delivered the opinion of the court.
Lim Lung, on behalf of the appellant, Lem Moon Sing, presented to the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California an application in writing for a writ of habeas corpus, directed to one D. D- Stubbs, and to the collector of the port of San Francisco, requiring them to produce the body of the appellant and abide by such order as the court might make in the premises.
The grounds set forth in the application for the writ were substantially as follows:
The appellant was a person of the Chinese race, born in China, and never naturalized' in the United States.
At and before the passage of the general appropriation act of Congress, approved August 18,1894, he was a Chinese merchant having a permanent domicil in the United States at San Francisco and lawfully engaged in that city in mercantile pursuits, and not otherwise. That domicil had never been surrendered or renounced by him.
On the 30th day of January, 1894, while conducting his business as a merchant at San Francisco, being a member of the firm of Kee Sang Tong & Co., wholesale and retail druggists in that city, he went on a temporary visit*1 to his native land, with the intention of returning and of continuing his residence in the United States, in the prosecution of that business. ' He was so.engaged for more thttn two years before his departure for China, and during that time performed no manual labor except as was necessary in the conduct of his business as a druggist.
During his temporary absence in China the appropriation act of August 18, 1894, was passed. That act contained these provisions:
“ Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act: To prevent unlawful entry of Chinese into the United States, by the appointment of suitable officers to enforce the laws in relation thereto, and for expenses of returning to China all Chinese persons found to be unlawfully in the United States, including the cost of imprisonment and actual expense of conveyance of *540 Chinese persons to the frontier or seaboard for deportation, and for enforcing the provisions of the act approved May fifth, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, entitled ‘ An act to prohibit. the coming of Chinese persons into the United States,’ fifty thousand dollars.
“ In every case where an alien is excluded from admission into the United States under any law or treaty now existing or hereafter made, the decision of the appropriate immigration •or custom officers, if adverse to the admission .of such alien, shall be final, unless reversed on appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury.” Act of August 18, 1894, c. 301, 28 Stat. 390.
The appellant returned to the United States, November 3, 1894, on the steamer Belgic, belonging to the Occidental and Oriental' Steamship Company, of which D. D. Stubbs was secretary and manager. Upon his arrival here he applied to •John H. Wise, collector of customs at San Francisco, to be permitted to land and enter the United States on the ground that he was formerly engaged in this country as a merchant. He submitted to the collector the testimony of two credible witnesses other than Chinese, showing that he conducted business as a merchant here for one year previous to his departure, as above stated, from the United States, and that during that period he was not engaged in the performance •of any manual labor except such as was necessary in conducting his business as a merchant. His application to enter the United States was denied, and consequently he was detained, ■confined, and restrained of his liberty by Stubbs as secretary •and manager of the steamship company.
In addition to the above facts, the application for the writ of habeas corpus alleged that Lem Moon Sing had not been apprehended and was not detained by virtue of the judgment, •order, decree, or other judicial process of any court, or under any writ or warrant, but under the authority alleged to have been given to the collector of the port of San Francisco by the above act of August 18, 1894; that Lem Moon Sing was not at the date of the passage of that act nor for more. than one year prior to the date of his departure for China for temporary purposes, and is not now, an alien excluded from *541 admission into the United States under any law or treaty now existing; and that said D. D. Stubbs and said John Ii. Wise,, collector of the port, are without jurisdiction to restrain the said Lem Moon Sing of his liberty.
The petitioner also alleged that if Lem Moon Sing, should not be allowed to enter the United States and to resume his. residence and mercantile- business therein, and be sent back to China, he would sustain great and irreparable loss, and his. business be wholly destroyed, -whereby he would be denied “ that equal right granted to him by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and by the treaties made and existing between the United States and the Chinese Empire, which he is a subject.”
. It was further alleged that the detention and restraint of the liberty of Lem Moon Sing were without jurisdiction, void, and unconstitutional, and “ without due process of law and against his rights under the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the treaties made between the United States of America and the Chinese Empire, and wrongfully and unlawfully under and by color of the authority of the United States asserted and exercised by the said John H. Wise, collector of the port of San Francisco.”
The writ of habeas corpus was denied by the court below because in its judgment the application on its face showed that Lem Moon Sing was detained and restrained of his liberty by the collector of the port of San Francisco, under the act of Congress approved August 18, 1894, and consequently that jurisdiction-over the petitioner was with the collector of the-port of San Francisco. From this judgment an appeal has. been prosecuted to this court.
The present cáse is, in principle, covered by the former adjudications of this court.
In the
Chinese Exclusion Case,
The case of
Nishimura Ekiu
v.
United States,
•Nishimura Ekiu, a female subject oí the Emperor of Japan, was denied .the right to land in the United States, and was held in custody to be sent back to her country, as the statute required in such cases. She sued out a writ of habeas corpus. The Circuit Court of the United States confirmed the action of the inspection officer and remanded the petitioner to his custody.
*543
This court, observing that, according to the accepted maxims of international law, every sovereign nation has the power, inherent in sovereignty, and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of- foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe, said: “ In the United States this power is vested in the national government to which the Constitution has committed the entire control of international relations, in peace as well as in war. # It belongs to the political department of the government, and may be exercised either through treaties made by the President and Senate, dr through statutes enacted by Congress, upon whom the Constitution has conferred power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, including the entrance of ships, the importation of goods, and the bringing of persons into the ports of the United States; to establish a uniform rule of naturalization; to declare war,, and to provide and maintain armies and navies; and to make all laws which may be necessary and proper for. carrying into effect these powers and all other powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the /United States or in any department or officer thereof.”
“
The supervision of the admission of aliens into the United States may be entrusted by Congress either to the Department of State, having the general management of foreign relations, or to the Department of the Treasury, charged with the enforcement of the laws regulating foreign commerce; and Congress has often passed acts forbidding the immigration of particular classes of foreigners, and has committed the execution of these acts to the Secretary of the Treasury, to collectors of customs, and to inspectors acting under their authority.” Again : “ An alien immigrant, prevented from landing by any such officer claiming authority to do so under an act of Congress, and thereby restrained of his liberty, is doubtless entitled to a writ of
habeas corpus
to ascertain whether the restraint is lawful.” It was further said that Congress could, if it saw fit, as in the statutes in question in
United States
v.
Jung Ah Lung,
These questions were again elaborately examined in
Fong Yue Ting
v.
United States,
The petitioners having assailed the validity of that section, this court said : “ In
Nishimura Ekiu's
case, it was adjudged that, although Congress might, if it saw fit, authorize the courts to investigate and ascertain the facts upon which the alien’s right to land was made by the statutes to depend, yet Congress might intrust the final determination of those facts to an executive officer, and that, if it did so, his order was due process of law, and no other tribunal, unless expressly authorized by law to do so, was at liberty to reexamine the evidence on which he acted, or to controvert its sufficiency.
An effort is made to distinguish the case before us from those cited by the circumstance that the petitioner, Lem Moon Sing, had, before the passage of the act of 1894, lawfully acquired a domicil as a merchant in the-United States, and at the time of his departure from this country, for the purpose merely of visiting his native land, he was actually engaged in mercantile pursuits at San Francisco. The right of domicil, thus acquired, could not, it is earnestly insisted, be legally taken from him, nor its exercise obstructed by any action of executive officers of the government under whatever authority they proceeded ; and that to give conclusive effect to the acts of such officers, when enforcing the statute of 1894, would deny to the appellant that due process of law which is required by the Constitution of the United States.
Ve do. not understand the appellant to deny — indeed, it. could not, consistently with, the cases above cited, be denied — that if the. appellant had attempted, after the passage of the act of 1894, for the first time, to enter the United States for the purpose of engaging, in mercantile pursuits, his right to “admission into the United States under any law or treaty” could be constitutionally committed for final, determination to subordinate immigration or other executive officers, with the right of appeal (if the decision be adverse to him) only to the Secretary of the Treasury, thereby excluding judicial interference so long as such officers acted within the authority conferred upon them by Congress.
The contention is that while, generally speaking, immigration officers have jurisdiction under the statute to exclude an alien who is not entitled under some statute or treaty to come into the-United States; yet if the alien is entitled, of right, by some law or treaty, to enter this country, but is nevertheless excluded by such officers, the latter exceed their jurisdiction ; and their illegal action, if it results in restraining the alien of his liberty, presents a judicial question for the decis *547 ion of which the courts may intervene upon a writ of habeas eorpps.
That view, if sustained, would bring into the courts every case of an alien who claimed the right to come into the United States under some law or treaty, but was prevented from doing so by the executive branch of the government. This would defeat the manifest purpose of Congress in com!mitting to subordinate immigration officers and to the Secretary of the Treasury exclusive authority to determine whether a particular alien seeking admission into this country belongs to the class entitled by some law or treaty to come into the country, or to a class forbidden to enter the United States. Under that interpretation of the act of 1894 the provision that the decision of the appropriate immigration or customs officers should be final, unless reversed on appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury, would be of no practical value.
The power of Congress to exclude aliens altogether from the United States, or to prescribe the terms and -conditions upon which they may come to this country, and to have its declared policy in that regard enforced exclusively through executive officers, without judicial intervention, is settled by-our previous adjudications. Is a statute passed in execution of that power any less applicable to an alien, who has acquired a commercial domicil within the United States, but who, having voluntarily left the country, although for a temporary purpose, claims the right under some law or treaty to reenter it? We think not. The words of the statute are broad and include “ every case ” of an alien, at least every Chinese alien, who, at the time of its passage, is out of this country, no matter for what reason, and seeks to come back. He is none the less an alien because of his having a commercial domicil in this country. While he lawfully remains here he is entitled to the benefit of the guaranties of liije, liberty, and property, secured by the Constitution to all persons, of whatever race, within the jurisdiction of the United States. His personal rights when he is in this country and such of his property as is here during his absence, are as fully protected by the supreme law of the land as if he were a native or naturalized citizen of the United States. But when he has *548 voluntarily gone from the country^ and is beyond its jurisdiction, being an alien, he cannot reenter the United States in violation of the will of the government as expressed in enactments of the law-making power. He oannot, .by reason merely of his domicil 'in the United States for purposes of business, demand that his claim to reenter this country by virtue of some statute or treaty, shall be determined ultimately, if not in the first instance, by the courts of the United States, rather than exclusively and finally, in every instance, by executive officers charged by an act of Congress witk the duty of executing the will of the political department of the government in respect of a matter wholly political in its character. He left'the country subject to the exercise by Congress of every power it possessed under the Constitution.
It is supposed that the claim of the appellant is sustained by
Lau Ow Bew
v.
United States,
Nor is the claim of appellant supported by In re Panzara, 51 Fed. Rep. 275. That cáse was decided in 1892, and, therefore, did not involve the act of 1894. So, also, was the case of Gee Fook Sing v. United States, 7 U. S. App. 27, decided by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The remedy of the appellant was by appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury from the decision of his subordinate, and not to the courts. If the act of 1894 had done nothing more than appropriate money to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act, the courts would have been authorized to protect any right the appellant had to enter the country, if he was of the class entitled to admission under existing laws or treaties, and was improperly excluded. But when Congress went further, and declared that in every case of an alien excluded by the decision of the appropriate immigration or customs officers “ from admission into the United States under any law or treaty,” such decision should be final, unless reversed by the Secretary of the Treasury, the authority of the courts to review the decision of the executive, officers was taken away.
United States
v.
Rogers,
65 Fed. Rep. 787. If the act of 1894, thus construed, takes away from the alien appellant any right given by previous laws or treaties to reenter the country, the authority of Congress to do even that cannot be questioned, although it is the duty of the courts not to construe an act of Congress as modifying or annulling a treaty made with another nation, unless its words clearly and plainly point to such a construction.
Chew Heong
v.
United States,
To avoid misapprehension, it is proper to say that the court does not now express any opinion upon the question whether, *550 under the facts stated in the application for the writ of habeas corpus, Lem Moon Sing was entitled, of right, under some law or treaty, to reenter the United States. We mean only to decide that that question has been constitutionally committed by Congress to named officers of the executive department of the government for final determination.
The judgment of the court below denying the application for the writ of habeas corpus is affirmed.