This article is being retracted in its entirety. One cannot draw a certain conclusion about the plaintiff’s parents’ citizenship, so the statement of the facts in the case and the government admission leads to no useful information for the controversy at hand.

United States v. Low Hong, the United States government admitted that Low Hong was a natural born citizen of the United States.

Low was born in the United States around 1894 of Chinese parents. At that time Chinese persons could not become naturalized citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. We may, therefore, be certain that Low Hong was not born of US Citizen parents.

Low was being held in bureaucratic limbo because of a law regarding the deportation of aliens. The government admitted that Low was a “natural-born citizen of the United States” but that he must still be held in custody until the deportation determination process concluded.

The court said that the law only applied to aliens and as the government had already admitted that Low was a natural-born citizen, he could not be held.