User talk:Arielaxelrad/sandbox

Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court found that the 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution forbid the imprisonment at hard labor without a jury trial for non citizens convicted of illegal entry to or presence in the United States.

In 1892, a federal judge sentenced four Chinese men; Wong Wing, Lee Poy, Lee You Tong, and Chan Wah Dong to 60 days of imprisonment and hard labor at the Detroit House of Corrections, followed by deportation. The men were convicted of unlawful residence under the Geary Act, an extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The men's lawyer appealed the imprisonment portion of their sentence until the case reached the Supreme Court. In finding for the plaintiff, the Court voided the imprisonment provisions of the Act. The men were not actually citizens and as such could not be subject to criminal punishment. The case ruled that unlawful residence was not a crime, and created a legal separation between the immigration and criminal justice courts. The Chinese men could not be subject to punishment of hard labor, but they could be detained before potential deportation.

This case established that non-citizens subject to criminal proceedings are entitled to the same constitutional protections available to citizens. The ruling was issued on the same day as the court upheld racial segregation laws in its infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

Lytle Hernandez,  Kelly. (2017) Ch3 Not Imprisonment in a Legal Sense of City of Inmates: Conquest, rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles 1771-1965e Romero, Roberto Chao. 2010. The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940. Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press.