Summary
The Supreme Court sided with twenty-two women who sailed from China to San Francisco, deciding that Congress, not states, had the power to regulate immigration. Because the women traveled alone, the California Commissioner of Immigration determined that they were “lewd”, or prostitutes. They were detained and held on a $500 bond in gold until the Supreme Court ordered their release, declaring that only a federal immigration authority was empowered to determine the women’s status.
Source
MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court….
The plaintiff, with some twenty other women, on the arrival of the steamer Japan from China, was singled out by the Commissioner of Immigration, an officer of the State of California, as belonging to that class, and the master of the vessel required to give the bond prescribed by law before he permitted them to land. This he refused to do, and detained them on board. They sued out a writ of habeas corpus . . . .
All of plaintiff’s companions were released from the custody of the sheriff on a writ of habeas corpus issued by MR. JUSTICE FIELD of this Court . . . We regret very much that while the Attorney General of the United States has deemed the matter of such importance as to argue it in person, there has been no argument in behalf of the State of California, the Commissioner of Immigration, or the Sheriff of San Francisco, in support of the authority by which plaintiff is held a prisoner; nor have we been furnished even with a brief in support of the statute of that state . . . .
It is hardly possible to conceive a statute more skillfully framed, to place in the hands of a single man the power to prevent entirely vessels engaged in a foreign trade, say with China, from carrying passengers, or to compel them to submit to systematic extortion of the grossest kind.
The commissioner has but to go aboard a vessel filled with passengers ignorant of our language and our laws, and without trial or hearing or evidence, but from the external appearances of persons with whose former habits he is unfamiliar, to point with his finger to twenty, as in this case, or a hundred if he chooses, and say to the master,
“These are idiots, these are paupers, these are convicted criminals, these are lewd women, and these others are debauched women. I have here a hundred blank forms of bonds, printed. I require you to fill me up and sign each of these for $500 in gold, and that you furnish me two hundred different men, residents of this state, and of sufficient means, as sureties on these bonds. I charge you five dollars in each case for preparing the bond and swearing your sureties, and I charge you seventy-five cents each for examining these passengers, and all others you have on board.” . . . .
While the occurrence of the hypothetical case just stated may be highly improbable, we venture the assertion, that, if citizens of our own government were treated by any foreign nation as subjects of the Emperor of China have been actually treated under this law, no administration could withstand the call for a demand on such government for redress….
The Constitution of the United States is no such instrument. The passage of laws which concern the admission of citizens and subjects of foreign nations to our shores belongs to Congress, and not to the states. It has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations; the responsibility for the character of those regulations and for the manner of their execution belongs solely to the national government. If it be otherwise, a single state can at her pleasure embroil us in disastrous quarrels with other nations.
