Opinion ID: 758325
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Judicial Review of Executive Deportation Decisions, 1885-1952

Text: 30 Before 1952, judicial review of immigration decisions proceeded solely by way of the writ of habeas corpus. 6 The scope of the courts' authority to review executive officials' decisions in immigration matters in this manner was first litigated in 1885. In the case of In re Jung Ah Lung, 25 F. 141 (D.Cal.1885), aff'd sub nom. United States v. Jung Ah Lung, 124 U.S. 621, 8 S.Ct. 663, 31 L.Ed. 591 (1888), the government challenged the jurisdiction of the federal district courts to review habeas petitions filed by Chinese immigrants. The government contended that the collector of customs at the port of entry, an executive official, had final authority to determine whether aliens were excludable under the Chinese Exclusion Act and that his decisions were not reviewable by the courts. The district court rejected the government's argument that the Chinese Exclusion Act had removed its authority to grant habeas relief, stating: 31 Such an abrogation of the writ of habeas corpus, which has always been considered among English-speaking peoples the most sacred muniment of personal freedom, must be unmistakably declared by congress before any court could venture to withhold its benefits from any human being, no matter what his race or color. 32 Jung Ah Lung, 25 F. at 142-43. Noting that [t]he right to a writ of habeas corpus is the right to have the lawfulness of the restraint to which the petitioner is subjected inquired into by the courts; to be adjudged and determined by the law of the land, the court ordered briefing by the parties on the merits of the collector's findings of fact and conclusions of law with respect to the petitioner. Id. at 143-44. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that [w]e see nothing in these acts which in any manner affects the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States to issue a writ of habeas corpus. Jung Ah Lung, 124 U.S. at 628-29, 8 S.Ct. 663. 33 Even before the Supreme Court expressly approved of the practice in Jung Ah Lung, the district courts in port cities had become quite active in granting writs of habeas corpus to Chinese immigrants. The Department of Treasury estimated that by 1885, the courts were responsible for the admission of 2,695 Chinese, approximately one-fifth of the total number of Chinese landed since the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Laws. By 1888, at least 4,091 Chinese had petitioned the federal courts for a habeas hearing and eighty-five percent of those persons had been admitted. See Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law 20 (1995). The result of the courts' exercise of the habeas power was that 34 [t]he Chinese litigants' success increased the antagonism between the federal judges and the collector and fueled public opinion against the courts. The collector ... accused the court of interfering with his job and argued that the cases should [not] come before the judiciary at all. Groups from the local community, incensed by the court decisions, called for the impeachment of the judges and established a committee to report on the court's actions in the Chinese cases. An examiner for the Department of Justice ... reported to the attorney general: Two coorfinate [sic ] branches of the Government are engaged in a hostile conflict, with the people and the press on the side against the courts, accusing them openly of all manner of bargain, intrigue and corruption.... 35 Salyer, supra, at 20-21 (citations and endnotes omitted). 36 Apparently in response to these concerns, Congress attempted to restrict the availability of judicial review in its 1888 amendments to the Chinese Exclusion Act. See Act of Sept. 13, 1888, 25 Stat. 476. Section 12 of this act stated, the collector shall ... decide all questions in dispute with regard to the right of any Chinese passenger to enter the United States, and his decision shall be subject to review by the secretary of the treasury and not otherwise. Id. § 12. As one district court explained: 37 The books are full of cases in which the rights of Chinese persons to enter this country have been re-examined on habeas corpus, after denials of such rights by customs officials.... It was, doubtless, in view of this unbroken line of decisions, and for the purpose of changing the law ... that congress enacted the twelfth section of the Act of September 13, 1888. With this section in force, the action of the collector, in the absence of fraud, would be conclusive and final. 38 United States v. Loo Way, 68 F. 475, 477 (S.D.Cal.1895), aff'd, 72 F. 688 (9th Cir.1896). 39 For reasons unrelated to this provision, however, the entire 1888 Act was held invalid, first by the Ninth Circuit, see United States v. Gee Lee, 50 F. 271, 273 (9th Cir.1892), and ultimately by the Supreme Court, see Li Sing v. United States, 180 U.S. 486, 488-90, 21 S.Ct. 449, 45 L.Ed. 634 (1901). Accordingly, judicial review of immigration decisions continued apace. 40 Shortly after the passage of the 1888 Act, a congressional joint committee on immigration began drafting what would become the Immigration Act of 1891. The committee sent representatives to the West Coast, where they learned that executive immigration officials considered meddling by the courts to be one of the most serious hindrances to their work. See U.S. Congress, Select Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 51st Cong., 2d Sess., Chinese Immigration 272-73 (1890) (cited in Salyer, supra, at 264 n. 151). And so it came to pass that the 1891 law included a provision stating that [a]ll decisions made by the inspection officers or their assistants touching the right of any alien to land, when adverse to such right, shall be final unless appeal be taken to the superintendent of immigration, whose action shall be subject to review by the Secretary of the Treasury. Act of March 3, 1891, ch. 551, § 8, 26 Stat. 1084, 1085. 41 The finality provision was carried forward, with only minor changes, in subsequent immigration acts. See Heikkila v. Barber, 345 U.S. 229, 234, 73 S.Ct. 603, 97 L.Ed. 972 (1953) (citing statutes from 1903, 1907, and 1917). And as the Supreme Court later explained, [d]uring these years, (i.e., from 1891 to 1952), the cases continued to recognize that Congress had intended to make these administrative decisions nonreviewable to the fullest extent possible under the Constitution. Id.; see also id. at 234-35, 73 S.Ct. 603 (noting that the statutes clearly had the effect of precluding judicial intervention in deportation cases except insofar as it was required by the Constitution). 42 While cognizant of the limits placed on their authority by Congress, the courts in this era continued to review--on habeas--claims by aliens that the immigration officials had acted under erroneous interpretations of the law. The first of these cases was Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U.S. 651, 12 S.Ct. 336, 35 L.Ed. 1146 (1892). The petitioner in that case was excluded from entry by customs inspectors in San Francisco. She filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and contended that the act of 1891, if construed as vesting in the [executive] officers ... exclusive authority to determine [her right to land] was in so far unconstitutional, as depriving her of liberty without due process of law; and that by the Constitution she had a right to the writ of habeas corpus. Id. at 656, 12 S.Ct. 336. 43 The Court responded to Nishimura Ekiu's due process argument by stating in sweeping terms that, as to aliens outside the United States, the decisions of executive or administrative officers, acting within powers expressly conferred by Congress, are due process of law. Id. at 660, 8 S.Ct. 663. But the Supreme Court also held that [a]n alien immigrant, prevented from landing by any such officer claiming authority to do so under an act of Congress, and thereby restrained of his liberty, is doubtless entitled to a writ of habeas corpus to ascertain whether the restraint is lawful. Id. (emphasis added). 44 In other words, the alien was entitled to a judicial determination of whether the executive was acting within powers expressly conferred by Congress. And so the Court went on to consider whether the actions of the inspector were in conformity with the act of 1891. Id. at 663, 8 S.Ct. 663. Specifically, the Court addressed the question of whether the statutory language required the inspector to take testimony on oath. Id. Concluding that the statute allowed, but did not require, the inspector to take testimony on oath, the Court rejected Nishimura Eiku's statutory claim on its merits. See id. 45 As to her claim that the customs inspector had based his decision on erroneous factual findings, the Court, in contrast to its review of the statutory interpretation issue, held that the final determination of those facts [on which the right to land depends] may be entrusted by congress to executive officers and that the court was therefore barred by the 1891 Act from second-guessing those findings. Id. at 660, 8 S.Ct. 663. 46 In Yamataya v. Fisher (The Japanese Immigrant Case ), 189 U.S. 86, 23 S.Ct. 611, 47 L.Ed. 721 (1903), the Court reiterated that Congress was entitled to entrust the enforcement of [immigration] provisions, conditions, and regulations exclusively to executive officers without judicial intervention, id. at 97, 23 S.Ct. 611, and that the 1891 Act had, in fact, invested executive officers with the power to determine finally the facts upon which an alien's right to enter this country, or remain in it, depended, id. at 100, 23 S.Ct. 611. The Court went on, however, to consider the petitioner's claim that a treaty signed in 1895 had, by implication, altered the law that allowed the exclusion of Japanese subjects who are paupers or persons likely to become a public charge. Id. at 97, 23 S.Ct. 611. Concluding that the provision excluding the indigent was still in effect, the court rejected the immigrant's petition. See id. at 102, 23 S.Ct. 611. 47 Similarly, in Gonzales v. Williams, 192 U.S. 1, 24 S.Ct. 177, 48 L.Ed. 317 (1904), the Court entertained a habeas petition brought by a Puerto Rican citizen who claimed that, although not a citizen of the United States, she was not an alien immigrant under the 1891 statute and was, therefore, improperly excluded. The Court agreed with the petitioner and rejected the government's interpretation of the statute. See id. at 13, 24 S.Ct. 177. As for the government's contention that judicial review was precluded by the finality provisions of the immigration laws, the Court concluded that as Gonzales did not come within the act of 1891, the commissioner had no jurisdiction to detain and deport her by deciding the mere question of law to the contrary; and she was not obliged to resort to the Superintendent or the Secretary. Id. at 15, 24 S.Ct. 177. 48 The Court further expounded upon the necessity of judicial review of statutory claims in Gegiow v. Uhl, 239 U.S. 3, 36 S.Ct. 2, 60 L.Ed. 114 (1915), stating: 49 The statute, by enumerating the conditions upon which the allowance to land may be denied, prohibits the denial in other cases. And when the record shows that a commissioner of immigration is exceeding his power, the alien may demand his release upon habeas corpus. The conclusiveness of the decisions of immigration officers under § 25 is conclusiveness upon matters of fact. This was implied in Nishimura Ekiu v. United States. ... As was said in Gonzales v. Williams, as Gonzales did not come within the act of 1891, the Commissioner had no jurisdiction to detain and deport her by deciding the mere question of law to the contrary. Such a case stands no better than a decision without a fair hearing, which has been held to be bad. 50 Id. at 9, 36 S.Ct. 2 (citations omitted). 51 As a result, the Court went on to consider the petitioner's claim that, under the immigration statute, he should not have been deemed an individual likely to become a public charge solely on the ground that the labor market in the city of his immediate destination was overstocked. The Court agreed with the alien and, rejecting the executive branch's interpretation of the statute, held that the statute allowed only consideration of the labor market in the country as a whole, and not in any particular city. See id. at 9-10, 36 S.Ct. 2. 52 Other cases of this sort abound in the reporters. See, e.g., Delgadillo v. Carmichael, 332 U.S. 388, 390-91, 68 S.Ct. 10, 92 L.Ed. 17 (1947) (granting habeas and rejecting the immigration service's interpretation of the statutory term entry); Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 149, 65 S.Ct. 1443, 89 L.Ed. 2103 (1945) (rejecting the government's interpretation of the term affiliation with the Communist party and holding that habeas is appropriate where an alien is ordered deported for reasons not specified by Congress); Kessler v. Strecker, 307 U.S. 22, 35, 59 S.Ct. 694, 83 L.Ed. 1082 (1939) (holding, on habeas, that as the Secretary erred in the construction of the statute, the writ must be granted and the respondent discharged from custody); Mahler v. Eby, 264 U.S. 32, 46, 44 S.Ct. 283, 68 L.Ed. 549 (1924) (rejecting, on habeas, the executive branch's interpretation of findings necessary for deportation based on espionage); Howe v. United States, 247 F. 292 (2d Cir.1917) (rejecting, in a habeas suit, the immigration authority's latitudinarian construction of the provision 'likely to become a public charge'  (citation omitted)). 53 The passage in 1946 of the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA), with its provisions allowing courts to determine on the whole record whether an agency decision was supported by substantial evidence, prompted aliens to press for broader judicial review. See APA § 10(e), 60 Stat. 243 (1946) (currently codified at 5 U.S.C. § 706) (describing the scope of judicial review under the statute). The Supreme Court rebuffed this bid in the Heikkila case. In Heikkila, the Court held that the Immigration Act of 1917--which had been consistently interpreted by the courts to have the effect of precluding judicial intervention in deportation cases except insofar as it was required by the Constitution, thereby limiting the courts' review of facts to the narrow requirements of due process--was a statute precluding judicial review within the meaning of the APA. Heikkila, 345 U.S. at 234-35, 73 S.Ct. 603. Accordingly, the Court held that habeas review for legal defects was still the sole avenue for attacking a deportation order. See id. at 237, 73 S.Ct. 603.