Court Opinion

ID: 9443125
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:11:41.950171+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:22.863232
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
So far as I can find, before 1950 the situation never reached the courts of a seaman seeking shore leave who was excluded, not because the inspector doubted his bona fides, but because he was a “subversive” within the classes excluded under the Act of 1918. But if such a case had arisen, the courts would certainly not have confined the inspector’s decision to the issue of the seaman’s bona fides, and required a Board of Special Inquiry to determine the issue of “subversiveness.” Such a course would have held up the ship until the question was decided, which ordinarily would not be justified by the interest at stake: the privilege of a short sojourn here to enable the seaman to get a new berth. Still less would it justify taking the seaman off the ship and compelling the owner to ship him back on a new ship, the alternative. If I am right about that, it seems to me to follow that the Act of 1950 did not change the practice and require the inspector to refer the case to the Commissioner, as my brothers believe. As I understand it, they think that this follows from §§ 174.4; 174.3 and 174.2 of the Regulations; for certainly it does not follow from any provision in the Act alone. Section 22 — which amended § 1 of the Act of 1918 — merely redefined the “classes” who “shall be excluded from admission”; and § 4 of the Act of 1950 dealt with members of classes who have already “entered,” and has nothing to do with exclusion. Section 5 on the other hand does deal with exclusion, but it covers only those to whom §§ 16 and 17 of the. old act, 8 U.S.C.A. §§ 152, 153, gave the remedy of a Board of Special Inquiry. This follows, not only from the fact that the section dealt only with the occasions when the alien may have recourse to a Board of Special Inquiry, but from the text itself. The section provides that those who the inspector thinks may be within § 1 of the Act of 1918 shall be “temporarily excluded”; and a seaman, seeking shore leave, is never “temporarily excluded”; he is “detained” on the ship, the detention being itself the final, and only, *646denial of his application.1 Therefore, when § 5 speaks of temporary exclusion, it seems to me that it would not support a regulation which would cover seamen seeking shore leave.
Moreover, the regulations themselves follow this distinction. Section 174.2 does indeed begin with indeterminate language: “Any alien including an alien seaman * * shall be excluded temporarily,” although all alien seamen are not seamen seeking shore leave. Had the section stopped at this, there would, however, have been verbal support for saying that it implied some sort of subsequent action in the case of all seamen as well as other aliens, regardless of § 5. Be that as it may, the section immediately went on to say that “in the case of a seaman seeking to enter” for shore leave only, he “shall be ordered detained on board, if the inspector thinks that he is a “subversive”; and § 174.4 confirms this, for it is limited to aliens who have been “temporarily excluded,” thus adopting the distinction of § 174.2 and the diction of § 5. Section 174.3 adopts the same phrase. The proviso in § 174.4(a) may perhaps be thought to put this conclusion in some doubt: it declares that “nothing in this part shall be deemed to authorize a hearing before a board of special inquiry in the case of” a seaman seeking shore leave. It could he argued that, although the Commissioner could never send such a seaman to a Board of Special Inquiry, nevertheless this implied that he was to “determine” his admissibility, which he could not do if the inspector’s decision was final. In answer I submit that, considering the statute and the regulations together, it is more reasonable to read the proviso as added out of abundant caution so as to insure against recourse to a board under any possible circumstances, than to read into it by indirection an appeal from the inspector to the Commissioner. For these reasons I do not believe that the statute or the regulations have changed the procedure by giving a seaman seeking shore leave what is in effect an appeal to the Commissioner from the inspector.
However, I agree that, even though such a seaman is not entitled to that appeal, it does not follow that he may not have a review of his exclusion in the courts by habeas corpus. As the cases cited in my brothers’ opinion show he has that remedy on the issue of his hona fides, and, consistently, he ought to have it on the issue of “subversiveness.” On such a review, of which this is one, the record must show that the inspector had no ground for finding that he was a “subversive,” just as it must show that the inspector had no ground for denying that he was a seaman seeking shore leave when the issue is of bona fides. In the case at bar the petition alleged that no information was given the relator “as to the cause of his detention except that the petitioner was being held for security reasons.” The return alleged that “the information upon the basis of which the immigration inspector ordered the relator detained on hoard 'has been classified as confidential by the Commissioner of Immigration.” The parties have agreed that no question of fact is involved, so that we are to take the return as true. If the relator had been an ordinary alien seeking entry, the inspector would have referred his case to the Commissioner; and, if the Commissioner 'had denied him a hearing before a Board of Special Inquiry and excluded him, he would not have been allowed access to the information on which the Commissioner had acted, unless the Commissioner had thought best to reveal it. On habeas corpus the relator could not have got access to the evidence: all the justices appear to have agreed on that in Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U.S. 537, 70 S.Ct. 309, 94 L.Ed. 317. If I am right in thinking that a seaman seeking shore leave does not have an appeal to the Commissioner, the inspector, who is in that event the only tribunal, must have authority to use information which the Commissioner has “classified” as secret without revealing it. Whether his use of it to exclude the seaman has been proper is indeed another matter; he may he wrong about that, and the seaman, consistently with his right as to his bona fides, should have the same limited review that he has on that is*647sue. The trouble is that it will be impossible to review the inspector’s decision on that issue without access to the secret evidence, and he cannot succeed, except perhaps in the event that he can show that the inspector has not used the “classified” information. The case at bar is not such a case, and the writ must fail, I should think. The difference between my brothers and me apparently is this: they believe that the Commissioner must decide personally the issue of “subversiveness” in each case; I believe that he may “classify” certain information as secret, communicate it to the inspectors and authorize them to act upon it; and that, when he does, the only issue is whether the inspector has made use of it.

. § 167, Title 8 U.S.C.A.