Guillermo Gonzalez-Zea v. United States
SocialSecurity FourthAmendment CriminalProcedure Immigration Privacy
Whether the Eleventh Circuit's reasonable suspicion determination can be reconciled with Terry v. Ohio
QUESTIONS PRESENTED I. Pursuant to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 22 (1968) and its progeny, law enforcement officers may conduct a brief, investigative stop when, under the totality of the circumstances, the officers have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. In the opinion below, the Eleventh Circuit determined that a Terry stop of any male individual leaving a particular residence was justified because a shared social security number at one point used by an ICE fugitive had been associated with that address more than eight months previously. Can the Eleventh Circuit’s reasonable suspicion determination be reconciled with Terry and its progeny? II. In Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1609, 1614 (2015), this Court held that the scope of a Terry stop “must be carefully tailored to its underlying justification,” and the stop may “last no longer than is necessary” to complete its mission. In this case, the deportation officers were not looking for the defendant for any reason, and the sole justification for the Terry stop was to ascertain whether the defendant was a different individual sought by ICE. As the Tenth Circuit has held, does reasonable suspicion supporting the Terry stop evaporate once an objectively reasonable officer would have been able to determine that the two men were physically dissimilar? Or as the Eleventh Circuit determined in the opinion below, may the deportation officers ii require the defendant to produce multiple forms of identification and answer questions proving his identity? iii