Fong Yue Ting v. United States

149 U.S. 698 (1893)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

In the first case, the petitioner had wholly neglected, failed and refused to apply to the collector of internal revenue for a certificate of residence, and, being found without such a certificate after a year from the passage of the act of 1892, was arrested by the United States marshal, with the purpose, as the return states, of taking him before a United States judge within the district; and thereupon, before any further proceeding, sued out a writ of habeas corpus. In the second case, the petitioner failed and refused to apply to the collector of internal revenue for a certificate of residence, and, being found without one, was arrested by the marshal and taken before the District Judge of the United States, who ordered him to be remanded to the custody of the marshal, and to be deported from the United States, in accordance with the provisions of the act. The petitioner had failed to clearly establish to the judge's satisfaction that by reason of accident, sickness or other unavoidable cause, he had been unable to procure a certificate, or that he had procured one and it had been lost or destroyed. In the third case, the petitioner had, within the year applied to a collector of internal revenue for a certificate of residence, and had been refused it, because he produced and could produce none but Chinese witnesses to prove the residence necessary to entitle him to a certificate. Being found without a certificate of residence, he was arrested by the marshal, and taken before the United States District Judge, and established to the satisfaction of the judge, that, because of the collector's refusal to give him a certificate of residence he was without one by unavoidable cause; and also proved, by a Chinese witness only, that he was a resident of the United States at the time of the passage of the act of 1892. Thereupon the judge ordered him to be remanded to the custody of the marshal, and to be deported from the United States, as provided in that act. All three had applied for writs, and all were denied. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.