United States Eichenlaub v. Shaughnessy United States Willumeit v. Shaughnessy v. 15 8212 16, 1949

• Citation: 64 L.Ed. 307,94 L.Ed. 307,338 U.S. 521,70 S.Ct. 329
• Decision Date: 16 January 1950
• Docket Number: 82,Nos. 3,s. 3
• Parties: UNITED STATES ex rel. EICHENLAUB v. SHAUGHNESSY. UNITED STATES ex rel. WILLUMEIT v. SHAUGHNESSY. Argued Nov. 15—16, 1949
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

338 U.S. 521

70 S.Ct. 329

64 L.Ed. 307

94 L.Ed. 307

UNITED STATES ex rel. EICHENLAUB

v SHAUGHNESSY.

UNITED STATES ex rel. WILLUMEIT

v. SHAUGHNESSY.

Nos. 3, 82.

Argued Nov. 15—16, 1949.

Decided Jan. 16, 1950.

Mr. George G. Shiya, New York City, for petitioner Eichenlaub.

Mr. Eugene H. Nickerson, New York City, for petitioner Willumeit.

Mr. Harold D. Cohen, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice BURTON, delivered the opinion of the Court.

These cases present the question of whether § 1 of the Act of May 10, 1920, ¹ authorizes the deportation of an alien under the following circumstances occurring since that Act took effect:

(1) The alien was naturalized; (2) while he was a naturalized citizen he was convicted of a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act of 1917;² (3) thereafter, in a denaturalization proceeding, his citizenship was revoked and his certificate of naturalization canceled on the ground that he had procured it by fraud; and (4) the proper authority, after the required hearings, found the alien to be an undesirable resident of the United States and ordered him deported. For the reasons hereinafter stated, we hold that the Act authorizes such deportation.

No. 3—The Eichenlaub Case.

Richard Eichenlaub, the relator, was born in Germany in 1905, and entered the United States from there in 1930. He was naturalized as an American citizen in 1936, and has resided in the United States continuously since his re-entry in 1937, when he returned from a visit to Germany. In 1941, on his plea of guilty in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, he was convicted of conspiring to act as an agent for a foreign government without having been registered with the Secretary of State.³ He was sentenced to imprisonment for 18 months and fined $1,000. In 1944, with his consent, a judgment was entered in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York canceling his citizenship on the ground of fraud in its procurement.⁴ Deportation proceedings were then instituted against him⁵ and, after a hearing before an Immigration Inspector and a review by the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Attorney General, in 1945, ordered his deportation. ⁶

This proceeding for a writ of habeas corpus was then filed in the court last named. After hearing, the writ was dismissed and the dismissal was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 167 F.2d 659. We denied certiorari. 335 U.S. 867, 69 S.Ct. 137. However, when the Court of Appeals affirmed the Willumeit case, now before us, on the authority of this case, but called attention to the added impression which had been made upon it by the argument in favor of Willumeit on the point above stated, we vacated our denial of certiorari in this case and granted certiorari in both. 337 U.S. 955, 69 S.Ct. 1526.

No. 82—The Willumeit Case.

In 1905, Otto A. Willumeit, the relator, was born in Lorraine, which at that time was a part of Germany but at the time of his arrest for deportation had become a part of France. He entered the United States from there in 1925. In 1931 he was naturalized, and he has resided in the United States continuously since his reentry in 1941 after a visit to Mexico. In 1942, on his plea of guilty in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, he was convicted of having conspired to violate that portion of the Espionage Act of 1917 which made it a crime to transmit to an agent of a foreign country information relating to the national defense of this country, with intent or reason to believe that such information would be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation.⁷ He was sentenced to imprisonment for five years. In 1944, with his consent, a judgment was entered in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois canceling his citizenship on the ground of fraud in its procurement.⁸ Deportation proceedings were then instituted against him and, after a hearing before an Immigration Inspector and a review by the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Attorney General, in 1947, ordered his deportation.⁹

This proceeding for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, after a hearing, the writ was dismissed. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal on the authority of its decision in the Eichenlaub case. ¹⁰ 171 F.2d 773. Because of the importance of the issue to American citizenship, we granted certiorari. 337 U.S. 955, 69 S.Ct. 1526.

The proper scope of the Act of 1920 as applied to these cases is found in the ordinary meaning of its words. The material provisions of the Act are as follows:

'* * * That aliens of the following classes * * * shall, upon the warrant of the (Attorney General), be taken into his custody and deported * * * if the (Attorney General),¹¹ after hearing, finds that such aliens are undesirable residents of the United States, to wit:

'(2) All aliens who since August 1, 1914, have been or may hereafter be convicted of any violation or conspiracy to violate any of the following Acts or parts of Acts, the judgment on such conviction having become final, namely:

'(a) (The Espionage Act of 1917, as amended).'¹²

The above words require that all persons to be deported under this Act shall be 'aliens.'¹³ They do not limit its scope to aliens who never have been naturalized. They do not exempt those who have secured certificates of naturalization, but then have lost them by court order on the ground of fraud in their procurement. They do not suggest that such persons are not as clearly 'aliens' as they were before their fraudulent naturalization.¹⁴ There is no question as to the power of Congress to enact a statute to deport aliens because of past misconduct.¹⁵ That is what Congress did in the Act of 1920, and there is no occasion to restrict its language so as to narrow its plain meaning.

The one substantial issue is whether the Act requires that the relators not only must have been 'aliens' at the times when they were ordered deported, but that they must also have had that status at the times when they were convicted of designated offenses against the national security. The Government suggests that one route to a conclusion on this issue is to hold that the relators, as a matter of law, were 'aliens' when so convicted. The basis it suggests for so holding is that the judicial annulment of the relators' naturalizations on the ground of fraud in their procurement deprived them of their naturalizations ab initio. Rosenberg v. United States, 2 Cir., 60 F.2d 475. They thus would be returned to their status as aliens as of the date of their respective naturalizations. Accordingly, they would come within the scope of the Act of 1920, even if that Act were held to require that all offenders subject to deportation under it also must have had an alien status when convicted of the designated offenses.

In our opinion, it is not necessary, for the purposes of these cases, to give a retroactive effect to the denatu- ralization orders. A simpler and equally complete solution lies in the view that the Act does not require that the offenders reached by it must have had the status of aliens at the time they were convicted. As the Act does not state that necessity, it is applicable to all such offenders, including those denaturalized before or after their convictions as well as those who never have been naturalized. The convictions of the relators for designated offenses are important conditions precedent to their being found to be undesirable residents. Their status as aliens is a necessary further condition of their deportability. When both conditions are met and, after hearing, the Attorney General finds them to be undesirable residents of the United States, the Act is satisfied.

The statutory language which says that 'aliens who since August 1, 1914, have been or may hereafter be convicted, * * *' (emphasis supplied)¹⁶ refers to the requirement that the deportations be applicable to all persons who had been convicted of certain enumerated offenses since about the beginning of World War I (August 1, 1914), whether those convictions were had before or after May 10, 1920. The crimes listed were not crimes in which convictions depended upon the citizenship, or lack of citizenship, of their perpetrators. In fact, they were crimes against the national security, so that their commission by naturalized citizens might well be regarded by Congress as more reprehensible than their commission by aliens who never had been naturalized.

The recognized purpose of the Act was deportation. It is difficult to imagine a reason which would have made it natural or appropriate for Congress to authorize the Attorney General to pass upon the undesirability and deportability of an alien, never naturalized, who had been convicted of espionage, but would prohibit the Attorney General from passing upon the undesirability and deportability of aliens, such as the relators in the instant cases, who had procured certificates of naturalization before their convictions of espionage, but later had been deprived of those certificates on the ground of fraud in their procurement. If there were to be a distinction made in favor of any aliens because they were at one time naturalized citizens, the logical time at which that status would be important would be the time of the commission of the crimes, rather than the purely fortuitous time of their conviction of those crimes. Not even such a distinction finds support in the statute.

The failure of Congress to give expression to the distinction, here urged by the relators, between aliens who never have been naturalized and those who have been denaturalized, was not due to unfamiliarity with such matters. In 1920, Congress must have been familiar with the status of aliens...