213 F. 901 | E.D. Pa. | 1914
Thus seems the law to stand on general principles. It only remains to test their soundness by a reference to the decided cases. This test is met by the case of United States ex rel. Barlin v. Rodgers, 191 Fed. 970, 112 C. C. A. 382, and no other citations of authorities are called for to vindicate the conclusions reached.
At the cost of perhaps unduly lengthening this opinion, we do feel called upon to discuss the legal merits of this particular case. This is the due of the relators and their counsel. The relators among them bridge the whole span of life. At the one end is a helpless child; at the other is an equally helpless old woman. Between them is a boy of 15 and a girl of about the same age, together with a young man and a young woman very little older. They are without powerful or influential friends, and against them they have arrayed the officials who represent the migHt of a great nation. Poor people so situated have the right to know and to feel that their cause has been patiently and fully heard and their claim of right not lightly regarded. Their counsel ar
There are only a few points that need to be touched upon. The case of these relators has been heard and considered fully and carefully by the proper executive department of the government, and the order which we are asked to render ineffective comes before us bearing the approval of the Secretary of Labor as just and proper. The touchstone of the whole case is to be found in the statement that this court is asked to review the findings of another department of the government upon a question of fact which it was clearly within their province to have found either as they did or differently from what they did. The appeal is made “to this court for a review of the decision.” To an appeal to review the whole proceedings in order that it may be determined whether the immigration authorities in depriving these relators of their liberty acted within the scope of the authority conferred upon them by the act of Congress, any court would and ought to make a quick response. The response of the court would be equally prompt whether the official had openly and boldly usurped a power and jurisdiction which the law had not conferred upon him, or whether he resorted to the always miserably unjust and sometimes the cowardly expedient of attempting to hide the real facts under findings which rest upon nothing but his own desire to grasp the power to do violence to the rights .of others, which he could not otherwise wield than by standing upon false findings of fact. Intellectual dishonesty should never be permitted to confer either jurisdiction or power upon any official, and, when power thus acquired is attempted to be used to another’s hurt, the courts should be alert to halt it.
The appeal of the relators must be made to the Department of Labor, who can alone give them relief. The relators are therefore remanded to the custody of the immigration authorities, to be dealt with according to law.