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EXPELLING THE FOREIGN-BORN MENACE: IMMIGRANT DISSENT, THE EARLY DEPORTATION STATE, AND THE FIRST AMERICAN RED SCARE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Emily Pope-Obeda
Emily Pope-Obeda*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This essay explores the impact of the First Red Scare on immigrant populations, focusing on the function that detentions, deportations, and attempted deportations occupied within the broader antiradical politics of the period. I assert that deportations were far more than an instrumentalist tactic of the Red Scare, but instead, were part of a much longer trajectory of expanding anti-immigrant enforcement and the postentry social control of foreign-born residents. Antiradical raids during the era have held a prominent place in the scholarly imagination, which has remained overly constrained by the exceptionalist and episodic narratives put forth by its earliest historians. I trace the evolution of scholarship on the Red Scare's temporal boundaries, the motivations for targeting immigrants, and the debates over how radical a rupture this period represented from earlier practices of antiradicalism and anti-immigrant politics. In doing so, I argue that Red Scare deportations must be understood in relationship to the broader deportation practices of the period and the rapid (and more consistent) growth of removals instigated because of racialized criteria of poverty, crime, health, or violations of an ever-stricter border regime.

Type
Special Forum
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 32 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2018 

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References

NOTES

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17 Even at their height, deportations under the anarchist provisions of the law only reached 37 in 1919, 314 in 1920, a peak of 446 in 1921, and 64 in 1922. See Clark, Jane Perry, The Deportation of Aliens from the United States to Europe (New York: Ayer Co., 1931), 225Google Scholar. Although the Acting Secretary of Labor issued over 3,000 warrants on Dec. 27, 1919 under 1918 provision that allowed for deportation of foreign-born members of the Communist Party or the Communist Labor Party, and over 4,000 suspected radicals were rounded up around the country on Jan. 2, 1920, the numbers actually deported were a much smaller fraction. Many warrants were never executed, and many others were later discarded because of a lack of evidence or the impossibility of transportation. See Murray, Red Scare, 210–19.

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24 Ibid.

25 Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor (Washington, DC, 1930).

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27 Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor (Washington, DC, 1919–1924).

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56 Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, 177.

57 “An Italian Taken in the Alien Deportation Raids of Feb. and Mar. 1926,” folder 50, box 4, Immigrants Protective League Records, University of Illinois at Chicago.

58 Schmidt, Red Scare, 27.

59 Schmidt, Red Scare, 15.

60 Schmidt, Red Scare, 27.

61 File 55208/General, RG 85, entry 9, Immigration and Naturalization Service Records, NARA.

62 Kanstroom, Deportation Nation, 148.

63 Kanstroom, Deportation Nation; Hong, “The Origins of American Legislation to Exclude and Deport Aliens for their Political Beliefs, and its Initial Review by the Courts”; Kraut, “Global Anti-Anarchism.”

64 Kraut, “Global Anti-Anarchism,” 180.

65 Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State, 20.

66 Kraut, “Global Anti-Anarchism,” 182.

67 Kanstroom, Deportation Nation, 137.

68 Hong, “Origins of American Legislation to Exclude and Deport Aliens,” 2.

69 Murray, Red Scare, 12.

70 Letter from Commissioner General to Commissioner of Immigration at Seattle, July 14, 1928, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Files 71-42, P2707, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

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77 Ibid.

78 Letter from Commissioner of Immigration at Seattle to Commissioner General, Apr. 3, 1928, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Files 71-42, P2707, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

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82 Letter from Commissioner General to Congressman J. V. McClintic, Mar. 25, 1930, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Files 71-42, P2707, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

83 Letter from Arizona Peace Officers’ Association to President Hoover, May 16, 1930, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Files 71-42, P2707, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

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87 Memorandum for Mr. Husband, Aug. 21, 1922, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Files 71-42, P2707, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

88 Letter from Ethel Strauss, Sept. 2, 1930, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Files 71-42, P2707, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

89 Letter from Chief Burgess James J. Hanlon to Secretary of Labor, Jan. 18 1932, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Files 71-42, P2707, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

90 Fischer, Spider Web, 69.

91 Murray, Red Scare, 239.

92 Murray, Red Scare, 240.

93 Ibid.

94 Goodall, Loyalty and Liberty, 82.

95 Murray, Red Scare, 261.

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104 Roberts, Whence They Came, 83.

105 Roberts, Whence They Came, 82.

106 Report of Meeting Held at the Hall of Local Number 127, Nov. 26, 1919, reel 12, Emma Goldman Papers, New York Public Library.

107 Hester, Deportation.

108 Hester, Deportation, 113.

109 Hester, Deportation, 139.

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111 Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor (Washington, DC, 1920).

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119 Letter from Commissioner of Immigration at Seattle to Commissioner General of Immigration, May 24, 1930, File 55727/399, RG 85, entry 9, NARA.

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121 Emanuel Pollack, “Whose America Is It Anyhow,” folder 26, box 4, Record Group 129: Labor Research Association Records, Tamiment Library.

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123 Letter from Norman Thomas to Eugene Lyons, Jan. 6, 1920, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Papers, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

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