Fok Yung Yo v. United States, ante, 185 U. S. 296,
followed.
The authority of the government in prescribing regulations in
respect of transit being unqualified, and the existing regulations
not open to constitutional objection, the court below could not
interfere by habeas corpus with the collector's orders, and its
ruling on an offer of evidence, the entire record considered, was
not erroneous.
The case was argued with the preceding case by the same
counsel.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case was a writ of habeas corpus substantially like the
preceding case of
Fok Young Yo v. United States, ante,
185 U. S. 296. The
petition was addressed to the Circuit Court of the United States
for the Northern District of California, and alleged that the
petitioner had taken passage from the agent of the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company at Hong Kong to the City of Mexico, and received
from him a ticket for passage on one of its steamships to the port
of San Francisco, and an order upon the agent of the company at
that port for passage by rail thence to the City of Mexico; that,
upon arriving at San Francisco, the petitioner was, on September
28, 1901, examined by a customs inspector, his baggage and private
papers opened, and his person searched, and that he was held in
custody under an order of deportation by the collector of the port.
The agent of the steamship company at San Francisco made a return
to the writ stating that he detained the petitioner under the
collector's order of deportation. The district attorney of the
United States, in an intervention filed by leave of court,
suggested
Page 185 U. S. 307
"that the United States collector of customs at the port of San
Francisco, after a careful and due investigation, has decided that
he is not satisfied that the said Chinese person, the petitioner
herein, does intend in good faith to continue his voyage, if
permitted so to do, through the territory of the United States to
the Republic of Mexico, and has denied the said Chinese person for
that reason the privilege to further continue his journey through
the territory of the United States, and has ordered the said person
deported to China, the country whence he came,"
and that the court had no jurisdiction of the person of the
petitioner, or of the subject matter of the proceeding.
The petitioner filed a demurrer to the return and to the
intervention. The court overruled the demurrers, and ordered the
writ of habeas corpus to be discharged and the petitioner remanded
to custody. 111 F. 998. The court also allowed a bill of
exceptions, stating that it excluded, against the objection and
exception of the petitioner, evidence offered by him tending to
support each and all of the allegations of his petition. He
appealed to this Court.
This case must take the same course as that just decided. The
difference between them is that, in this case, the court sustained
the objection to an offer of evidence. But as, in our view, the
authority of the government in prescribing regulations is
unqualified, and these regulations are not essentially
unreasonable, and do not transgress constitutional limitations,
jurisdiction to interfere with the collector's orders was lacking,
and the ruling was not erroneous. If petitioner had just cause of
complaint of the conduct of the collector's subordinates, the
remedy is not to be found in his discharge on habeas corpus.
Order affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE BREWER and MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM dissented.