United States v. Sifuentes Ibarra

MEMORANDUM ***

Upon de novo review of the record, we agree with the district court that Delfina Sifuentes Ibarra failed, as a matter of law, to make an offer of proof sufficient to meet the four requisite elements of a necessity defense. In United States v. Arellano-Rivera, 244 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir.2001), we outlined the procedure and requirements in establishing a necessity defense:

Id. at 1125-26 (quotation marks and citations omitted).

Sifuentes Ibarra, a citizen of Guatemala, alleges that she entered the United States from Mexico in September of 2003, for the purpose of rushing her daughter, a United States citizen, to the hospital to treat her daughter’s serious condition. Her daughter was hospitalized for fourteen days, yet Sifuentes Ibarra was found in the United States nearly nine months later, on June 1, 2004.

Sifuentes Ibarra has not offered any explanation sufficient to establish that almost nine months after her daughter’s medical emergency that she still faced a choice of evils and chose the lesser evil or that there were no other legal alternatives to violating the law. For example, if her daughter needed a caretaker nine months after she was brought to the United…