Cuban Travel

William Worthy, a Negro reporter for the Baltimore Afro-American, returned to the United States from Cuba on October 10, 1961. He carried a birth certificate as proof of citizenship, a landing card and a customs declaration. He had no passport. Following a brief interrogation by immigration officers he was admitted to the U.S. But the next April a Florida grand jury indicted him for entry into the U.S. without a valid passport, allegedly a violation of the McCarran Act of 1952. On August 8 of the same year Worthy was found guilty and sentenced to three months imprisonment and nine months probation.

William Worthy was the first American to be indicted for violating the ban on travel to Cuba. Secretary of State Dean Rusk invoked the ban on January 19, 1961, stating: "In view of the conditions existing in Cuba . . . I find that the unrestricted travel by U.S. citizens to or in Cuba . . . would be inimical to the national interest." He claimed the power to do this under the McCarran Act, which says in part, "After such proclamation [of a national emergency by the President] . . . it shall be unlawful for any citizen to depart from or enter the U.S. without a valid passport." Worthy has appealed his case which will be heard again this year in a federal circuit court. Doubtlessly there will be more people who seek to test the legality of a limit on the travel of Americans in peace time.

Louis Zemel, for example, has already challenged the ban without leaving his Connecticut home. Zemel, who already has a valid passport, applied to the State Department for permission to travel to Cuba. He cited his reason for going as self edification--a desire to inform himself first-hand of conditions in Cuba. In April, 1962, the State Department summarily rejected the application and subsequently turned down his request for a hearing. Citizen Zemel then sued the government for the right to travel freely to Cuba, naming Secretary Rusk and Attorney General Robert Kennedy as defendants.

Zemel vs. Rusk will be heard by a special three-judge federal court in Hartford this winter. Since the case involves a Constitutional right, an appeal from this court goes directly to the Supreme Court. The argument against the government involves three basic questions. First, does the Secretary of State have the statutory authority to limit the travel of an American citizen, and, if he does, is such an authority constitutional? Second, is there (as Secretary Rusk claims) an inherent executive power to control travel? And, third, does a legitimate state of national emergency now exist?

It is interesting to note as a corollary to these arguments that an American commits a crime not by traveling to Cuba but by re-entering the United States after such a trip. To make a critizen's return to his own country a crime is to sanction banishment in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. It has always been recognized that a person has the right to reside in the country of which he is a citizen, and no court has ever declared the simple exercise of the rights of a citizen criminal. Yet the American who travels to Cuba now has the choice of accepting banishment or returning home to face imprisonment.

Zemel vs. Rusk will also test the alleged "state of emergency" that is now in force. In 1950, President Truman declared a state of emergency in connection with the Korean War. In 1953, he reiterated the stand. Since then ten years have passed without renewal or recall of the executive order. Zemel will contend that if U.S. citizens are subjected to such conditions of extreme duress, the government certainly owes them detailed and up-to-date explanations of its policy.

Student Protest

Fifty-nine American students who visited Cuba ths summer are testing the travel ban in a manner tactically different from the approaches chosen by Worthy and Zemel. Early in 1962, Castro issued an invitation to the Natonal Student Association. Apparently he felt that a student visit would improve the Cuban image in the eyes of the American public. Although NSA declined the invitation, Castro did not withdraw it. Last fall, a group in New York calling themselves the Ad Hoc Student Committee for Travel to Cuba set about organizing a trip to the island. The Committee finally sent fifty-nine students to Cuba for two months during the summer. Returning to New York, the students refused to surrender their passports to Immigration authorities. After a three-hour "sit-in," they were allowed to pass customs and leave the airport.

To date, three of the students who made the trip and a fourth who helped plan it have been indicted for traveling to Cuba and for "conspiring to effectuate such travel." By prosecuting only four of the people involved the Department of Justice is apparently attempting to establish judicial precedent for the treatment of future travel-ban abusers. The students' defense will take a line similar to the one that Zemel will use. But there is an additional issue involved here. While Zemel never left the United States and Worthy was not carrying a passport, the fifty-nine students were all armed with valid U.S. passports. Can the government hold that the sojourn of an American on Cuban soil invalidates an otherwise valid passport?

Speaking Tour Cancelled

The indicted students have been subjected to another juridical proceeding of questionable legality. Although the students have been released on bail in the custody of their lawyer, the court has restricted their movements to the "New York City area." Hoping to make money to pay for their defense and to present their case to the public in the best possible light, the four had accepted speaking engagements at universities around the country. The defense has moved for reconsideration of the local travel restriction, stating that since "bail is limited to providing assurance that the accused will appear for trial . . . [the travel restriction] deprives them of liberty without due process of law." The prosecution argues (accurately enough) that the defendants hope to arouse public ire against the Cuban travel ban. "The court need not commit judicial suicide by allowing issues before it to be pretried publicly for the avowed purpose of stimulating appeal for the defendants cause." The court is scheduled to rule on the motion in the next week.

The legal issues aside, the protests seem to have been prompted by a feeling that the travel ban stands as a patently hypocritical smear on the face of the Free World. In an article in the Brandeis Justice, Martin Nicolaus, one of the fifty-nine students, tells of meeting an East German technician on the flight from Prague to Havana. The German didn't understand why Americans had to fly to Prague to get to Havana. When the travel ban was explained to him, he smiled understandingly; "Ah, it is clear. It is as if I wanted to travel to West Germany. This ban of yours is something like we have in my country too." He was a little too right.