“Reasonable” refers to the attempt made, and will be subject to judicial review. The same word is used in the standard that guides enforcement of every single criminal law: reasonable suspicion, the quanta of suspicion necessary to effect a temporary detention in order to investigate and confirm, or dispel, the belief that a crime has been committed.
So I can’t get too worked up over the use of that word and the idea that it’s left to the offcer, since that same statement may be applied to every single criminal law on the books of every single state in the country.
I’ve noted my own heritage above, but write again here to say that no, what actions are reasonable are reviewable by a court. For example, a roadside detention to summon a drug-sniffing dog is not forbidden, but the original traffic detention may not be unreasonably extended. That’s the standard, again, in every state in the union. I’m sure that drug smugglers convicted after application of this law may have a different idea of “reasonable” than the officers did, but society is undamaged by this discrepancy.
No. As the law clearly states, persons must be stopped in the enforcement of some other law or ordinance. No one may be stopped because they look like anything.
Sure. In the many threads discussing this issue, I have provided many helpful scenarios that answer this question. I’m sorry you missed them, and am happy to reproduce some of them here:
In this first example, we see the officer has developed reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation by his questioning. The driver is legally detained because the officer has at least reasonable suspicion to believe he’s guilty of speeding. In course of that detention, he asks about the driver’s citizenship. The drivers avers he’s a legal permanent resident, but then advises he is not in possession of his green card, an offense under 18 USC § 1304(e).
In this encounter, there is no initial detention. The officer has simply chosen to ask a person the question. This is known as a consensual encounter, and does not implicate the Constitution, because any person is free to disregard the police inquiry and go about his business. In the same way, the officer could approach an individual and ask if he;s carrying drugs, or a weapon. As long as the person’s liberty is not restrained in any way, the officer may ask anything he wishes, for any or no reason at all.
However, the responses of the other people involved give rise to reasonable suspicion of questionable immigration status. The first person’s refusal to answer cannot be held against him in any way, but the second and third people involved appear to know that the first person is both not a citizen and and is in need of a phony answer.
A consensual encounter can quickly become a detention. Here is an example of how this might play out:
The second individual has exercised his right both to remain silent, and, in the face of a consensual police encounter, disregard the encounter and go about his business. When he does so, the cop orders him to remain. At this point, a reasonable individual would not feel free to leave, and is thus seized for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. That means that at that instant, the officer must be able to articulate specific facts and inferences that cause him to believe a crime is being committed. In the example above, the cop cannot point to any such facts, and thus the detention is illegal.
As to the second question, a reasonable effort to verify status would be either the production by the suspect of papers showing his status, or an inquiry to the federal resource. If the feds don’t answer within a reasonable period of time, the suspect must be permitted to leave.