Vlisidis v. Holland

150 F. Supp. 678, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3768
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedApril 18, 1957
DocketCiv. A. Nos. 21438, 21463
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 150 F. Supp. 678 (Vlisidis v. Holland) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Vlisidis v. Holland, 150 F. Supp. 678, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3768 (E.D. Pa. 1957).

Opinion

LORD, District Judge.

These are like civil actions for declaratory judgments and judicial review. The plaintiffs have been found to be aliens subject to deportation, and have been ordered deported. Those findings were the results of hearings conducted by Special Inquiry Officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, whose orders were affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Plaintiffs have asked this Court to find that the deportation orders are invalid, and to restrain the defendant from taking fur-their steps toward their deportation.

Defendant has moved for a summary judgment of dismissal.

These cases again present the now somewhat familiar situation in which alleged aliens stand mute at deportation proceedings. United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 1923, 263 U.S. 149, 44 S.Ct. 54, 68 L.Ed. 221; United States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 1927, 273 U.S. 103, 47 S.Ct. 302, 71 L.Ed. 560; United States ex rel. Zapp v. District Director of Immigration and Naturalization, 2 Cir., 1941, 120 F.2d 762; Quilodran-Brau v. Holland, 3 Cir., 1956, 232 F.2d 183; Ocon v. Guercio, 9 Cir., 1956, 237 F.2d 177; Caetano v. Shaughnessy, D.C.S.D.N.Y.1955, 133 F.Supp. 211; Williams v. Butterfield, D.C.E.D.Mich.1956, 145 F.Supp. 567; Da Costa v. Holland, D.C.E.D.Pa., 151 F.Supp. 746, opinion by Kirkpatrick, Chief Judge.

As may be expected, however, such cases present variations in the nature of the asserted grounds for deportation and in the reasons, if any, given for the silence of those appearing at the hearings on deportation.

In the present cases, the plaintiffs had been called to answer allegations that they were subject to deportation since they had entered the United States as non-immigrants and had thereafter failed to comply with the conditions of that status. In other words, the Immigration Service asserted, and determined [680]*680after hearing, both plaintiffs to be alien crewmen who had entered the United States on shore leaves and had failed to depart with their ships. On the ground that such asserted conduct could subject them to criminal liability under the statutes of the United States, the plaintiffs refused to answer the questions of the Special Inquiry Officers at their respective hearings. Over objections, the Special Inquiry Officers received in evidence a number of documentary exhibits from the departmental files. Such included material from which the Special Inquiry Officers made the findings upon which the orders of deportation were based.

Both aliens had been interviewed by Immigration Officers at Albany, New York, some time before the hearings which are here challenged. At those Albany interviews they had voluntarily executed sworn question-and-answer statements admitting alienage, the circumstances of their entrances at United States ports as seamen, and their subsequent violations of the conditions of such admissions.

The deportation proceedings here in question had been originally set for hearing at the New York Office of the Service. In response to requests by present counsel for plaintiffs, however, both cases were thereafter transferred to the Philadelphia Office of the Service, and took place in the latter city.

The chief contention of the plaintiffs is that, since the officers who originally interviewed the plaintiffs at Albany were not present at the Philadelphia hearings, there was no identification of the parties or the exhibits at the latter place. Those exhibits, which included landing permits, seamen’s papers, and a passport — in addition to the sworn statements heretofore described — were relied upon by the administrative triers of fact in reaching their decisions.

Somewhat significantly, plaintiffs have never denied that they are aliens, nor have they ever asserted that they are lawfully in this country. Their positions, throughout, have simply been that the Government did not prove the cases against them before the Special Inquiry Officers, in that the documents and exhibits were not related to them. Since the officers who conducted the Albany interviews were not produced at the Philadelphia hearings, they complain, they have been denied due process of law.

The matter has long since been settled in the United States Courts to the contrary. It is true that in most of the cases heretofore cited wherein alleged deportable aliens have refused to answer, there has been no claim of Fifth Amendment privilege. In others, such claim has been without substantial basis, e. g. Caetano v. Shaughnessy, D.C.S.D.N.Y.1955, 133 F.Supp. 211, 213. An exception is United States ex rel. Zapp v. District Director of Immigration and Naturalization, 2 Cir., 1941, 120 F.2d 762. There the aliens had maintained silence in administrative deportation proceedings, invoking the Fifth Amendment. Their claim of privilege was indeed warranted, since federal criminal indictments were then pending against them for the crimes of having failed to register as foreign agents and, as to petitioner Zapp, for having filed a false registration statement. Dismissing the peition for a writ of habeas corpus, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Clark, J., held that at page 764:

“* * * the privilege against self-incrimination may be operative in [deportation] proceedings, but in that event the alien’s silence may be evidence against him. Any limitation upon the right to exclude aliens because of other provisions of municipal or national law would, of course, be a serious impairment of sovereignty and might well produce dangerous results. * * * ”

The passage last quoted leads to the final aspects of the present case. Much has been made by plaintiffs of the unfairness, in the face of the Fifth Amendment claims, of the Government’s posi[681]*681tion that inferences may be drawn from the silences of those who refuse to answer on those grounds at deportation proceedings.

For one answer, it is settled that the inference may be drawn generally, and no less in these cases — since it is axiomatic that a deportation proceeding is civil rather than criminal (see Appendix I, infra.) Furthermore, in such cases, the Fifth Amendment privilege has no connection with the basic evidential proposition, as determined in the Zapp ease last cited. Elaboration of the evidential rule (as opposed to the due process rule) appears in part II of the Appendix.

In the present cases, the Special Inquiry Officers had before them departmental official records which would have been admissible even in federal judicial proceedings, see Rule 44, Federal Rules Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C., set out in part III of the Appendix. Such documents included, in the case of plaintiff Vlisidis, even a Greek passport bearing a photograph which the Special Inquiry Officer specifically found to be a good likeness of the person then before him. Insofar as an inference, drawn from the silence of the subject in the particular case, was deemed necessary to support the identifications and findings, such inference was clearly justified.

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Bluebook (online)
150 F. Supp. 678, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3768, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/vlisidis-v-holland-paed-1957.