Opinion ID: 587250
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: conclusion

Text: 225 The legislative history of § 243(h)(1), including as it must Article 33 and its negotiating history, clears up the textual ambiguities in this case and demonstrates conclusively that the United States' duty of non-refoulement pertains only to deportable and excludable refugees physically present in its territory and does not reach those, such as plaintiffs, who are on the high seas. Thus, the INA does not prohibit the May 23, 1992 policy; rather, it authorizes it in §§ 212(f) and 215(a)(1). When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 637, 72 S.Ct. 863, 871, 96 L.Ed. 1153 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). Faced with such combined Presidential and Congressional authority, I would deny plaintiffs' request for injunctive relief. 226 I am strengthened in this conclusion by the well-established judicial reticence, in the absence of a clear legal mandate, to grant relief which would undermine the President's authority in foreign affairs. See Dep't of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 529-30, 108 S.Ct. 818, 825, 98 L.Ed.2d 918 (1988); Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 290-92, 101 S.Ct. 2766, 2773-74, 69 L.Ed.2d 640 (1981); Chicago & Southern Airlines, Inc. v. Waterman Steamship Corp., 333 U.S. 103, 109-11, 68 S.Ct. 431, 435-36, 92 L.Ed. 568 (1948); see generally, United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 315-22, 57 S.Ct. 216, 218-22, 81 L.Ed. 255 (1936). The interdiction and return policy embodied in the May 23, 1992 Order was not confined to an immigration crisis but was squarely in the foreign affairs arena. To be sure, the dramatic surge in Haitian migration following the September 30, 1991 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Bertrand Aristide and that led to 34,000 interdictions from October 1991 through May 1992 (as compared with 25,000 interdictions over the previous decade) precipitated an immigration crisis of substantial dimension. However, according to Under Secretary of State Kantor in a May, 1992 affidavit filed in this action, the massive migration outflow also gave the de facto Haitian government leverage against those nations who, like the United States, were pressing for a return to democracy in Haiti. 227 In a January 1992 affidavit filed in the HRC v. Baker litigation, Assistant Secretary of State Aronson cited credible reports that the de facto Haitian government intend[ed] to encourage massive outmigration in order to pressure the United States and the Organization of American States into dropping their concerted efforts ... to restore constitutional democratic government in Haiti. Thus, the May 23, 1992 Order was part of the United States' response to a foreign policy crisis, and accordingly deserves the utmost deference. United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 710, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 3108, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974). 228 Finally, while I do not rely on it because I see no need to do so in light of the clear purposes underlying the 1980 amendments to § 243(h)(1), I note that the presumption against extraterritorial application of domestic legislation also weighs against plaintiffs' claim. See EEOC v. Arabian Am. Oil Co., --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1227, 1230, 113 L.Ed.2d 274 (1991). 229 I respectfully dissent.