Deporting Hispanics Born in the U.S. Echoes the (Anti-Chinese) Geary Act of 1892

The U.S. government is requiring a growing number of Hispanics along the Texas-Mexico border with U.S. birth records to provide other proof that they were born in the U.S. Some citizens are being denied passports; others are being held in detention centers; and others have been forced into deportation proceedings.

The situation is a reminder of the 1892 Geary Act, a law that expanded the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The Geary Act required Chinese laborers who resided in the U.S. to apply for a “certificate of residence.” The law shifted the burden of proof to the Chinese resident—and also required proof by two white witnesses. These white Americans would need to testify under oath in order for a certificate to issue.

Without a certificate, any person of Chinese descent was subject to deportation.

In Fong Yue Ting, a “Chinaman” (using the Supreme Court’s biased language) could not find a white person to testify under oath that he resided and worked in New York, though he produced American citizens born of Chinese parents to provide this affirmation. President Harrison's administration—like President Trump's— refused to take the word of a nonwhite person.

By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the Geary Act was constitutional. Fong Yue Ting was deported. Justice Field issued a stinging dissent—one that fits today:

“I utterly dissent from, and reject, the doctrine expressed in the opinion of the majority, that ‘congress, under the power to exclude or expel aliens, might have directed any Chinese laborer found in the United States without a certificate of residence to be removed out of the country by executive officers, without judicial trial or examination, just as it might have authorized such officers absolutely to prevent his entrance into the country.’

An arrest in that way, for that purpose, would not be a reasonable seizure of the person, within the meaning of the fourth article of the amendments of the constitution. It would be brutal and oppressive. The existence of the power thus stated is only consistent with the admission that the government is one of unlimited and despotic power, so far as aliens domiciled in the country are concerned.

According to this theory, congress might have ordered executive officers to take the Chinese laborers to the ocean, and put them into a boat, and set them adrift, or to take them to the borders of Mexico, and turn them loose there, and in both cases without any means of support.

Indeed, it might have sanctioned towards these laborers the most shocking brutality conceivable. I utterly repudiate all such notions, and reply that brutality, inhumanity, and cruelty cannot be made elements in any procedure for the enforcement of the laws of the United States.”

In 1903, the Supreme Court abrogated Fong Yue Ting, stating that deportation proceedings for aliens within the U.S. must conform to due process. Apparently, Trump administration officials do not know—or are willfully ignoring— Yamataya v. Fisher, 189 U.S. 86 (1903).