Dean Johnson comments for Daily Journal podcast on Sanchez v. Sessions

Dean Kevin R. Johnson offered commentary for a Daily Journal podcast about the Sanchez v. Sessions case, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with plaintiff Luis Enrique Sanchez, who was detained on suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant by Coast Guard officers in Oxnard. The officers detained Sanchez after he sent out a distress signal while on his boat.

The Ninth Circuit granted Sanchez’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals that affirms an immigration judge’s denial of Sanchez’s motion to suppress evidence.

Sanchez was undocumented, but the Ninth Circuit panel held that the officers who detained him violated a federal law requiring that any “immigration officer” must have “reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts” that a person is in the country illegally.

“The assertion is the Coast Guard did not have reason to think he was (undocumented),” Johnson said on the podcast. “That there was no reasonable suspicion that justifies detention, and really what the Coast Guard officer was relying on was (Sanchez’s) race and nationality in deciding to detain him and investigate his immigration status.”

Kevin R. Johnson is dean, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and professor of Chicana/o studies at UC Davis School of Law. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of immigration law and policy, refugee law, and civil rights.