Jose Angel Ocon v. Herman R. Landon, District Director, Immigration and Naturalization Service

218 F.2d 320, 1954 U.S. App. LEXIS 3255
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedDecember 18, 1954
Docket320
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 218 F.2d 320 (Jose Angel Ocon v. Herman R. Landon, District Director, Immigration and Naturalization Service) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jose Angel Ocon v. Herman R. Landon, District Director, Immigration and Naturalization Service, 218 F.2d 320, 1954 U.S. App. LEXIS 3255 (9th Cir. 1954).

Opinion

STEPHENS, Circuit Judge.

We are considering an appeal by Jose Angel Ocon from an order of the district court dismissing a petition for the issuance of the writ of habeas corpus in which petitioner sought to be released on bail bond from the custody of respondent, pending termination of an action in the district court wherein petitioner alleges that an administrative order to deport appellant is wholly illegal.

Prior to the filing of the petition for habeas corpus, Ocon had been arrested under an Attorney General’s warrant issued in a proceeding to deport him as an alien who “is or at any time has been after entry a member of the Communist Party of the United States” 1 under the provisions of the Immigration *322 and’Naturalization Act óf 1952. 2 Before the hearing on the charge, he had been released on bail from detention and later, but before the issuance of the deportation order, he had been retaken into -custody and was held without the privilege of bail. The administrative hearing resulted in the issuance of an order for Ocon’s deportation and he was continued in custody by respondent Landon in his official capacity as District Director of Immigration and Naturalization Service.

After the order of deportation had issued, Ocon filed an action in the district court against Landon as director etc. for an injunction restraining Landon from enforcing, executing, or otherwise carrying into effect the final order of deportation, alleging in his complaint that he was not afforded due process of law in the deportation proceedings, and that the order was contrary to the evidence, and that the proceedings were based upon a statute unconstitutional upon its face, citing the following statutory enactments:

“Act of June 27, 1952, 8 U.S.C.A. § 1329, and Act of June 11, 1946, 5 U.S.C.A. §§ 1001-1011 and 10, 5 U. S.C.A. § 1009.”

For a second cause of action in the same complaint Ocon alleged that a controversy existed “as to whether defendant may deport, attempt to deport, or require plaintiff to surrender for deportation” and contends that the deportation order “is arbitrary and illegal because it is not supported by reasonable substantive and probative evidence and is based upon incompetent evidence; that the order was entered without observance of procedure required by law * * and the order is in violation of the First, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. For brevity and to distinguish it from the habeas corpus proceeding, we shall refer to this case as the “declaratory case”.

Under the complaint which has just been outlined, the district court issued its order for Landon, the defendant, to appear at a day certain and show cause why he should not be “enjoined and restrained during the pendency of this action from deporting * * * or removing * * * plaintiff from the Southern District of California and from requiring the surrender of plaintiff or taking him into custody for deportation.” It was further ordered that, pending hearing on the show cause order, plaintiff should not be removed from the Southern District of California.

It was and is contended by Ocon that the pendency in the declaratory case rendered respondent powerless to deport him and therefore holding him in custody was and is illegal. If we understand it, petitioner contends that since he has been taken into custody and there is pending in the declaratory case the attack on the administrative procedure which resulted in the deportation order, and petitioner has shown by his complaint therein that substantial issues are presented, he is entitled therefore to be released on bail while that case winds its long course toward finality. If petitioner is right in this, it follows that the protection to the United States from alien Communists by their continued governmental custody after the order of deportation and until final decision in a court review, is completely nullified. Hereinafter we shall show that the government is not so impotent.

The habeas corpus proceedings alluded to were filed before the hearing on the show cause order, issued in the declaratory case, and while Ocon was in Landon’s custody pursuant to the Attorney General’s order heretofore referred to. In that (the habeas corpus proceeding) Ocon demanded his release from custody on reasonable bail pending determination of the district court review and declaratory action.

It is not asserted in Ocon’s habeas corpus , petition or in his traverse to respondent’s Return that he is or is not a citizen or national of the United States, nor that he has not been or is not a *323 Communist. 3 And since he does not deny the status of an alien or that he has been or is a Communist, these facts are admitted so far as the habeas corpus proceeding is concerned. However, he recites in his petition the fact of his original arrest, his release on bond, his retaking into custody, the order of deportation, and the pendency of the district court action. He goes on and asserts that “the revocation of administrative bail and the refusal to admit the petitioner to bail during the pend-ency of the proceedings and the final determination of the issues raised by petitioner’s complaint,” was ordered without any showing by “Respondent [Landon] of any change of circumstances warranting the revocation of administrative bail * * * during the pend-ency of the proceedings and the final determination of the issues raised by petitioner’s complaint, * * * and that the action of the Respondent [in revoking bail and holding him in custody] is arbitrary and void and capricious.”

Ocon argues in his brief that § 242(c) of the Act, 8 U.S.C.A. § 1252(c), does not justify the re-arrest, citing the case of Rubinstein v. Brownell, 1953, 92 U.S.App.D.C. 328, 206 F.2d 449, 455, affirmed by an equally divided court, 346 U.S. 929, 74 S.Ct. 319. That section of the Act refers to admission to bail after order of deportation has issued and during the six months’ period following the order. Whatever comfort Ocon can get from this holding is more than dissipated for in the cited case the court held that § 242(a) of the Act effectually covers the situation found in our case which is, that the power and discretion of the Attorney General to permit and deny bail is not exhausted when that official once permits bail. The court in the Rubinstein case quoted from U. S. ex rel. Yaris v. Esperdy, 1953, 2 Cir., 202 F.2d 109, 111: “ ‘When there has been a revocation and a rearrest on the warrant, the test on habeas corpus of the lawfulness of the resulting detention is whether under the prevailing circumstances the Attorney General exercised a sound discretion.’ ” And we think this test applies throughout the deportation and court proceedings until the alien is deported or is finally declared to be non-deportable.

But Ocon does not rest here.

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218 F.2d 320, 1954 U.S. App. LEXIS 3255, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jose-angel-ocon-v-herman-r-landon-district-director-immigration-and-ca9-1954.