Biographical Information Obtained in Warrantless Raid by ICE Agents is Suppressed Under Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule

State v. Maldonado-Arreaga, Minn.Ct.App., 9/15/2009.  At 5:30 in the morning, immigration officers burst into Ms. Maldonado-Arreaga’s house.  They did not have permission.  They did not have a warrant.  There was no emergency.  They did have guns. Without benefit of a Miranda warning, Ms. Maldonado-Arreaga told the officers her name, address, date of birth, country of origin, employer, and that she had used an alias.  (Oh, did I mention that the immigration officers made Ms. Maldonado-Arreaga drive them around in her car to look for her adult son?  They did.)

The immigration officers recorded all this information on one of their forms, then gave a copy of the form to the Willmar police.  The Willmar police, in turn, used the form to discover that Ms. Maldonado-Arreaga had used the alias to obtain a driver’s license, to apply for her job, to obtain a social security card, and to record exemptions on her W-4 form.  The state charged her with various counts of aggravated forgery and identity theft. 

Ms. Maldonado-Arreaga moved to suppress the information contained on the immigration form, the information obtained from her employer, and the information obtained from the driver’s license office.  The trial court believed that the warrantless raid and detention, and the non-Mirandized interrogation – all of which produced the information on the immigration form – were unconstitutional, but that because most of the information was biographical there was no Fifth Amendment violation in admitting it.

The trial court relied upon three so called “routine booking question” opinions:  State v. Widdell, 258 N.W.2d 795, 797 (Minn. 1977); State v. Link, 289 N.W.2d 102 (Minn. 1979); and State v. Hale, 453 N.W.2d 704 (Minn. 1990).  Each of these cases involved booking questions asked of a suspect at a police station following a lawful detention, the only value of which was clerical.  Here, the questions to Ms. Maldonado-Arreaga were asked at a time when the immigration police had her chained – well, handcuffed – to her bed frame as her nursing baby lay sleeping at he side, and were intended to uncover evidence of crime: her entry status into the country.  The appellate court said that this implicates the Fourth Amendment and its exclusionary rule, not the Fifth Amendment.  Of all things, the appellate court relied upon an Eighth Circuit opinion, United States v. Guevara-Martinez, 262 F.3d 751 (8th Cir. 2001) to conclude that the exclusionary rule applies to the collection of biographical information from Ms. Maldonado-Arreaga.  The appellate court then concluded that the information on the immigration form, and the information that the Willmar police obtained on the basis of that form, must be suppressed as the fruits of the illegal raid and detention, the conduct of which the appellate court described as “flagrant and egregious”.  The appellate court concluded its Opinion with this blistering footnote:

Appellant does not claim that the detective was directly involved in the ICE raids. Yet, at oral argument, respondent conceded that members of the Willmar Police Department, including this detective, were in contact with ICE prior to the raid on appellant‟s residence, assisted ICE in coordinating unconstitutional raids on Willmar residents, and were present as “observers” during some of the raids. Clearly, the ICE raids did not occur in a vacuum, and the local police‟s participation—even if described as moderate, passive, or idle—is regrettable.