Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/374/469/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 00:07:40+00:00

Document:
Petitioner, an alien long resident in this country, was ordered deported on the ground that, for a period in 1949 and 1950, he was a member of the Communist Party, within the meaning of §241 (a)(6)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. In the deportation hearing, the evidence consisted solely of the testimony of two government witnesses that, between either late 1948 or early 1949 and the end of 1950 or early 1951, petitioner was a dues-paying member of a club of the Communist Party in Los Angeles, and that he attended about 15 meetings of this club, one executive meeting of the group, and one area party convention. Petitioner chose to introduce no evidence.
Held: On the record in this case, the Government did not sustain its burden of establishing that petitioner's association with the Communist Party was meaningful, as contemplated by §241 (a)(6)(C), and the deportation order cannot stand. Rowoldt v. Perfetto, 355 U. S. 115. Pp. 374 U. S. 470-480.
(a) In deportation cases such as this, the ultimate burden is on the Government to establish that the alien was a meaningful member of the Communist Party, and there is insufficient evidence in this record to support such a finding. Pp. 374 U. S. 473-478.
(b) Because deportation is a drastic sanction and because the Government's witnesses might well have been able, if asked, to testify concerning the character of petitioner's association with the Party, the deportation order cannot be sustained on a bare inference based upon petitioner's failure to produce or elicit evidence in response to the Government's proof that he paid dues to the Party and attended some meetings. Pp. 374 U. S. 479-480.
in Rowoldt v. Perfetto, 355 U. S. 115, 355 U. S. 120, it was held, in elaboration of Galvan, that the alien must have had a "meaningful association" with the Communist Party in order to be deportable. The evidence in the record, to which the standards set forth in these decisions must be applied, was all elicited at hearings before the Service's special inquiry officer in 1956. This evidence consists solely of the testimony of two government witnesses, petitioner having chosen to introduce no evidence.
The special inquiry officer entered a deportation order against petitioner on February 28, 1957. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed petitioner's appeal on November 14, 1957, on the ground that the record established his voluntary membership in the Communist Party. A few weeks later, this Court decided Rowoldt v. Perfetto, supra, and petitioner asked the Board to reconsider its decision in light of the opinion in that case. The Board denied the application, pointing out that the record as it stood still supported the deportation order. It did, however, order a reopening of the proceedings before the special inquiry officer so that petitioner might have a chance to offer rebuttal testimony and thereby bring himself, possibly, within the framework of the Rowoldt decision.
Columbia Circuit Affirmed the dismissal, Gastelum-Quinones v. Rogers, 109 U.S.App.D.C. 267, 286 F.2d 824, and this Court denied a petition for certiorari, 365 U.S. 871.
Petitioner read the Court of Appeals' opinion as suggesting that § 241(a)(6)(C) would not have applied to him if he had introduced evidence that he had not personally advocated the forcible overthrow of the Government. [Footnote 2] He therefore moved before the Board of Immigration Appeals that the deportation hearing be reopened to permit him to introduce evidence that he did not personally advocate the violent overthrow of the Government. The Board of Immigration Appeals heard oral argument on the motion and, on August 1, 1961, denied it.
and No. 293 relates to the ultimate dismissal of petitioner's complaint on the merits.
"support, or even demonstrated knowledge, of the Communist Party's advocacy of violence was not intended to be a prerequisite to deportation,"
had "had no difficulty in interpreting membership' . . . as meaning more than the mere voluntary listing of a person's name on Party rolls." Scales v. United States, 367 U. S. 203, 367 U. S. 222.
"[f]rom his own testimony in 1947, which is all there is, the dominating impulse to his 'affiliation' with the Communist Party may well have been wholly devoid of any 'political' implications."
355 U.S. at 355 U. S. 120. The Court therefore decided that the record was too insubstantial to support the order of deportation. The same is true here. The testimony of the two government witnesses establishes only that, between either late 1948 or early 1949 and the end of 1950 or early 1951, petitioner was a dues-paying member of a club of the Communist Party in Los Angeles, and that he attended about 15 meetings of his Party club, one executive meeting of the group, and one area Party convention.
it "was split up into smaller units for security reasons." During these few months, Scarletto testified, he was introduced to petitioner at an El Sereno Club meeting, and saw him there one other time. Since attendance at club meetings was restricted to Communist Party members, Scarletto inferred that petitioner was a member of the Party.
Scarletto was next assigned, sometime in early 1949, to the Mexican Concentration Club, which, he testified, was also a unit of the Communist Party of the United States. Petitioner, he said, was put into the same new group. Scarletto shortly became organization secretary of this group, a job which, among other things, gave him the duty of collecting dues, and he testified that he collected dues from petitioner. Scarletto left the Concentration Club in early 1951, when he was transferred by the Party "to the underground."
Concentration Club meetings were held weekly. Petitioner, Scarletto testified, "just went once in awhile, but he was a regular member." Over the approximately two-year period of Scarletto's membership in the Concentration Club, during which he attended "most" of its meetings, he testified that he saw petitioner at "about 15" meetings. All but "a couple" of these, he said, were restricted to Communist Party members. Although meetings were held in members' homes, Scarletto did not recall any at petitioner's home, and said that he himself had never been in petitioner's home. Scarletto did not remember whether petitioner ever held "an official position" in either the El Sereno Club or the Mexican Concentration Club. Finally, Scarletto, who attended Communist Party conventions in the Los Angeles area with some regularity, recalled seeing petitioner at one such convention. He said he himself attended these conventions in an official capacity, but did not know in what capacity petitioner attended, except that membership in the Party was a prerequisite to attendance.
The other witness, one Elorriaga, testified that he, too, joined the Communist Party in Los Angeles in 1947. He, too, was a member of the El Sereno Club, but did not meet petitioner until he was assigned to a smaller unit "known as the Forty-Fifth Concentration," which apparently was the same entity as the "Mexican Concentration Club" discussed by Scarletto. Elorriaga did not recall petitioner as being a member of the El Sereno Club. Elorriaga's testimony as to the frequency of petitioner's attendance at Concentration Club meetings was contradictory. After having testified on direct examination that he saw petitioner at three or four meetings a month, Elorriaga radically revised his estimate the next day on redirect examination to say that he saw petitioner at "about two or three meetings" in total, adding that "I was present at one meeting in 1951 and another in 1949 with . . . [petitioner]." [Footnote 5] The over-all lack of precision of Elorriaga's answers to questions concerning petitioner is also suggested by a comparison of his assertion that petitioner must have been an official of the club "because he attended a few [of its] executive meetings," with his immediately following admission that he himself remembered being present at only one executive meeting with petitioner.
response to the Government's proof of his dues-paying membership and sometime attendance at Party meetings.
"(a) Any alien in the United States . . . shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be deported who --"
"(6) is or at any time has been after entry, a member of any of the following classes of aliens:"
"(C) Aliens who are members of or affiliated with (i) the Communist Party of the United States. . . ."
There is no dispute before this Court, nor could there be, that, under Galvan, supra, at 347 U. S. 528, the absence of personal advocacy of violent overthrow is not, by itself, a bar to deportability under § 241(a)(6)(C). See pp. 374 U. S. 473-474, infra.
See, e.g., Aaron, Writers on the Left (1961), 149-160; Decter, The Profile of Communism (1961), 50-51; Ernst and Loth, Report on the American Communist (1952), passim; Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (1961), 115 and passim.
Compare Yates v. United States, 354 U. S. 298, 354 U. S. 327-333; Scales v. United States, 367 U. S. 203, 367 U. S. 222-223, 230-255; Noto v. United States, 367 U. S. 290.
"Q. Now you say you met him in meetings of that club, how often would you say you saw the respondent in meetings of that club?"
"A. How often, about maybe three or four meetings a month."
One possible explanation of the apparent contradiction is that Elorriaga understood the question on direct examination as merely an inquiry into how often club meetings were held, and answered accordingly. This is borne out to some extent by the fact that the witness gave his "revised" answer to the question on two separate occasions, some minutes apart, during the redirect examination.
"[a]t this time, I cannot say definitely the purpose [of that meeting], but it was either organizational or to form an agenda for the regular meeting."
Thus, none of the testimony of either Scarletto or Elorriaga was significantly probative of petitioner's "meaningful association" with the Party.
This Court's later per curiam decision in Niukkanen v. McAlexander, 362 U. S. 390, in no way qualified the meaning of Rowoldt, since the evidence in the record in Niukkanen, clearly showed "meaningful association." See Niukkanen v. McAlexander, 265 F.2d 825 (C.A.9th Cir. 1959). Two witnesses testified for the Government. Both confirmed Niukkanen's Party membership and his regular attendance at meetings. In addition, one witness testified that Niukkanen helped in the distribution of a Communist-controlled trade union newspaper edited by the witness, and actively participated in discussions at the newspaper office and elsewhere pertaining to policies of the Communist Party and circulation of the newspaper as a Communist organ. This witness also testified that Niukkanen had attended a regional "plenum" of the Party -- a meeting wherein all aspects of regional Party activities were reported on. Such a meeting, said the witness, was only for the "anointed people," the "top fraction" in the Party, to which, the witness added, Niukkanen belonged. The other witness, who had been a member of the same unit of the Party as Niukkanen, added that Niukkanen, although never an officer of the unit, was a member of its executive board.
Nor is Galvan, supra, which was decided before Rowoldt, inconsistent with either that case or the present one. Mr. Justice Frankfurter, who wrote the Court's opinions in both Galvan and Rowoldt, stated in Rowoldt that "[t]he differences on the facts between Galvan v. Press, supra, and this case are too obvious to be detailed." 355 U.S. at 355 U. S. 121.
In the present case, for example, deportation would remove a man who has resided in this country since 1920, when he came from Mexico as a 10-year-old boy, and has raised and supported a family who are all American citizens.
Our disposition of the case makes it unnecessary to consider petitioner's contention that "at least the spirit" of 28 U.S.C. § 46 was violated when the panel of the Court of Appeals assigned to hear petitioner's appeal in the current series of proceedings transferred the appeal instead to the same panel which had heard his first appeal, 109 U.S.App.D.C. 267, 286 F.2d 824, it being clearly predictable that one of the three judges on that panel would not participate, since he had been unable to participate in the disposition of the first appeal.
and affirmed. In a petition for certiorari to this Court, petitioner argued that the evidence was insufficient to support the deportation order, but certiorari was denied, 365 U.S. 871.
Petitioner thereupon commenced the proceedings which bring the case before us today. He filed a motion to reopen the proceedings before the Board of Immigration Appeals on the ground that he should be permitted to testify that he never personally advocated the overthrow of the Government by force and violence. While not disputing that an inquiry into whether an alien personally advocated violent overthrow is immaterial in deportation proceedings, Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522, petitioner nonetheless insisted upon introducing the testimony because, as he read the opinion of the Court of Appeals, 109 U.S.App.D.C. 267, 286 F.2d 824, proof that an alien did not personally espouse the cause of violent overthrow of the Government would save him from deportation under § 241(a)(6)(C). The Board of Immigration Appeals declined to reopen the proceedings again because, in its view, the Court of Appeals did not announce the rule on which petitioner relied, and because Galvan v. Press and Rowoldt v. Perfetto so clearly held that proof of such a personal commitment to the tenet of violent overthrow was not required for deportation proceedings. After reviewing the record for the third time, the Board concluded that "there is uncontradicted testimony to show that a voluntary meaningful membership existed." Petitioner filed his second action for judicial review, contending that the refusal to reopen the hearings so that he could submit his testimony was "erroneous, unconstitutional and illegal." The District Court, finding no abuse of discretion in the Board's refusal to reopen the proceedings, declined to disturb the deportation order. The Court of Appeals affirmed, the case was brought here, and the Court now reverses. I respectfully dissent.
First. The issue tendered to the District Court was whether the Board of Immigration Appeals should have reopened the record to allow petitioner to present evidence of the kind stated in the affidavit attached to the complaint. Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals upheld the Board's refusal to reopen the proceedings. The Court here does not disagree, nor does it suggest that the evidence which petitioner sought to add to the record was in any way material to the question of deportability under the statute. Instead, it decides that the record does not show meaningful or voluntary membership, thus resurrecting an issue supposedly settled in previous proceedings in this case, an issue which the courts below time after time decided contrary to the view now taken by this Court and an issue which the Court itself previously declined to review by certiorari. A wise use of the Court's powers would confine decision here to the issue presented to the District Court, rather than afford repeated review of previously decided matters, and so call into question the integrity of the administrative and judicial process.
"be set aside when the record before a Court . . . clearly precludes the Board's decision from being justified by a fair estimate of the worth of the testimony of witnesses or its informed judgment on matters within its special competence or both,"
choice between two fairly conflicting views, even though the court would justifiably have made a different choice had the matter been before it de novo."
Universal Camera Corp. v. Labor Board, 340 U. S. 474, 340 U. S. 488, 340 U. S. 490.
"It is . . . immaterial that the facts permit the drawing of diverse inferences. The [agency] alone is charged with the duty of initially selecting the inference which seems most reasonable, and [its] choice, if otherwise sustainable, may not be disturbed by a reviewing court."
Cardillo v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 330 U. S. 469, 330 U. S. 478.
"you had to face the panel and give your club, your position of that club, and be identified by the members that were on the, on this panel, before you were admitted."
"they would have discussions on what was going on in the Party, and what drives were coming up."
These facts are sufficient basis for the Board's finding of voluntary, meaningful membership. * After regular attendance at Party Meetings and functions, and regular financial support for its activities, it is rather fanciful to believe petitioner was still unaware of the political nature of the Communist Party. It is doubtful that the meetings were so ineptly run or structured.
"it is enough that the alien joined the Party, aware that he was joining an organization known as the Communist Party which operates as a distinct and active political organization, and that he did so of his own free will. A fair reading of the legislation requires that this scope be given to what Congress enacted. . . ."
Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. at 347 U. S. 528.
I would therefore affirm the repeated holdings of the courts below, made after several thorough examinations of the record.
of evidence nor to reverse a Court of Appeals because, were we in its place, we would find the record tilting one way rather than the other, though fairminded judges could find it tilting either way."
Labor Board v. Pittsburgh S.S. Co., 340 U. S. 498, 340 U. S. 503. "We do no more on the issue of insubstantiality than decide that the Court of Appeals has made a fair assessment' of the record." Federal Trade Comm'n v. Standard Oil Co., 355 U. S. 396, 355 U. S. 401; Peurifoy v. Commissioner, 358 U. S. 59, 358 U. S. 61; Labor Board v. Pittsburgh S.S. Co., 340 U. S. 498, 340 U. S. 502.
"This Court will intervene only in what ought to be the rare instance when the standard appears to have been misapprehended or grossly misapplied."
* The Court is concerned about the insufficiency of the "direct" and "indirect" evidence of awareness and participation. The record, though, contains "direct" evidence from Scarletto, who saw petitioner at Party meetings and at a convention, and who testified that at such conventions "they would have discussions on what was going on in the Party." Elorriaga stated that he saw petitioner at an executive meeting "either organizational or to form an agenda for the regular meeting." Both witnesses testified "directly" that petitioner was a dues-paying member and attended Party meetings. To me, this uncontradicted testimony plainly is "direct" evidence that petitioner was aware of the distinct and active political nature of the Communist Party or at the very least sufficient "indirect" evidence from which an inference of meaningful membership could be drawn.

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