United States v. Williams

• Decision Date: 07 November 1903
• Citation: 126 F. 253
• Parties: UNITED STATES ex rel. TURNER v. WILLIAMS, Immigration Com'r.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

126 F. 253

UNITED STATES ex rel. TURNER v. WILLIAMS, Immigration Com'r.

United States Circuit Court, S.D. New York.

November 7, 1903

Hugh O Pentecost, for relator.

Robert A. Paddock, for respondent.

LACOMBE Circuit Judge.

The immigration act of March 3, 1903, c. 1012, Sec. 2, 32 Stat 1214 (U.S. Comp. St. Supp. 1903, p. 172), increased the number of classes of aliens who were to be excluded from admission to the United States. Among these additional classes are found 'polygamists, anarchists, or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all government or of all forms of law, or the assassination of public officials. ' The board of special inquiry has examined into the facts, and decided that Turner is an 'anarchist.' That decision is not open to review here.

The contention of relator is that the exclusion act is unconstitutional. That objection has been raised in very many cases, and in all of them has been overruled. Indeed, counsel concedes, for the purposes of this argument, that, as to all the kinds of persons enumerated in the act except anarchists it is within the constitutional powers of Congress to exclude them. It is undoubtedly true that in the case of persons who are insane, or afflicted with contagious disease, or of some particular race or nationality, or who have been convicted of crime involving moral turpitude, the differentiation is physical, rather than mental. Nevertheless it is not perceived why the principles laid down in Ekiu's Case 142 U.S. 657, 12 Sup.Ct. 336, 35 L.Ed. 1146, and a long line of similar decisions, do not apply equally to a person who is differentiated by the possession and advocacy of specified beliefs as to the conduct and regulation of society. 'It is an accepted maxim of international law that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe. * * * In the United States this power is vested in the national government, to which the Constitution has committed the entire control of international relations in peace as well as in war. ' Ekiu's Case, supra. Undoubtedly, the Constitution which committed this power to the national government might have restricted its exercise in any way...