Lem Moon Sing v. United States

delivered the opinion of the court.

Lim Lung, on behalf of the appellant, Lem Moon Sing, presented to the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California an application in writing for a writ of habeas corpus, directed to one D. D- Stubbs, and to the collector of the port of San Francisco, requiring them to produce the body of the appellant and abide by such order as the court might make in the premises.

The grounds set forth in the application for the writ were substantially as follows:

The appellant was a person of the Chinese race, born in China, and never naturalized' in the United States.

At and before the passage of the general appropriation act of Congress, approved August 18,1894, he was a Chinese merchant having a permanent domicil in the United States at San Francisco and lawfully engaged in that city in mercantile pursuits, and not otherwise. That domicil had never been surrendered or renounced by him.

On the 30th day of January, 1894, while conducting his business as a merchant at San Francisco, being a member of the firm of Kee Sang Tong & Co., wholesale and retail druggists in that city, he went on a temporary visit*1 to his native land, with the intention of returning and of continuing his residence in the United States, in the prosecution of that business. ' He was so.engaged for more thttn two years before his departure for China, and during that time performed no manual labor except as was necessary in the conduct of his business as a druggist.

During his temporary absence in China the appropriation act of August 18, 1894, was passed. That act contained these provisions:

“ Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act: To prevent unlawful entry of Chinese into the United States, by the appointment of suitable officers to enforce the laws in relation thereto, and for expenses of returning to China all Chinese persons found to be unlawfully in the United States, including the cost of imprisonment and actual expense of conveyance of

“ In every case where an alien is excluded from admission into the United States under any law or treaty now existing or hereafter made, the decision of the appropriate immigration •or custom officers, if adverse to the admission .of such alien, shall be final, unless reversed on appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury.” Act of August 18, 1894, c. 301, 28 Stat. 390 .

The appellant returned to the United States, November 3, 1894, on the steamer Belgic, belonging to the Occidental and Oriental' Steamship Company, of which D. D. Stubbs was secretary and manager. Upon his arrival here he applied to •John H. Wise, collector of customs at San Francisco, to be permitted to land and enter the United States on the ground that he was formerly engaged in this country as a merchant. He submitted to the collector the testimony of two credible witnesses other than Chinese, showing that he conducted business as a merchant here for one year previous to his departure, as above stated, from the United States, and that during that period he was not engaged in the performance •of any manual labor except such as was necessary in conducting his business as a merchant. His application to enter the United States was denied, and consequently he was detained, ■confined, and restrained of his liberty by Stubbs as secretary •and manager of the steamship company.

In addition to the above facts, the application for the writ of habeas corpus alleged that Lem Moon Sing had not been apprehended and was not detained by virtue of the judgment, •order, decree, or other judicial process of any court, or under any writ or warrant, but under the authority alleged to have been given to the collector of the port of San Francisco by the above act of August 18, 1894; that Lem Moon Sing was not at the date of the passage of that act nor for more. than one year prior to the date of his departure for China for temporary purposes, and is not now, an alien excluded from

The petitioner also alleged that if Lem Moon Sing, should not be allowed to enter the United States and to resume his. residence and mercantile- business therein, and be sent back to China, he would sustain great and irreparable loss, and his. business be wholly destroyed, -whereby he would be denied “ that equal right granted to him by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and by the treaties made and existing between the United States and the Chinese Empire, which he is a subject.”

. It was further alleged that the detention and restraint of the liberty of Lem Moon Sing were without jurisdiction, void, and unconstitutional, and “ without due process of law and against his rights under the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the treaties made between the United States of America and the Chinese Empire, and wrongfully and unlawfully under and by color of the authority of the United States asserted and exercised by the said John H. Wise, collector of the port of San Francisco.”

The writ of habeas corpus was denied by the court below because in its judgment the application on its face showed that Lem Moon Sing was detained and restrained of his liberty by the collector of the port of San Francisco, under the act of Congress approved August 18, 1894, and consequently that jurisdiction-over the petitioner was with the collector of the-port of San Francisco. From this judgment an appeal has. been prosecuted to this court.

The present cáse is, in principle, covered by the former adjudications of this court.

In the Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U. S. 581 , 603, this court said: “That the government of the United States, through the action of the legislative department, cán exclude aliens from its territory, is a proposition "which we do not think open to controversy. Jurisdiction over its own territory to that extent is an incident of every independent nation. It is a part of

The case of Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S. 651 , 653, 659, 660, arose under the act of March 3, 1891, c. 551, 26 Stat. 1084 , excluding from admission into the United States, in accordance with acts then in force regulating immigration, (other than those concerning Chinese laborers,) all idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease; persons who had been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, etc. That act made provision for the appointment, by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, of a superintendent of immigration, who should be an officer of the Treasury, and to whom was committed, under the control and supervision of the Secretary of the Treasury, the execution of the act. It was further declared by that act that “ all 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.”

•Nishimura Ekiu, a female subject oí the Emperor of Japan, was denied .the right to land in the United States, and was held in custody to be sent back to her country, as the statute required in such cases. She sued out a writ of habeas corpus. The Circuit Court of the United States confirmed the action of the inspection officer and remanded the petitioner to his custody.

These questions were again elaborately examined in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698 , 713, 714, which arose under the act of May 5, 1892, c. 60, 27 Stat. 25 , prohibiting the coming of Chinese persons into the United States. Those were cases of Chinese laborers arrested and held by the marshal of the United .States under that act, the sixth section of which made'it the duty of all Chinese laborers, within the limits of the United States at the time of the passage of the act, and who were entitled to remain in the United .States, to apply to the collector of internal revenue of their respective districts, within one year after that time, for a- certificate of residence'; and any Chinese laborer, within the limits of the .United States, who should neglect, fail, or refuse to comply with the provisions of that act, or who, after one year from its passage, should be found within the jurisdiction' of the United States without; such certificate of residence, should be deemed and adjudged to be unlawfully within the United States, and subject to be arrested by any United States customs official, collector of internal revenue or his deputies, United States marshal or his deputies, and taken before a

The petitioners having assailed the validity of that section, this court said : “ In Nishimura Ekiu's case, it was adjudged that, although Congress might, if it saw fit, authorize the courts to investigate and ascertain the facts upon which the alien’s right to land was made by the statutes to depend, yet Congress might intrust the final determination of those facts to an executive officer, and that, if it did so, his order was due process of law, and no other tribunal, unless expressly authorized by law to do so, was at liberty to reexamine the evidence on which he acted, or to controvert its sufficiency. 142 U. S. 600 . The power to exclude aliens and the power to expel them rest upon one foundation, are derived from one source, are supported-by the same reasons, and are in truth but parts of one and the same power. _ The power of Congress, therefore, to expel, like the power to exclude aliens, or any specified clas^ of aliens, from the country, may be exercised entirely through executive officers; or Congress may call in the aid of the judiciary to ascertain any contested facts- on which an alien’s right to be in the country has been made by Congress to depend. Congress, having the right, as it may see fit, to expel aliens of a particular class, or to permit them to remain,

An effort is made to distinguish the case before us from those cited by the circumstance that the petitioner, Lem Moon Sing, had, before the passage of the act of 1894, lawfully acquired a domicil as a merchant in the-United States, and at the time of his departure from this country, for the purpose merely of visiting his native land, he was actually engaged in mercantile pursuits at San Francisco. The right of domicil, thus acquired, could not, it is earnestly insisted, be legally taken from him, nor its exercise obstructed by any action of executive officers of the government under whatever authority they proceeded ; and that to give conclusive effect to the acts of such officers, when enforcing the statute of 1894, would deny to the appellant that due process of law which is required by the Constitution of the United States.

Ve do. not understand the appellant to deny — indeed, it. could not, consistently with, the cases above cited, be denied — that if the. appellant had attempted, after the passage of the act of 1894, for the first time, to enter the United States for the purpose of engaging, in mercantile pursuits, his right to “admission into the United States under any law or treaty” could be constitutionally committed for final, determination to subordinate immigration or other executive officers, with the right of appeal (if the decision be adverse to him) only to the Secretary of the Treasury, thereby excluding judicial interference so long as such officers acted within the authority conferred upon them by Congress.

The contention is that while, generally speaking, immigration officers have jurisdiction under the statute to exclude an alien who is not entitled under some statute or treaty to come into the-United States; yet if the alien is entitled, of right, by some law or treaty, to enter this country, but is nevertheless excluded by such officers, the latter exceed their jurisdiction ; and their illegal action, if it results in restraining the alien of his liberty, presents a judicial question for the decis

That view, if sustained, would bring into the courts every case of an alien who claimed the right to come into the United States under some law or treaty, but was prevented from doing so by the executive branch of the government. This would defeat the manifest purpose of Congress in com!mitting to subordinate immigration officers and to the Secretary of the Treasury exclusive authority to determine whether a particular alien seeking admission into this country belongs to the class entitled by some law or treaty to come into the country, or to a class forbidden to enter the United States. Under that interpretation of the act of 1894 the provision that the decision of the appropriate immigration or customs officers should be final, unless reversed on appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury, would be of no practical value.

The power of Congress to exclude aliens altogether from the United States, or to prescribe the terms and -conditions upon which they may come to this country, and to have its declared policy in that regard enforced exclusively through executive officers, without judicial intervention, is settled by-our previous adjudications. Is a statute passed in execution of that power any less applicable to an alien, who has acquired a commercial domicil within the United States, but who, having voluntarily left the country, although for a temporary purpose, claims the right under some law or treaty to reenter it? We think not. The words of the statute are broad and include “ every case ” of an alien, at least every Chinese alien, who, at the time of its passage, is out of this country, no matter for what reason, and seeks to come back. He is none the less an alien because of his having a commercial domicil in this country. While he lawfully remains here he is entitled to the benefit of the guaranties of liije, liberty, and property, secured by the Constitution to all persons, of whatever race, within the jurisdiction of the United States. His personal rights when he is in this country and such of his property as is here during his absence, are as fully protected by the supreme law of the land as if he were a native or naturalized citizen of the United States. But when he has

It is supposed that the claim of the appellant is sustained by Lau Ow Bew v. United States, 144 U. S. 47 . But that, is a mistake. That case arose under the sixth section of the act of May 6, 1882, c. 126, 22 Stat. 58 , as amended by the act of July 5, 1884, c. 220, 23 Stat. 115 . It presented -the -question whether that section applied to Chinese merchants,, already. domiciled in the United States, who, having left the country for temporary purposes, animo revertendi, sought to reenter it and resume their business. The question was raised by writ of habeas corpus in the Circuit Court of the United' States for the Northern District of California, which adjudged that Lau Ow Bew was not entitled to enter the. United States. This court, upon certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, reversed the judgment below, and held that the statutes there in question did not apply to Lau Ow Bew, and that he had the right to return to .the United States. Now the difference between that case and the present one is that, by the statutes in force when the former was decided, the action of executive officers charged with the duty of enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, as amended in 1884, could be reached and controlled by the courts when .'necessary for the protection of rights given or secured by some statute or treaty relating to Chinese. But, by the act of 1894, the decision of the appropriate immigration or cus

Nor is the claim of appellant supported by In re Panzara, 51 Fed. Rep. 275 . That cáse was decided in 1892, and, therefore, did not involve the act of 1894. So, also, was the case of Gee Fook Sing v. United States, 7 U. S. App. 27, decided by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The remedy of the appellant was by appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury from the decision of his subordinate, and not to the courts. If the act of 1894 had done nothing more than appropriate money to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act, the courts would have been authorized to protect any right the appellant had to enter the country, if he was of the class entitled to admission under existing laws or treaties, and was improperly excluded. But when Congress went further, and declared that in every case of an alien excluded by the decision of the appropriate immigration or customs officers “ from admission into the United States under any law or treaty,” such decision should be final, unless reversed by the Secretary of the Treasury, the authority of the courts to review the decision of the executive, officers was taken away. United States v. Rogers, 65 Fed. Rep. 787 . If the act of 1894, thus construed, takes away from the alien appellant any right given by previous laws or treaties to reenter the country, the authority of Congress to do even that cannot be questioned, although it is the duty of the courts not to construe an act of Congress as modifying or annulling a treaty made with another nation, unless its words clearly and plainly point to such a construction. Chew Heong v. United States, 112 U. S. 536 , 539, 559; Head Money Cases, 112 U. S. 580 , 599; Whitney v. Robertson, 1 24 U. §. 190, 195; Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U. S. 581 , 600. There is no room in the languageof the act of 1894 to doubt that Congress intended that it should be interpreted as we have done in this case.

To avoid misapprehension, it is proper to say that the court does not now express any opinion upon the question whether,

The judgment of the court below denying the application for the writ of habeas corpus is affirmed.

Mr. Justice Brewer dissented.