Zurbrick v. Woodhead

• Decision Date: 28 June 1937
• Docket Number: No. 7549.,7549.
• Parties: ZURBRICK, District Director of Immigration, v. WOODHEAD.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

90 F.2d 991 (1937)

ZURBRICK, District Director of Immigration, v. WOODHEAD.

No. 7549.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

June 28, 1937.

L. M. Hopping, of Detroit, Mich. (John C. Lehr, of Detroit, Mich., on the brief), for appellant.

Frank J. Kinzinger, of Detroit, Mich., for appellee.

Before HICKS, SIMONS, and ALLEN, Circuit Judges.

SIMONS, Circuit Judge.

Once more we are impelled to direct attention to the toll in human anguish which so often follows that literal reading of the Immigration Act by which every departure from the United States, however brief and temporary, and pursuant to no intention to relinquish domicile, constitutes subsequent return a new entry, subjecting the unsuspecting to exclusion or deportation. But the law is clear, and however cruel the result, we have no recourse but protest and recommendation.

The present appeal is by the Director of Immigration from an order discharging an alien from custody under a deportation warrant upon her petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The facts of record are undisputed. The petitioner is a young Scottish woman, who, with her parents, brothers, and sisters, emigrated to the United States and was lawfully admitted on September 22, 1924. She was then twenty-four years of age, and has lived here continuously since that time. So far as the record shows she has been capable of making and has made her own way, having been employed for years as a bookkeeper with the Detroit City Gas Company. She has never been refused admission to the United States, nor been arrested and convicted of crime or misdemeanor. There is no blot upon her character. She became afflicted, however, with active tuberculosis, and on April 12, 1934, was admitted for treatment to the Herman Kiefer Hospital, a public institution. Her own savings and those of her family having been swept away by the long period of depression, neither she nor they were possessed of means to pay the hospital expenses. Within the purview of the law she became a public charge. This coming to the attention of the immigration authorities, and it also coming to their attention that on February 25, 1934, within two months of her admission to the hospital, she had made a temporary visit of a few hours to Windsor, Canada, on a shopping tour with several girl friends, she was taken into technical custody and held for examination. The hearing which followed was fairly conducted. The return from Canada being an entry under the Immigration Act, it was found by the Secretary of Labor that at the time of such entry she belonged to the excluded classes under the provisions of section 3 of the 1917 Act (as amended, 8 U.S.C.A. § 136) in that she was (c) a person afflicted with tuberculosis, and (i) a person likely to become a public charge. A warrant for deportation issued — challenged by petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The District Judge, understandably moved more by human compassion than strict adherence to controlling precedents, granted the writ and discharged the petitioner.

We are compelled, however reluctantly, to reverse. Without regard to the lawfulness of the petitioner's original entry, without regard to the running of the period of limitation during which she...