387 U.S. 118 (1967)
Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service is a landmark Supreme Court decision at the intersection of immigration law, statutory interpretation, and constitutional due process.
Does the term psychopathic personality in INA § 212(a)(4) encompass homosexuals such that an alien who was homosexual at the time of entry was excludable and is therefore deportable for having been excludable at entry, and is the statute unconstitutionally vague or otherwise invalid as applied?
Under the INA, an alien is deportable if, at the time of entry, the alien was within a class of persons excludable by statute. INA § 241(a)(1) (then 8 U.S.C. § 1251(a)(1)). INA § 212(a)(4) (then 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(4)) excluded aliens afflicted with psychopathic personality, epilepsy, or a mental defect. Congress intended psychopathic personality to include homosexuals and other sexual deviates. Deportation is a civil, nonpunitive proceeding, and the Ex Post Facto Clause does not apply. A statute is not unconstitutionally vague as applied where legislative history and administrative practice give a term a sufficiently definite meaning in the relevant context.
Yes. Congress intended psychopathic personality in INA § 212(a)(4) to include homosexuals; therefore, an alien who was homosexual at the time of entry was excludable and is deportable under § 241(a)(1). The statute, as applied, is not unconstitutionally vague, and no separate medical diagnosis or certificate was required for the deportation order.
Boutilier is a canonical immigration case for statutory interpretation and the scope of the federal government's plenary power over admissions and removals. It illustrates how legislative history can be decisive in construing opaque statutory language and how the Court treated deportation as a civil consequence with relaxed constitutional constraints compared to criminal statutes. Historically, the decision entrenched a discriminatory regime that excluded LGBTQ immigrants under the rubric of psychopathic personality and, later, sexual deviation. Although Congress repealed that exclusion in 1990 and modern constitutional doctrine has evolved significantly on LGBTQ rights, Boutilier remains a key study in immigration exceptionalism, vagueness analysis in civil contexts, and the consequences of deferring to congressional classifications in the immigration domain.