United States v. Day
| Decision Date | 15 June 1931 |
| Docket Number | No. 4401.,4401. |
| Citation | 50 F.2d 816 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES ex rel. BELARDI v. DAY, Commissioner of Immigration. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Adrian Bonnelly, of Philadelphia, Pa., and G. M. Cusumano, of New York City, for appellant.
Phillip Forman, U. S. Atty., of Trenton, N. J., and Oliver Randolph, Asst. U. S. Atty., of Newark, N. J., for appellee.
Before WOOLLEY, DAVIS, and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges.
After a hearing at Ellis Island in New York Harbor the Department of Labor ordered that Palleschi be deported. Whereupon he surrendered himself to the Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, resident at Ellis Island, and Bellardi, as his next friend, filed in the District Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey a petition for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that Palleschi (whom we shall call the relator) was unlawfully restrained of his liberty and praying that he be discharged. One of the judges of the District Court issued the writ; the Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, to whom it was addressed, obeyed it by producing the relator before the judge in New Jersey under circumstances to which we shall advert presently; the judge dismissed the writ and remanded the relator to the custody of the Commissioner. This appeal followed.
The one question properly here for review concerns the jurisdiction of the District Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey to entertain the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, to issue the writ and discharge the alien. On this question the relator makes two contentions in the alternative, namely, that the District Court for the District of New Jersey (or any judge thereof) had jurisdiction to issue the writ and follow the case to the end, or, if it had not such jurisdiction and in consequence unlawfully issued the writ, the court nevertheless had power, on the actual production of the relator, to hear the case and discharge him.
The first contention is predicated on the assertion that Ellis Island is in the District of New Jersey and therefore within the jurisdiction of the District Court for that district.
The island is property of the United States, ceded to the United States by the State of New York in 1808 and since 1891 used by the United States as an Immigration Station for the Port of New York. When it was property of New York it was within one or another of the counties of that state or within the waters thereof. With respect to federal jurisdiction over such counties and their waters, the United States by statute (28 USCA § 178, Judicial Code, § 97) prescribed the territorial limits of the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York as embracing certain counties "with the waters thereof" and provided that the District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts "shall have concurrent jurisdiction over the waters within the counties of New York, Kings, Queens, Nassau, Richmond, and Suffolk. * * *" This it would seem vested federal jurisdiction with respect to Ellis Island in the District Courts of the two named New York districts. But the relator, showing that by the Act of June 28, 1834 (4 Stat. 708) a boundary line between the states of New York and New Jersey had been run down the Hudson River to the sea, "submitted" that Ellis Island is on the westerly or New Jersey side of the harbor and therefore is in — or "not entirely" outside — the District of New Jersey and within at least "the concurrent jurisdiction of the District Court for the District of New Jersey and the District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York." Jurisdiction is determined by statute, not by geography. The statute expressly, and therefore exclusively, placed federal jurisdiction of Ellis Island in the District Courts of the two named New York districts. The running of a boundary line in 1834 through the waters dividing the states of New York and New Jersey cannot disturb the statutory designation of jurisdiction in 1910.
Therefore we hold that the judge of the District Court for the District of New Jersey had no power to issue the writ of habeas corpus prayed for in this case, to be executed outside of the territorial jurisdiction of his court. Ex parte Gouyet (D. C.) 175 Fed. 230, 233; Ex parte Yee Hick Ho (D. C.) 33 F.(2d) 360. The writ was unlawfully issued.
But the relator, in aid of his contention that the District Court for the District of New Jersey had jurisdiction of this petition, relies upon the fact that the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of...
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