.
- The decision is identified in secondary sources as an unpublished 2011 BIA disposition in A097 535291.
- Publicly accessible sources describing the case provide the factual background and procedural posture but do not provide the BIA’s full written reasoning or state the final disposition (e.g., affirmed, reversed, or remanded).

## Legal Principles

- The exclusionary rule generally does not apply in civil removal proceedings, but suppression may be available where obtaining the evidence involved an egregious constitutional violation or where use of the evidence would render the proceedings fundamentally unfair (drawing from INS v. Lopez-Mendoza).
- A respondent moving to suppress in removal proceedings typically must present specific facts supporting a prima facie claim of unlawful conduct before DHS is required to explain how it obtained the evidence.
- Warrantless entry into a home, including entry into private living spaces within the home, raises Fourth Amendment concerns; allegations of forced entry and pre-dawn tactics are commonly analyzed in determining whether the violation is “egregious.”
- When suppression is considered, disputes often include whether statements, documents, or other evidence were obtained as a result of the challenged conduct and whether DHS can establish removability through evidence not derived from the alleged illegality.

## Conclusion

In re Quevara-Mata, A097 535291 (2011), involves a pre-dawn ICE operation in Long Island in which agents, armed and in uniform and allegedly without a warrant, entered a home after another resident opened the front door and then broke through a locked bedroom door to detain six immigrants; the immigration judge found a prima facie egregious constitutional violation and ordered suppression, and the case proceeded to the BIA on DHS’s challenge to that suppression ruling, though the unpublished BIA disposition and reasoning are not available in the publicly accessible materials referenced here.
