Court Opinion

ID: 9421660
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:59:14.043108+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:48.511985
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Brennan concur,
dissenting.
The statutory provision in controversy is contained in § 243 (h) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 212, 214, 8 U. S. C. § 1253 (h), which reads:
“The Attorney General is authorized to withhold deportation of any alien within the United States *191to any country in which in his opinion the alien would be subject to physical persecution and for such period of time as he deems to be necessary for such reason.”
The alien who is physically present in this country is about to be sent to Communist China — a country which the Immigration and Naturalization Service itself has told us is inhospitable to refugees.*
*192The question for us is not whether she should or should not be returned to China. It is whether the Attorney General has discretion to withhold her deportation if in his opinion she would be “subject to physical persecution” were she returned to that country.
This alien is not in custody at our border. She is here on parole. The authority to parole is contained in § 212 (d) (5) of the Act — the Attorney General may “in his discretion” parole an alien “into the United States.” How an alien can be paroled "into the United States” and yet not be “within the United States” remains a mystery.
Of course if we had the problem of Kaplan v. Tod, 267 U. S. 228, different considerations would come into play. There an alien on parole sought to have her years here used to gain herself citizenship. Alternatively, she argued that the statute had run on her deportation since her parole was an “entry.”
No such enlargement of the prerogatives of a parolee is sought here. This alien seeks not citizenship, not residence, but only the shelter of a provision of the law designed to protect such refugees from the fate of “physical persecution.” She only requests that she be eligible to be considered by the Attorney General as a beneficiary of this humane provision of our law. Only a hostile reading can deny her that respite.
I would not read the law narrowly to make it the duty of our officials to send this alien and the others in the companion case to what may be persecution or death. Technicalities need not enmesh us. The spirit of the law provides the true guide. It makes plain, I think, that this case is one of those where the Attorney General is authorized to save a human being from persecution in a Communist land.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced on October 31, 1956, a policy of granting stays of deportation for those headed back to Red China. In that connection it stated:
“Official notice may be taken that the China mainland is under the control of a de facto Communist government. As in other Communist states, this government operates as a totalitarian dictatorship, suppressing personal liberties and imposing arbitrary restraints on the people when necessary to maintain its authority or secure its objectives. Its methods for imposing its will include persecution of individuals and groups by way of economic sanctions, corporal punishment, incarceration, and execution.
“While it can be accepted as a general proposition that the Peiping government at times engages in these forms of persecution to further its authoritarian ends, no reliable information has yet been made available to this Service to indicate whether such persecution is directed indiscriminately against the populace as a whole or whether it is employed on a selective basis against particular elements. It is not known to what extent or to what degree such factors as personal political beliefs or religious views, in themselves, are noticed or acted upon by the Communist authorities. Another unknown factor is whether prior presence in the United States has any bearing on the kind of treatment accorded by the Communist authorities to a Chinese national upon his return to the mainland, despite the fact that there is evidence indicating strong and continued efforts on the part of these same authorities to persuade their overseas nationals to reestablish themselves and their residence within Communist China. These and other specific considerations bearing on the question of physical persecution as practiced on the China mainland today are matters which await further inquiry and to which an answer may be provided through the collation of intelligence material being gathered by other agencies of the United States government.” In re Lee Sung, No. A-7921505.