FOTI v. IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
No. 28
Supreme Court of the United States
December 16, 1963
375 U.S. 217
Philip R. Monahan argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Cox and Assistant Attorney General Miller.
Jack Wasserman and David Carliner filed a brief for the Association of Immigration and Nationality Lawyers, as amicus curiae, urging affirmance.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.
Involved in this case is the single question of whether the Federal Courts of Appeals have the initial, exclusive jurisdiction, under
Petitioner, a 47-year-old alien and a native and citizen of Italy, last entered the United States in late 1950,
The issue involved here is solely one relating to procedures incident to deportation proceedings. In the present posture of the case, we need not be concerned with the ultimate merits as to petitioner‘s deportability,4 since he concedes that he is deportable and the question of the propriety of the administrative refusal of suspension of deportation has not as yet been reviewed in any lower
The statutory provision in question,
Prior to 1940, the Attorney General had no discretion with respect to the deportation of an alien who came within the defined category of deportable persons. The expulsion of such a person was mandatory; his only avenue of relief in a hardship case was by a private bill in Congress. Therefore, any differentiation that might have been made prior to 1940 between a determination that an alien was deportable and the order directing his deportation would have been merely formalistic and essentially meaningless. In fact, the determination of deportability necessarily resulted in, and was invariably accompanied by, a deportation order. Since 1940, however, when the Attorney General was given the power to grant discretionary relief under various circumstances in deportation cases,7 administrative regulations having the force and effect of law have provided for the practice of determining deportability and ruling on an application
It must be concluded that Congress knew of this familiar administrative practice and had it in mind when it enacted
It can hardly be contended that the meaning of the phrase “final orders of deportation” is so clear and unambiguous as to be susceptible of only a narrow interpretation confined solely to determinations of deportability. If anything, the literal language would appear to include a denial of discretionary relief, made during the same proceedings in which deportability is determined, which effectively terminates the proceeding. In arriving at the intended construction of this language, we must therefore inevitably turn to the purpose of Congress in enacting this legislation. The fundamental purpose behind
“Other aliens, mostly subversives, gangsters, immoral [persons], or narcotic peddlers, manage to protract their stay here indefinitely only because their ill-gotten gains permit them to procure the services of astute attorneys who know how to skillfully exploit the judicial process. Without any reflection upon the courts, it is undoubtedly now the fact that such tactics can prevent enforcement of the deportation provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act by repetitive appeals to the busy and overworked courts with frivolous claims of impropriety in the deportation proceedings.”
The key feature of the congressional plan directed at this problem was the elimination of the previous initial step in obtaining judicial review—a suit in a District Court—and the resulting restriction of review to Courts of Appeals, subject only to the certiorari jurisdiction of this Court. As stated in the same Committee report, the plain objective of
Although the Court of Appeals agrees that the basic purpose of
In substance, we feel that the Court of Appeals was wrong in limiting the phrase “final orders of deportation”
Paragraph (4) of the subsidiary exceptions to
Also, it seems rather clear that all determinations made during and incident to the administrative proceeding conducted by a special inquiry officer, and reviewable together by the Board of Immigration Appeals, such as orders denying voluntary departure pursuant to
We need not pass at this time on whether
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring.
Believing that a jurisdictional statute of this kind should be circumspectly construed, cf. Kesler v. Department of Public Safety, 369 U. S. 153, 156-157, and recognizing the force of the considerations which concerned the majority of the Court of Appeals, 308 F. 2d 779, I am nevertheless satisfied that the legislative history of
I therefore concur in the judgment.
