Pang Sho Yin v. United States

• Decision Date: 18 June 1907
• Docket Number: 1,668.
• Citation: 154 F. 660
• Parties: PANG SHO YIN v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

154 F. 660

PANG SHO YIN v. UNITED STATES.

No. 1,668.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

June 18, 1907

B. F Graziani, for appellant.

James V. D. Willcox, for appellee.

Before LURTON, SEVERENS, and RICHARDS, Circuit Judges.

SEVERENS Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from an order of the District Court adjudging the appellant to be a Chinese person unlawfully within the United States and ordering his deportation to China. He was seized by two customs inspectors on the night of June 30, July 1 1906, at the village of Ecorse, nine miles south of Detroit and taken to the jail at Detroit. On July 2d he was brought before one of these officers and was sworn and examined by the latter through the medium of a Chinese interpreter employed by the government, and the other inspector, acting as stenographer, took down the statement. On July 5th a warrant was issued by a United States commissioner on the complaint of one of the inspectors, and the respondent was taken before the commissioner, where he pleaded not guilty. His defense was that he was born in San Francisco, Cal., and was therefore a citizen of the United States. The hearing was adjourned from time to time until November 19th, when the commissioner adjudged that the respondent was a Chinese person, and was guilty of being unlawfully within the United States, and entered an order for his deportation. The respondent appealed to the District Court, where the commissioner's order was affirmed.

The decisive question in the case is whether the appellant was born in this country of parents having a domicile here. If he was, his expulsion would deprive him of a constitutional right of citizenship.

The order of the commissioner, so far as it involved the question of the respondent's citizenship, was based entirely on the inspector's examination of the respondent above mentioned and the answers of the respondent to the questions put to him on said examination; and the testimony of the inspectors that at the time they seized the respondent at Ecorse he was coming from the direction of the Detroit river in company with three other persons, one of whom was a Chinese person, and the other two white men. The interpreter who was himself a Chinese person, testified that the respondent seemed to understand the Chinese language, and that from his general appearance, his complexion, and the manner of wearing his queue, he judged him to belong to that nationality. And it may be here said that the proof was sufficient to...