Defending Smuggling Unlawful Alien Cases

Usually when you hear about immigration lawyers, you think Visas and Green Cards or deportation defense. The other immigration lawyers also practice in federal court, but we are not in immigration court, we are in the criminal court.  

There is no secret about the energy the government has for enforcing federal immigration laws. This includes aggressive action by the U.S. Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border Patrol and the Los Angeles Border Enforcement Security Task Force (LA BEST). These multi-agency investigations, which also include local authorities, are on the lookout for both land and ocean-based border crossings.

Officers may discover a so-called "drop house" where people who have entered the country unlawfully are alleged to be temporarily housed. Police officers may personally witness parts of the operation, use video surveillance of boats coming ashore, and of cars, trucks or vans picking up passengers. The officers may have listen to phone calls through wiretaps. They might tail the vans to a drop house somewhere in Southern California.

The Federal Sentencing Guideline 2L1.1, Smuggling, Transporting or Harboring an Unlawful Alien accounts for a huge amount of cases in the federal system.

Defense attorneys, prosecutors, probation officers and the courts must determine whether the people who are being brought into this country have been previously removed or deported, deported for a conviction for an aggravated felony, if the offense was committed for profit, and establish the number of people involved.

Federal defense lawyers must limit the scope of relevant conduct the government wants to pin on their clients. Defense attorneys may focus on the client's role to identify mitigating factors, and identify other areas for downward departures and seek variances from the range suggested by the federal sentencing guidelines. If the client is charged in a conspiracy, focus must be to limit the scope of the client's jointly undertaken criminal activity.

Immigration is a hot topic. The judge has to make sure he protects the public when taking into account the appropriate sentence. If you get caught for this or any other federal offense, you need lawyers with over 80 years of experience who understand the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. If you are going to get the best possible federal defense, you need the lawyers at the Downtown L.A. Law Firm of Gold, Leftwich & Wagner.