Mezei, a long-time resident of the United States who had journeyed abroad to visit his mother, was excluded on undisclosed security grounds when he returned. After some sixteen months in custody, the government announced that it had abandoned its futile efforts to find a country to which he could be deported. Thereafter, Mezei remained on Ellis Island in what Justice Black in dissent described as an “island prison” in which Mezei must “stay indefinitely, maybe for life.” The Supreme Court summarily rejected Mezei's challenge to his exclusion.

Having never seen the government's evidence, there was of course little for the Court to say. Mezei, it noted, was actually the beneficiary of “legislative grace”; as an excludable alien, the authorities could have kept him aboard the vessel that brought him here rather than extending “temporary haborage” at Ellis Island. Mezei's complaint was with the countries that would not accept him, not with the American government. “An alien in [Mezei's] position,” the Court concluded, “is no more ours than theirs.”