Zavala-Mendez

Facts

Zavala-Mendez was a passenger in a car that crossed into Alaska on the Alaska Highway from the Yukon Territory on a January night. He had no right to enter the United States, because he had been deported and the Attorney General had not given him permission to reenter.1 At the border station Zavala-Mendez lied and said he had a green card. But he gave his true name, and it came up on the border station computer showing that he had been deported. He was therefore detained and driven to Anchorage, 430 miles away, where his finger- prints could be scanned and compared to the fingerprints in his alien file. The prints matched.

Zavala-Mendez was convicted of being “found in” the United States after having previously been deported.2 He was not indicted for attempting to enter the United States.3 His only defense is legal, that he could not be “found in” the United States when all he did after crossing the border was to go straight to the border station and present himself for entry.

Like all American border stations, the Alaskan facility is inside the United States, so by the time Zavala-Mendez got there, he was already across the survey line that delineates one country from…