What is the offense for which this bill proposes to subject an allen to indefinite "supervision and detention"? In many instances simply the failure or refusal of the country of the aliens nationality or last place of residence to issue passport of travel documents permitting the alien to journey from this country to a foreign land. The alien becomes subject to this bill. with all Its hardships. even though he may make the most sincere efforts himself to obtain his passport or other authorization to return whence he came. * * Also deportation may be to a nonnative country where the language. customs. and mores may be strange or unknown to the deportee. Deportation is possible even to a country where ones life may be endangered. That is conceivably possible where a nonCommunist or antiCommunist is forced to go back to Soviet Russia or a satellite country of Soviet Russia there to be purged or liquidated. That to my mind is "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the eighth amendment to the Constitution. As was indicated by the late lamented Mr. Justice Murphy in his concurring opinion in the Bridges case (326 U. S. 135. 163164): "It is no answer that a deportation proceeding is technically noncriminal in nature and that a deportable alien is not adjudged guilty of a crime. Those are oversubtle niceties that shed their significance when we are concerned with safeguarding the ideals of the Bill of Rights. The Impact of deportation upon the life of an alien is often as great. if not greater. than the imposition of a criminal sentence. A deported alien may lose his family. his friends. and his livelihood forever. Return to his native land may result in poverty. persecution. and even death. There is thus no justifiable reason for discarding the democratic and humane tenets of our legal system and descending to the practices of despotism in dealing with deportation."
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