United States v. Sanchez-Velasco, No. 18-3568 (8th Cir. 2020)
Annotate this Case
The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress his responses to an ICE agent's two questions at the Treasurer's Office, because he was not in custody at the time of questioning.
Although defendant was in custody at the ICE facility, the court held that an agent's questions were not custodial interrogation because the agent could not have known his questions were likely to elicit incriminating information regarding the two criminal charges that were eventually brought against defendant. The court noted that the Attorney General's regulations carefully distinguish between the warrantless arrest of an alien for a criminal violation of the immigration laws, and what is called the "administrative arrest" of an alien who is reasonably believed to be illegally present in the United States. The court agreed with the district court that the agent's questioning was a request for routine information necessary for basic identification purposes that is not interrogation under Miranda, even if the information turns out to be incriminating.
Court Description: [Loken, Author, with Grasz and Stras, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law. Defendant was not in custody at the time he was questions by ICE agents at the county treasurer's office; the questioning was consistent with the Attorney General's regulations authoring immigration officers to briefly detain a person for questioning if they have a reasonable suspicion, base on specific, articulable facts, that the person is an alien illegally in the U.S.; this brief detention is not subject to the Miranda requirements; defendant's answers to questions posed once he was in ICE custody were admissible as the questions posed to him related to his immigration status and contemplated civil removal proceedings; none of the questions were related to the substantive offenses here, which involved misuse of a social security number.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.