#beet strike

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The strong emphasis on targeting “Bolshevik” organizations and immigrant groups associated with the Soviet revolution was, therefore, a major obstacle to the success of these operations. Immigrants from Russia, perhaps the most vehemently decried by the anti-radical public, faced a number of logistical and diplomatic impediments to their removal. In the aftermath of the vast raids of late 1919 and early 1920, authorities increasingly faced a glut of indefinitely detained prisoners with no feasible plans for their removal. These challenges also sparked noteworthy early debates over the international human rights implications of the growing global deportation regime. As Nick Fischer explains, “Deportees’ suffering did not end with expulsion, for the government had difficulty removing them to such countries as Russia, Armenia, Turkey, the Ukraine, and Austria. Yet the Bureau of Immigration persisted in attempting to deport aliens to these countries.”

Louis Post himself expressed an early iteration of this concern in his book following what he called the “Deportations Delirium of Nineteen Twenty,” explaining that in some rare cases, such as that of Mexican-born Enrique Flores Magon, safety was a consideration. “Had I ordered him to be deported to the country from whence he came,” Post wrote, “he would have been promptly shot … . No American-minded official who cherishes one of the noblest of his country’s traditions, that it is an asylum for the oppressed of all nations, could lightly deport an alien to such a fate even in the period of delirium.”

Over a decade later, radical organizations would take up the same claim about the danger of sending Mexican radicals back to their native country. In an unpublished 1933 “Document on Deportation,” produced by the Labor Research Association of New York (research and publishing organization founded in 1927 by a number of communist activists, although the organization was not formally connected to the party), one author explained that “Scores of leaders of the beet strike are deported to Mexico, where they are known as militant working-class fighters, and where they are either immediately thrown into prison or kept under constant watch.”

Throughout the era, lawyers for the detained radicals engaged in extensive correspondence with immigration officials over the potential dangers of their clients’ removal. Attorney Jacob Margolis wrote to Post in May of 1920 expressing concern over a rumored plan to send members of the Union or Russian Workers and the Communist Party to various provinces that had been part of Russia at the time of their departure, but were now controlled by Poland or Danzig. Such a plan, he explained was troubling, as “All of these men who are classed as Poles are very much opposed to being sent to Danzig as they are unable in the first place to speak the Polish language … and they are further opposed to being sent to Danzig or Poland because of the attitude of the Polish Government to any person charged with radical tendencies or ideas.” 

This concern was echoed by attorney Isaac Shore, who wrote to Commissioner Caminetti that if deported to Poland, “they will unquestionably be treated as enemies, not only for the reason that they are Russians, but also for the charge made against them in this country.” Furthermore, he went on, with a thinly veiled warning of international reproach, “I am reliably informed that if these men are sent to Danzig … they would be either executed or put in prison for an indefinite time … . It is no doubt the policy of your Department to do nothing that would jeopardize the lives of any of these men … . It would furthermore cause unpleasant complications with the Russian Government.” A telegram from attorney Charles Recht to the commissioner general stated this anxiety even more sharply, and reiterated the international ramifications, stating, “The lives of these people would be naturally jeopardized. To send them into this danger is both against spirit and letter of international law.” While the commissioner general responded promptly, reassuring Recht that these fears were based on erroneously distributed information, the struggle to find some method by which to deport Russian subjects continued.

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The specific focus on Russian immigrants in much of Red Scare scholarship, alongside the more general limitations of the Red Scare discourse, have also tended to reify the disproportionate visibility of particular types of white, European-born immigrant activists. Instead, a broader historical trajectory allows us to see the ways in which political repression and removal of foreign-born activists have been applied to leaders of color, from the controversial, but decidedly capitalistic, Marcus Garvey to anti-imperialist activists from China and India, to Mexican communists. As Deirdre Moloney notes, scholars have primarily focused on radical deportations of European communists and anarchists, in both the First and Second Red Scare eras, therefore neglecting a variety of significant cases, such as those of Garvey, Trinidadian Communist Claudia Jones, or Australian-born labor leader Harry Bridges. Indeed, she maintains, this gap “… emanates in part from a narrow definition of political activism and ideology. But by broadening the definition of politics to include social movements that focus on racial equality and labor rights, we can understand that federal authorities were concerned about immigrants beyond communities and anarchists.””