NEW ORLEANS — On August 14, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s ruling USA v. Larremore, a human smuggling case involving an Alpine-area rancher. “We find no Fourth Amendment violation and accordingly affirm,” the majority opinion reads.
James Larremore was arrested on Highway 385 north of Marathon on the afternoon of July 9, 2023, after he was stopped by Brewster County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Christopher Colona. Colona testified before the lower court that he was on high alert during a Border Patrol shift change — a small early-afternoon window of time used by savvy smugglers. The deputy never activated his emergency lights, but dashcam footage revealed that he reached speeds of up to 93 miles an hour to catch up with Larremore.
Deputy Colona noticed an open container of alcohol in the cab but didn’t acknowledge it right away. Instead, he asked Larremore to “hang on a sec” while he took a look around the trailer. Colona eventually discovered three undocumented immigrants in the trailer’s locked tack compartment after a long back-and-forth with Larremore about his rights to due process — during which he hesitated and was unable to answer basic questions about himself and the trailer.
Larremore’s lawyer, Shane O’Neal of Alpine, built his appeal around the moment Colona asked his client to “hang on a sec,” which he believed constituted a detention under the law. “Neither the government nor the district court seriously attempts to explain why a reasonable person would think they could drive off while an officer holds onto their truck, sticks his head in the window, and questions them,” he wrote in his opening brief to the appeals court. “Every action that Deputy Colona took after approaching Larremore’s vehicle confirmed, to a reasonable person in Larremore’s position, that he was not free to leave.”
The Fifth Circuit’s majority opinion disagreed with O’Neal, arguing that Colona gave Larremore no concrete reason to believe that he was detained. “A consensual encounter with police is not a seizure,” they wrote. “No pertinent case holds that simply following a car on a freely accessible highway is a show of force.”
Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote a separate opinion “concurring in part and dissenting in part” that agreed with O’Neal’s assertion that “hang on a sec” signalled that Larremore was not free to leave. “Deputy Colona may not have explicitly ordered Larremore to a certain location, but he did direct Larremore to not leave a particular location — no matter how friendly his tone,” she wrote. “Under our precedent, that is enough.”
Elrod’s partial dissent wasn’t enough to tip the scales, so Larremore’s original conviction — one count of transporting undocumented migrants — stands. Per inmate records from the Department of Justice, he is currently serving out the rest of his sentence in a “residential re-entry” program in San Antonio and is set to be released at the end of October.
