## Facts

- ICE received an anonymous tip (2006) that a manufacturing facility employed hundreds of undocumented workers.
- Nearly two years later, ICE obtained a search warrant for employment-related documents at the facility and arrest warrants for eight named employees.
- ICE planning materials reflected an intent to use execution of the document search as a large-scale operation aimed at detaining and arresting many workers, with logistics for buses, vans, and detention beds.
- About 100 armed agents entered the factory, blocked exits, ordered workers to stop working, and announced that no one could leave.
- Agents separated workers into lines based on whether they had work-authorization documents and questioned workers about immigration status.
- Gregorio Perez Cruz, a Mexican citizen who entered the United States without inspection, was detained, patted down, handcuffed, and questioned; he admitted he lacked lawful status.
- ICE prepared a Form I-213 documenting Perez Cruz’s statements and obtained his Mexican birth certificate using information derived from the detention.
- Removal proceedings charged Perez Cruz as removable for entry without inspection, relying primarily on the I-213 and the birth certificate.
- The Immigration Judge terminated proceedings on other grounds; the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed and rejected suppression; Perez Cruz petitioned for review.

## Issues

1. Whether the categorical detention authority incident to execution of a search warrant under *Michigan v. Summers* permitted ICE to detain factory workers en masse without individualized reasonable suspicion.
2. Whether ICE violated 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(b)(2) by detaining and questioning Perez Cruz about immigration status without reasonable suspicion based on specific, articulable facts.
3. Whether the I-213 and birth certificate obtained as a result of the detention should be suppressed in removal proceedings, and, if suppressed, whether proceedings must be terminated.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit granted the petition for review, reversed the BIA, and remanded with instructions to dismiss the removal proceedings without prejudice.
- The court held that *Summers* did not authorize the preplanned, mass detention of factory workers during execution of a document search warrant.
- The court held ICE violated 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(b)(2) by detaining and questioning Perez Cruz without individualized reasonable suspicion.
- The court ordered suppression of the I-213 and the birth certificate as fruits of the regulatory violation.
- With the tainted evidence excluded and no sufficient untainted evidence of removability, dismissal without prejudice was required.

## Legal Principles

- *Michigan v. Summers* permits limited detention of occupants incident to certain warrant executions but does not extend to preplanned mass detentions whose central purpose is to detain, interrogate, and arrest individuals without individualized reasonable suspicion.
- Under 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(b)(2), immigration officers must have reasonable suspicion based on specific, articulable facts before detaining and questioning a person about suspected immigration offenses.
- Evidence obtained as a result of a violation of binding immigration enforcement regulations may be suppressed in removal proceedings.
- When unlawful conduct is shown, the government bears the burden to establish that its evidence of removability is untainted; failure to do so requires exclusion of the tainted evidence.
- If suppression eliminates the evidentiary basis for removability, the proper disposition is termination (dismissal) of removal proceedings without prejudice.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit rejected reliance on categorical warrant-execution detention to justify a planned factory sweep, held ICE’s detention and questioning violated the reasonable-suspicion requirement in 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(b)(2), suppressed the raid-derived I-213 and birth certificate, and ordered dismissal without prejudice because the government lacked untainted proof of removability.


Perez Cruz v. Barr, 926 F.3d 1128 (9th Cir. 2019)