Yu owned and operated the Great Texas Employment Agency along with his girlfriend, Ya Cao. Great Texas was in the business of supplying Chinese restaurants in several states with immigrant workers.

Yu advertised Great Texas to Chinese restaurant owners through direct mailings and in the Midwest edition of a Chinese periodical, agreeing to supply

“Hispanic and Middle Southern American workers”

for “odd jobs” or positions such as “dishwashers” or

“busboys.” Upon receiving an order from a restaurant owner, Great Texas would recruit immigrant workers from Texas, and arrange for their transportation to the restaurants.

Authorities began investigating Yu after a border patrol agent encountered two men riding bicycles on Interstate 29 in North Dakota in June 2004. The two men admitted that they were Mexican citizens who were in the country illegally and who had been working at a Chinese restaurant in Grand Forks, North Dakota. One of the men had an employment contract, written in both Chinese and Spanish, which provided that the employee would receive a salary of $1,000 per month. The contract also listed a 312 area code telephone number for an employment agency. Agents asked to interview Yu, and he consented. After receiving his Miranda warnings, Yu explained that he lived at the residence with Ya Cao

(whom he referred to as Lily) and that Ya Cao and a Spanish-speaking recruiter would go to street corners to find workers to fill requests. He said that he paid $20 for each worker recruited. Yu admitted that some of the workers were illegal but said that he assumed most were legal and that the restaurants would check on the workers’ immigration status.

After he was indicted, he contested the charges and sought to have his statement excluded on the ground that the spoke poor English and did not understand what rights he was giving up. If you were the trial judge, how would you rule on Yu’s motion to suppress the confession? See U.S. v. Shan Wei Yu, 484 F.3d 979 (8th Cir. 2007).