Page 35 - TPA Journal January February 2023

court relied on Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217 nvolvement of “a neutral and detached magis-
(1960), in which the Court had affirmed the trate.”
admissibility of evidence gathered per a home
arrest without a judicial warrant. The court also To arrest someone without a judicial warrant and
found that Malagerio gave effective consent to the with no suspicion that a crime has been committed
search of his trailer. would ordinarily be unconstitutional. But deporta-
tion is not a criminal punishment.
Malagerio stood trial, maintaining that, while he
had been present in the United States illegally and Thus, “immigration officers may seize aliens
had possessed firearms, he had not known he was based on an administrative warrant attesting to
present illegally. That defense proved unavailing, probable cause of removability.”
and the jury found Malagerio guilty. On appeal,
Malagerio challenges the denial of his motion to Malagerio waives any contrary position and main-
suppress, but he does not otherwise object to his tains, instead, that, although the agents might have
trial or sentence. been legally entitled to arrest him in a public
place, they were not permitted to seize him within
Malagerio’s primary theory on appeal is that he his home. The district court found that Malagerio
was arrested unlawfully, meaning that any evi- was not seized until after he had exited his home
dence gathered from the subsequent search must (the trailer) and that he was not located on any cur-
be suppressed. His position depends on several tilage of that home.
premises. To prevail, his arrest must have been
illegal, that illegality must be of the type that trig- Those findings are not clearly erroneous. It fol-
gers the exclusionary rule, and the arrest must lows that we need not decide whether an adminis-
have poisoned the search. Instead of working trative warrant may be used to arrest an alien in his
through each of those premises, we focus on the home. We leave that important question for anoth-
district court’s factual findings, which are not er day
clearly erroneous and, instead, are supported by
the record. Specifically, the district court found Malagerio says that he was “seized in [his] door-
that Malagerio was not arrested in his home or its way.” But “a person standing in the doorway of a
curtilage, so there was no Fourth Amendment vio- house is ‘in a “public” place,’ and hence subject to
lation. arrest without a warrant permitting entry of the
home.” As for Malagerio’s notion that he was
When considering the denial of a motion to sup- arrested in the curtilage, the district court found to
press, this court reviews legal conclusions de novo the contrary. Malagerio was spread on the hood of
and factual findings for clear error. We view the his truck that was parked in an open driveway
evidence in the light most favorable to the prevail- between his trailer and a neighbor’s. Such an open
ing party, here the government. driveway is not curtilage, and at the very least, the
Malagerio was arrested under an administrative district court’s finding of no curtilage is protected
warrant based on the suspicion that he was unlaw- as plausible in light of the record as a whole.
fully present in the United States. Administrative
warrants do not comply with the requirements that Malagerio presents an alternative theory: Even if
the Fourth Amendment places on judicial war- his arrest did not trigger the exclusionary rule, the
rants. In the immigration context, administrative warrantless search that turned up the guns would
warrants can be issued without probable cause that still be unconstitutional. The district court con-
a crime has been committed1 and without the cluded that the search had been permissible

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