Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/198/253.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 23:19:56+00:00

Document:
[198 U.S. 253, 257] Messrs. Hayden Johnson, Oliver Dibbls, and Henry C. Dibble for Ju Toy.
'First. Should a district court of the United States grant a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person of Chinese descent being held for return to China by the steamship company which brought him therefrom, who, having recently arrived at a port of the United States, made application to land as a native-born citizen thereof, and who, after examination by the duly authorized immigration officers, was found by them not to have been born in the United States, was denied admission, and ordered deported, which finding and action upon appeal was affirmed by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, when the foregoing facts appear to the court, and the petition for the writ alleges unlawful detention on the sole ground that petitioner does not come within the restrictions of the Chinese exclusion acts, because born in and a citizen of the United States, and does not allege or show in any other way unlawful action or abuse of their discretion or powers by the immigration officers who excluded him?
'Second. In a habeas corpus proceeding should a district [198 U.S. 253, 260] court of the United States dismiss the writ, or should it direct a new or further hearing upon evidence to be presented where the writ had been granted in behalf of a person of Chinese descent being held by the steamship company for return to China, from whence it brought him, who recently arrived from that country, and asked permission to land, upon the ground that he was born in and was a citizen of the United States, when the uncontradicted return and answer show that such person was granted a hearing by the proper immigration officers, who found he was not born in the United States, that his application for admission was considered and denied by such officers, and that the denial was affirmed upon appeal to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and where nothing more appears to show that such executive officers failed to grant a proper hearing, abused their discretion, or acted in any unlawful or improper way upon the case presented to them for determination?
We assume in what we have to say, as the questions assume [198 U.S. 253, 261] that no abuse of authority of any kind is alleged. That being out of the case, the first of them is answered by the case of United States v. Sing Tuck, 194 U.S. 161, 170 , 48 S. L. ed. 917, 921, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 621: 'A petition for habeas corpus ought not to be entertained unless the court is satisfied that the petitioner can make out at least a prima facie case.' This petition should have been denied on this ground, irrespective of what more we have to say, because it alleged nothing except citizenship. It disclosed neither abuse of authority nor the existence of evidence not laid before the Secretary. It did not even set forth that evidence, or allege its effect. But, as it was entertained, and the district court found for the petitioner, it would be a severe measure to order the petition to be dismissed on that ground now, and we pass on to further considerations.
The broad question is presented whether or not the decision of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor is conclusive. It was held in United States v. Sing Tuck, 194 U.S. 161, 167 , 48 S. L. ed. 917, 920, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 621, that the act of August 18, 1894 (28 Stat. at L. 372, 390, chap. 301, 1, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 1303), purported to make it so, but whether the statute could have that effect constitutionally was left untouched, except by a reference to cases where an opinion already had been expressed. To quote the latest first, in Japanese Immigrant Case ( Yamataya v. Fisher), 189 U.S. 86, 97 , 47 S. L. ed. 721, 724, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 611, 613, it was said: 'That Congress may exclude aliens of a particular race from the United States, prescribe the terms and conditions upon which certain classes of aliens may come to this country, establish regulations for sending out of the country such aliens as come here in violation of law, and commit the enforcement of such provisions, conditions, and regulations exclusively to executive officers, without judicial intervention, are principles firmly established by the decisions of this court.' See also United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279, 290 , 291 S., 48 L. ed. 979, 983, 984, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 719; Chin Bak Kan v. United States, 186 U.S. 193, 200 , 46 S. L. ed. 1121, 1125, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 891. In Fok Young Yo v. United States, 185 U.S. 296, 304 , 305 S., 46 L. ed. 917, 921, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 686, it was held that the decision of the collector of customs on the right of transit [198 U.S. 253, 262] across the territory of the United States was conclusive, and, still more to the point, in Lem Moon Sing v. United States, 158 U.S. 538 , 39 L. ed. 1082, 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 967, where the petitioner for habeas corpus alleged facts which, if true, gave him a right to enter and remain in the country, it was held that the decision of the collector was final as to whether or not he belonged to the privileged class.
It is true that it may be argued that these cases are not directly conclusive of the point now under decision. It may be said that the parties concerned were aliens, and that although they alleged absolute rights, and facts which it was contended went to the jurisdiction of the officer making the decision, still their rights were only treaty or statutory rights, and therefore were subject to the implied qualification imposed by the later statute, which made the decision of the collector with regard to them final. The meaning of the cases, and the language which we have quoted, is not satisfied by so narrow an interpretation, but we do not delay upon them. They can be read.
It is established, as we have said, that the act purports to make the decision of the Department final, whatever the ground on which the right to enter the country is claimed,-as well when it is citizenship as when it is domicil, and the belonging to a class excepted from the exclusion acts. United States v. Sing Tuck, 194 U.S. 161, 167 , 48 S. L. ed. 917, 920, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 621; Lem Moon Sing v. United States, 158 U.S. 538, 546 , 547 S., 39 L. ed. 1082, 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 967. It also is established by the former case and others which it cites that the relevant portion of the act of August 18, 1894 [28 Stat. at L. 372] chap. 301, is not void as a whole. The statute has been upheld and enforced. But the relevant portion being a single section, accomplishing all its results by the same general words, must be valid as to all that it embraces, or altogether void. An exception of a class constitutionally exempted cannot be read into those general words merely for the purpose of saving what remains. That has been decided over and over again. United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 221 , 23 S. L. ed. 563, 565; Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 98 , 99 S., 25 L. ed. 550, 553, 554; Allen v. [198 U.S. 253, 263] Louisiana, 103 U.S. 80, 84 , 26 S. L. ed. 318, 319; United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629, 641 , 642 S., 27 L. ed. 290, 294, 295, 1 Sup. Ct. Rep. 601; Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U.S. 269, 305 , 29 S. L. ed. 185, 197, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 903, 962; Baldwin v. Franks, 120 U.S. 678 , 685-689, 30 L. ed. 766, 768, 769, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 656, 763; Smiley v. Kansas, 196 U.S. 447 , 455, ante, 289, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 289. It necessarily follows that when such words are sustained, they are sustained to their full extent.
In view of the cases which we have cited it seems no longer open to discuss the question propounded as a new one. Therefore we do not analyze the nature of the right of a person presenting himself at the frontier for admission. Re Ross (Ross v. McIntyre), 140 U.S. 453, 464 , 35 S. L. ed. 581, 586, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 897. But it is not improper to add a few words. The petitioner, although physically within our boundaries, is to be regarded as if he had been stopped at the limit of our jurisdiction, and kept there while his right to enter was under debate. If, for the purpose of argument, we assume that the 5th Amendment applies to him, and that to deny entrance to a citizen is to deprive him of liberty, we nevertheless are of opinion that with regard to him due process of law does not require judicial trial. That is the result of the cases which we have cited, and the almost necessary result of the power of Congress to pass exclusion laws. That the decision may be intrusted to an executive officer, and that his decision is due process of law, was affirmed and explained in Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U.S. 651, 660 , 35 S. L. ed. 1146, 1149, 12 Sup. Ct. Rep. 336, and in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698, 713 , 37 S. L. ed. 905, 913, 13 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1016, before the authorities to which we already have referred. It is unnecessary to repeat the often-quoted remarks of Mr. Justice Curtis, speaking for the whole court in Den ex dem. Murray v. Hoboken Land & Improv. Co. 18 How. 272, 280, 15 L. ed. 372, 376, to show that the requirement of a judicial trial does not prevail in every case. Lem Moon Sing v. United States, 158 U.S. 538, 546 , 547 S., 39 L. ed. 1082, 1085, 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 967; Japanese Immigrant Case (Yamataya v. Fisher), 189 U.S. 86, 100 , 47 S. L. ed. 721, 725, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 611; Public Clearing House v. Coyne, 194 U.S. 497, 508 , 509 S., 48 L. ed. 1092, 1098, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 789.
We are of opinion that the first question should be answered, no; that the third question should be answered, yes, with the result that the second question should be answered [198 U.S. 253, 264] that the writ should be dismissed, as it whould have been dismissed in this case.
I am unable to concur in the views expressed in the foregoing opinion, and, believing the matter of most profound importance, I give my reasons therefor.
'Second. In a habeas corpus proceeding should a district court of the United States dismiss the writ or should it direct a new or further hearing upon evidence to be presented, where the writ had been granted in behalf of a person of Chinese descent being held by the steamship company for return to China, from whence it brought him, who recently arrived from that country, and asked permission to land, upon the ground that he was born in and was a citizen of the United States, when the uncontradicted return and answer show that such person was granted a hearing by the proper immigration officers, who found he was not born in the United States, that his application for admission was considered and denied by such officers, and that the denial was affirmed upon appeal to [198 U.S. 253, 266] the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and where nothing more appears to show that such executive officers failed to grant a proper hearing, abused their discretion, or acted in any unlawful or improper way upon the case presented to them for determination?
The proposition presented by these questions is that, unless the petitioner for a writ of habeas corpus shows that the immigration officers have been guilty of unlawful action or abuse of their discretion or powers, the writ must be denied, and the petitioner banished from the country. In order to see what action is lawful, I refer to the rules prescribed under the authority hereinafter referred to. Rule 6 declares that 'immediately upon the arrival of Chinese persons . . . it shall be the duty of the officer . . . to adopt suitable means to prevent communication with them by any persons other than the officials under his control, to have said Chinese persons examined promptly, as by law provided, touching their right to admission, and to permit those proving such right to land.' Rules 7, 8, 9, 10, and 21 are as follows: [198 U.S. 253, 267] 'Rule 7. The examination prescribed in Rule 6 should be separate and apart from the public, in the presence of government officials and such witness or witnesses only as the examining officer shall designate, and if, upon the conclusion thereof, the Chinese applicant for admission is adjudged to be inadmissible, he should be advised of his right of appeal, and his counsel should be permitted, after duly filing notice of appeal, to examine, but not make copies of, the evidence upon which the excluding decision is based.
'Rule 8. Every Chinese person refused admission under the provisions of the exclusion laws by the decision of the officer in charge at the port of entry must, if he shall elect to take an appeal to the Secretary, give written notice thereof to said officer within two days after such decision is rendered.
'Rule 9. Notice of appeal provided for in Rule 8 shall act as a stay upon the disposal of the Chinese person whose case is thereby affected until a final decision is rendered by the Secretary; and, within three days after the filing of such notice, unless further delay is required to investigate and report upon new evidence, the complete record of the case, together with such briefs, affidavits, and statements as are to be considered in connection therewith, shall be forwarded to the Commissioner General of Immigration by the officer in charge at the port of arrival, accompanied by his views thereon in writing; but on such appeal no evidence will be considered that has not been made the subject of investigation and report by the said officer in charge.
It will be seen that under these rules it is the duty of the immigration officer to prevent communication with the Chinese seeking to land by any one except his own officers. He is to conduct a private examination, with only the witnesses present whom he may designate. His counsel, if, under the circumstances, the Chinaman has been able to procure one, is permitted to look at the testimony, but not to make a copy of it. He must give notice of appeal, if he wishes one, within two days, and within three days thereafter the record is to be sent to the Secretary at Washington; and every doubtful question is to be settled in favor of the government. No provision is made for summoning witnesses from a distance or for taking depositions, and, if, for instance, the person landing at San Francisco was born and brought up in Ohio, it may well be that he would be powerless to find any testimony in San Francisco to prove his citizenship. If he dodoes not happen to have money he must go without the testimony, and when the papers are sent to Washington (3,000 miles away frorom the port, which, in this case, was the place of landing), he may no have the means of employing counsel to present his case to the Secretary. I this be not a star-chamber proceeding of the most stringent sort, what more is necessary to make it one?
I do not see how any one can read those rules and hold that they constitute due process of law for the arrest and deportation of a citizen of the United States. If they do in proceedings by the United States, they will also in proceedings in- [198 U.S. 253, 269] stituted by a state, and an obnoxious class may be put beyond the protection of the Constitution by ministerial officers of a state, proceeding in strict accord with exactly similar rules.
It will be borne in mind that the petitioner has been judicially determined to be a free-born American citizen, and the contention of the government, sustained by the judgment of this court, is that a citizen, guilty of no crime-for it is no crime for a citizen to come back to his native land-must, by the action of a ministerial officer, be punished by deportation and banishment, without trial by jury and without judicial examination.
It is true in this case the petitioner was returning to San Francisco from China. Whether his absence from this country had been for a few weeks or a few years is not shown, nor does it matter. The right of a citizen is not lost by a temporary absence from his native land, and when he returns he is entitled to all the protection which he had when he left.
Summing this up, banishment is a punishment, and of the severest sort. There can be no punishment except for crime. This petitioner has been guilty of no crime, and so judicially determined. Yet, in defiance of this adjudication of innocence, with only an examination before a ministerial officer, he is compelled to suffer punishment as a criminal, and is denied the protection of either a grand or petit jury.
But, it is said, that he did not prove his innocence before [198 U.S. 253, 274] the ministerial officer. Can one who judicially establishes his innocence of any offense be punished for crime by the action of a ministerial officer? Can he be punished because he has failed to show to the satisfaction of that officer that he is innocent of an offense? The Constitution declares that 'the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of invasion or rebellion, the public safety may require it.' There is no rebellion or invasion. Can a citizen be deprived of the benefit of that so much vaunted writ of protection by the action of a ministerial officer?
By the act of August 18, 1894 (28 Stat. at L. 390, chap. 301, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 1303), it is provided that 'in every case where an alien is excluded from admission into the United States under any law or treaty now existing or hereafter made, the decision of the appropriate immigration or customs officers, if adverse to the admission of such alien, shall be final, unless reversed on appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury.' The same limitation of finality to the case of aliens is repeated in the act of March 3, 1903 (32 Stat. at L. 1213, chap. 1012).1 So it appears that this court discharged from the custody of the immigration officers a person of Chinese descent on the ground that he was a citizen of the United States, doing this upon the concession of the government that, if he was a citizen, the exclusion acts had no application to him; that Congress in terms makes the decision of the immigration officer final only when the party is an alien, and that the rules prescribed by the proper department exclude from the operation of the law citizens of the United States of Chinese descent. Yet, in spite of all this, it is held that this citizen of the United States must, by virtue of the ruling of a ministerial officer, be banished from the country of which he is a citizen. And this upon the ground that such officer has a right to decide whether he is or is not a citizen, and his decision on the question excludes all judicial examination.
"Upon principle,' says Chief Justice Marshall, 'it would seem that the operation of every judgment must depend on the power of the court to render that judgment; or, in other words, on its jurisdiction over the subject-matter, which it has determined. In some cases that jurisdiction unquestionably depends as well on the state of the thing as on the constitution of the court. If, by any means whatever, a prize court should be induced to condemn, as prize of war, a vessel which was never captured, it could not be contended that this condemnation operated a change of property. Upon principle, then, it would seem that, to a certain extent, the capacity of the court to act upon the thing condemned, arising from its being within or without their jurisdiction, as well as the constitution of the court, may be considered by that tribunal which is to decide on the effect of the sentence."
I have always supposed that a judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction was at least as conclusive as the finding of a ministerial officer, and that the right or personal liberty was as sacred in the eyes of the law as the title to a sloop.
It would be an affectation to attempt to cite all the authorities in which this doctrine is announced. In Doolan v. Carr, 125 U.S. 618 , 31 L. ed. 844, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1228, decided in 1887, Mr. Justice Miller cites more than a dozen cases as directly in point. Since then the doctrine has been again and again restated.
Take also the matter of imports. The Secretary of the Treasury is charged with the collection of the duties on them, but has it ever been held or even suggested that a ruling of the customhouse officers, approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, is a final determination that the article so passed upon was subject to duty, and precluded the courts from inquiring [198 U.S. 253, 279] as to that fact? Certainly this court has wasted a great deal of time determining whether a given article was subject to duty or not if the decision of the customhouse officers, approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, was a final decision of the question.
But it is said that the exclusion acts speak of Chinese persons, and that such term includes citizens as well as aliens, and, therefore, Congress has given power to the immigration officers to banish citizens of the United States if they happen to be of Chinese descent. But obviously the statutes refer to citizens of China, and not to citizens of the United States. The treaty of 1894 (28 Stat. at L. 1210), in execution of which most of these statutes were passed, speaks, on the one hand, of Chinese subjects in the United States, and, on the other, of citizens of the United States in China. The treaty declared the rights and burdens of Chinese citizens in the United States, as well as the rights and burdens of citizens of the United States in China. The treaty then, placing Chinese subjects over against American citizens, must have had in mind citizenship, and not race. The legislation carrying that treaty into effect must be interpreted in the light of that fact. The statutes of the United States expressly limit the finality of the determination of the immigration officers to the case of aliens. It has been conceded by the government that these statutes do not apply to citizens, and this court made a most important decision based upon that concession. The rules of the Department declare that the statutes do not apply to citizens, and yet, in the face of all this, we are told that they may be enforced against citizens, and that Congress so intended. Banishment of a citizen not merely removes him from the limits of his native land, but puts him beyond the reach of any of the protecting clauses of the Constitution. In other words, it strips him of all the rights which are given to a citizen. I cannot believe that Congress intended to provide that a citizen, simply because he belongs to an obnoxious race, can be deprived of all the liberty and protection which the Constitution [198 U.S. 253, 280] guarantees, and if it did so intend, I do not believe that it has the power to do so.
Mr. Justice Peckham concurred in the foregoing dissent.
[ Footnote 1 ] U. S. Comp. St. Supp. p. 170.

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