Court Opinion

ID: 9421603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:59:04.443635+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:31.321906
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Black concur, dissenting.
The decision seems to me to be out of harmony with the statutory scheme of venue which Congress designed for immigration cases. We are here concerned with a crime under § 252 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 163, 220, 8 U. S. C. § 1282; viz. unlawfully remaining in the United States. Sections 275 and 276 describe crimes of unlawful entry. Section 279 *411gives the District Courts jurisdiction over the trial of both types of crimes; and as to venue it provides:
“Notwithstanding any other law, such prosecutions or suits may be instituted at any place in the United States at which the violation may occur or at which the person charged with a violation under section 275 or 276 may be apprehended.”
When Congress wanted to lay venue in the district where the accused was “apprehended,” it said so. It would seem, therefore, that venue may be laid in the district where the alien was “apprehended” only in case of the crimes of unlawful entry. All other crimes are to be prosecuted in the district where the violation first occurred. It is no answer to say that this crime is different because it was “continuous.” See In re Snow, 120 U. S. 274, 281. As District Judge Smith said, the distinction drawn by § 279 between venue at the place of violation and venue at the place of apprehension “would be meaningless if violations such as the one in issue were regarded as continuous.” United States v. Tavares, supra.*
Moreover, the crime is completed when the conditional permit expires. All elements of the crime occur then. Nothing more remains to be done. It is then and there, Congress says, that the crime is “committed” in the sense that that term is employed in Art. Ill, § 2, cl. 3 of the Constitution and in the Sixth Amendment.
I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.

Congress has made its intent equally clear in analogous situations, see, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 659, where the possession of certain stolen goods, certainly a continuing illegal status similar to remaining, is made a crime. Section 659 provides in pertinent part: “The offense shall be deemed to have been committed ... in any district in which the defendant may have taken or been in possession of the said money, baggage, goods, or chattels.”