Court Opinion

ID: 9469494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:41:48.564783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:24.758465
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I would affirm the defendant’s conviction because I do not think that we have any warrant for reading a defense of reasonable mistake into 8 U.S.C. § 1326.
The statute, so far as is relevant to this case, makes it a felony for an alien who has been deported from the United States to be thereafter found in this country at any time unless the Attorney General has expressly consented, in advance, to the alien’s reapplying for admission. I read this to mean that an alien who has been deported reenters this country at his peril. He had better be sure he has the express consent of the Attorney General because if he does not he is guilty of a felony.
I have difficulty understanding how Congress could have made its meaning any plainer. The statute does not simply make it a crime for a deported alien to return to this country illegally. It makes it a crime for a deported alien to be found “at any time” in this country “unless,” before reembarking for the U. S., he has the “express” consent of the Attorney General. The structure of the statute and the choice of words seem designed to make the prima facie liability as broad as possible and the defense of consent as narrow as possible. And since the statute creates a crime unknown at common law, we cannot assume from Congress’ silence that it meant to borrow the mental element from some earlier common law crime. Cf. Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 262, 72 S.Ct. 240, 249, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952). To be justified in rewriting the statute so that the words “unless . .. the Attorney General has expressly consented” become “unless . .. the alien reasonably believes that the Attorney General has expressly consented” requires more than a general distaste for strict liability criminal statutes.
Even if the statute is more susceptible of interpretation than I think, it is still necessary to ask whether the usual objections that are made to strict criminal liability probably would have persuaded the draftsmen of section 1326 to include a defense of reasonable mistake if their attention had been drawn to the point. Those objections are two. (See, e.g., Wasserstrom, Strict Liability in the Criminal Law, 12 Stan.L. Rev. 731 (1960).) One is that the moral authority of the criminal law is undermined when criminal punishment is visited upon an act committed with an innocent intent. This concern has little force when applied to a statute that is limited to previously deported aliens. Their previous sojourn in the U. S. was illegal; if they are again found to be here illegally, there is a powerful common-sense presumption of guilty intent. That this presumption is made conclusive by the statute is a harsh result, but not an unreasonable one, even though violators are subject to imprisonment. Cf. United States v. Ayo-Gonzales, 536 F.2d 652, 661 and n.22 (5th Cir. 1976).
The second objection to strict criminal liability is that fear of being punished for inadvertently straying across the line separating the lawful from the unlawful will cause people to steer too far clear of the forbidden zone — will deter socially desirable behavior along with the undesirable behavior that the statute was intended to deter. See, e.g., United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 440-43, 98 S.Ct. 2864, 2875-76, 57 L.Ed.2d 584 (1978). But that objection also is weak in this case, again because the statute is limited to aliens who have already been deported at least once. True, not every deported alien is forever after an “undesirable”; the fact that deported aliens may be readmitted to the U. S. shows that this is too strong a characterization. But they are hardly a favored class of prospective entrants and it is therefore difficult to believe that the draftsmen of section 1326 would have been disturbed by the prospect that some previously deported aliens might be deterred *1020from reapplying for admission to the U. S. by fear they could be punished for an inadvertent violation.
There is an analogy here to statutory rape. A statute that does not allow a defense of reasonable mistake as to the girl’s age will deter some men from having intercourse with young-looking girls who in fact are over the age of consent. Socially permitted activity is thereby deterred; but since there is no strongly felt social interest in encouraging the activity, overdeterrence is seen as a small price to pay for having a statute that is easier to enforce than it would be if a defense — inevitably rather porous — of reasonable mistake were allowed. Similarly, Congress would not I think have thought it a high price to pay for a strict prohibition against the illegal return of previously deported aliens that some deported aliens who would have gotten the Attorney General’s express consent to reenter this country if they had applied for it would be discouraged from applying because of the consequences of making a mistake.
The evolution of the statute is instructive. The ancestor of section 1326 is a statute passed in 1918 which excluded from the U. S. “aliens who are anarchists,” “aliens who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States or of all forms of law,” and several other classes of aliens similarly deemed subversive; and not only were they excluded, but any alien excluded or deported under the statute who thereafter attempted to enter the U. S. was made guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. Act of Oct. 16, 1918, Pub.L.No. 221, 39 Stat. 1012. In 1929 the prohibition was extended to all previously deported aliens who tried to reenter the U. S.; however, for those not embraced by the 1918 act, the maximum penalty was reduced to two years because many of the aliens deported under other laws were considered less dangerous than those deported under the 1918 act. Act of March 4, 1929, Pub.L.No. 1018, § 1, 45 Stat. 1551, 8 U.S.C. § 180(a) (1946); see also S.Rep.No.1456, 70th Cong., 2d Sess. 1 (1929). Section 2 of the 1929 act made it a crime for an alien to obtain entry to the U. S. “by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact.” This provision suggests that the absence of any reference to state of mind in section 1 may not have been inadvertent. Congress was trying in section 1 to prevent deported aliens from returning, like yo-yos, from the countries to which they had been deported. “It frequently happens that aliens of the criminal and other classes who are deported under the general immigration law reenter the country unlawfully. As a matter of fact, in some instances such aliens have been deported four or five times, only to return as soon as possible to the United States in an unlawful manner.” S.Rep.No. 1456, supra, at 1. A similar concern had been expressed by a sponsor of the 1918 act. See 56 Cong.Rec. 8109 (remarks of Rep. Burnett).
Section 1326 assumed its present form in 1952. Act of June 27, 1952, Pub.L.No.82-414, ch. 8, § 276, 66 Stat. 229. Section 1 of the 1929 act was extended to previously deported aliens who were found to be in the U. S. unlawfully even though their reentry had been lawful. In addition, the defense in the 1929 act for aliens receiving the Attorney General’s “permission” to reapply for admission was tightened up by the substitution of “express consent.” See H.Rep.No. 1365, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 220-21 (1952), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1952, p. 1653.
In light of this history, the interpretation which will best carry out the legislative purpose is one that places the burden of mistake on the alien. Just as allowing a defense of reasonable mistake would make it much more difficult to achieve the objectives of the laws against statutory rape, so reading such a defense into section 1326 will make it much more difficult to achieve the legislative purpose of keeping illegal aliens out of this country. Anyone in any country with which we have diplomatic relations can walk into the nearest American consulate and get a visa allowing him to enter the U. S., as Anton, the defendant in *1021this case, did, and then testify plausibly at his criminal trial that he thought he had the Attorney General’s express consent to reenter. (Plausibly but not, to me at least, persuasively: Anton either left blank (his testimony) or answered “no” (the government’s) the question on the visa application form whether his previous American visa had been cancelled — as it had been, when he was deported.)
It is true, as my brethren note, that if criminal prosecution fails, the previously deported alien can be deported again; but having to deport the same illegal alien again and again is just the tedious cycle that Congress was trying in section 1326 to break. Any doubt on this score is dispelled by the legislative history of the 1929 act. “The fact that possible deportation is not a sufficient deterrent to discourage those who seek to gain entry through other than regular channels is demonstrated by the frequency with which [the Department of Labor] is compelled to resort to deportation proceedings for the same alien on several succeeding occasions... . [A]n alien deported at Government expense under the present procedure is not subject to any more difficulties or embarrassment than before the first successful attempt to enter the country unlawfully.” S.Rep.No.1456, supra, at 2.
It is all very well to note as my brethren do that the draftsmen of the Model Penal Code and other progressive thinkers on criminal justice disfavor strict liability. But since no constitutional issue has been raised in this case, our only job is to think our way as best we can into the minds of the legislators who enacted section 1326 and its predecessors back to 1918. We have to guess whether they would have wanted to complicate the statute and reduce its deterrent effect by including a state of mind requirement that would protect deported aliens who by mistake failed to obtain the Attorney General’s express consent to reenter this country. As I have already indicated, my guess is that they would not have. The origin of the statute during the wartime “Red Scare” that swept this country after the communist revolution in Russia in 1917, the extension of the statute in the 1920’s, shortly after America abandoned its historic policy of essentially unrestricted immigration, from subversive aliens to all aliens, and its strengthening in 1952, during another xenophobic wartime period, make it doubtful that concern for the welfare of previously deported aliens has ever figured in the congressional thinking on this legislation. This in turn makes it unlikely that if Congress had thought about the issue raised in this case it would have wanted to compromise the effectiveness of the statute for the sake of a few illegal aliens who might be caught unwittingly in its toils.
The construction of the statute that I am advocating is the one that the Ninth Circuit adopted in Pena-Cabanillas v. United States, 394 F.2d 785 (9th Cir. 1968). Indeed, every decision until today, with one exception (reserving judgment on the question), has said or assumed that reasonable mistake is not a defense under section 1326. See United States v. Wong Kim Bo, 472 F.2d 720, 722 (5th Cir. 1972) (dictum); United States v. Oris, 598 F.2d 428, 430 (5th Cir. 1979) (assumed — issue not raised); United States v. Trott, 227 F.Supp. 448 (D.Md. 1964); United States v. Mohammed, 372 F.Supp. 1048 (S.D.N.Y.1973) (assumed); United States v. Newton, No. 81-727 (S.D. N.Y. Nov. 23, 1981), appeal pending, 2d Cir., No. 81-1495; but cf. United States v. DiSantillo, 615 F.2d 128, 132 n.6 (3d Cir. 1980) (reserving question). By rejecting the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Pena-Cabanillas we create a conflict between circuits and thereby dump another case onto the crowded lap of the Supreme Court — and do so though the Ninth Circuit’s decision makes even more sense today than when it was rendered fourteen years ago. We have greater experience today with the difficulty of stemming the flood of illegal immigration to this country; we should have greater understanding of the arguments for shifting the risk of mistake regarding a previously deported alien’s right to reenter this country from harassed immigration officials to the deported aliens themselves— arguments that I believe Congress would *1022have accepted if the issue had been raised when section 1326 or its predecessors were under consideration.
All this is not to say however that section 1326 is a strict liability statute in every respect. I doubt that if Anton had been kidnapped and transported by his kidnappers to the U. S. he would upon arrival here have been guilty of violating the statute. Cf. United States v. White Fuel Corp., 498 F.2d 619, 624 (1st Cir. 1974). A defense of involuntary reentry would be narrow, and proof would not involve speculating on what a man knows or should know about obtaining the Attorney General’s express consent to be readmitted to the U. S. But I earnestly submit that it is not a defense that the alien may have thought he had that consent when he did not.