Isabel González

Who was Isabel González?

Isabel González was a Puerto Rican activist who helped pave the way for Puerto Ricans to be given United States citizenship. As a young unwed pregnant woman, Gonzalez had her plans to find and marry the father of her unborn child, derailed by the United States Treasury Department, when she was excluded as an alien "likely to become a public charge" upon her arrival to New York City. Gonzalez challenged the Government of the United States in the groundbreaking case Gonzales v. Williams. Officially the case was known as "Isabella Gonzales, Appellant, vs. William Williams, United States Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York" No. 225, argued December 4, 7, 1903, and decided January 4, 1904. Her case was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, filed February 27, 1903, after also having her Writ of Habeas Corpus dismissed. Her Supreme Court case is the first time that the Court confronted the citizenship status of inhabitants of territories acquired by the United States. Gonzalez actively pursued the cause of U.S. citizenship for all Puerto Ricans by writing and publishing letters in the New York Times.