In cases decided in March and April, 1952, comparable results were reached: The Internal Security Act of 1950, section 23, in authorizing the Attorney General to hold in custody, without bail, aliens who are members of the Communist Party of the United States, pending determination as to their deportability, is not unconstitutional.[1077] Nor was it unconstitutional to deport under the Alien Registration Act of 1940[1078] a legally resident alien because of membership in the Communist Party, although such membership ended before the enactment of the Act. Such application of the Act did not make it _ex post facto_, being but an exercise of the power of the United States to terminate its hospitality _ad libitum_.[1079] And a statutory provision[1080] which makes it a felony for an alien against whom a specified order of deportation is outstanding "to willfully fail or refuse to make timely application for travel or other documents necessary to his departure" is not on its face void for "vagueness."[1081]
The power of Congress to legislate with respect to the conduct of alien residents is, however, a concomitant of its power to prescribe the terms and conditions on which they may enter the United States; to establish regulations for sending out of the country such aliens as have entered in violation of law; and to commit the enforcement of such conditions and regulations to executive officers. It is not a power to lay down a special code of conduct for alien residents or to govern private relations with them. Purporting to enforce the above distinction, the Court, in 1909, held void a statutory provision which, in prohibiting the importation of "any alien woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution," provided further that whoever should keep for the purpose of prostitution "any alien woman or girl within three years after she shall have entered the United States" should be deemed guilty of a felony and punished therefor.[1082] Three Justices, however, thought the measure justifiable on the principle that "for the purpose of excluding those who unlawfully enter this country Congress has power to retain control over aliens long enough to make sure of the facts. * * * To this end it may make their admission conditional for three years. * * *" [And] "if Congress can forbid the entry * * *, it can punish those who cooperate in their fraudulent entry."[1083]