American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [162]
Any male over the age of fourteen born in Germany, residing in the United States, and not a naturalized U.S. citizen, overnight became an alien enemy, part of a potential fifth column ready to strike America on behalf of the kaiser. Such individuals were banned from possessing any weapons or operating a plane. Alien enemies were barred from living within half a mile of any military base, aircraft station, navy yard, or munitions factory. Such aliens could not “write, print or publish any attack or threat against the Government or Congress of the United States.” Above all, no enemy alien could give aid or comfort to Germany, assist its war effort, or disturb the “public peace or safety of the United States.” Anyone suspected of violating these orders was subject to summary arrest and confinement. No trial or hearing was necessary.
This action was not unprecedented, but was based on the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which stated that if the United States was ever at war with a foreign nation, all adult males from that country residing in the United States who had not become naturalized citizens were deemed “alien enemies” and “shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed.” The legislation was part of a series of laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts, pushed through by members of the Federalist Party as the nation prepared for a possible war against France. While the other parts of the Alien and Sedition Acts either expired or were repealed, the Alien Enemies Act still remains law more than two hundred years later.
After Wilson’s proclamation, the government wasted little time in exercising its prerogative. America’s first wartime action took place not in Europe but on American soil, using agents from the Immigration Service. On the night of Wilson’s war proclamation, federal agents began rounding up German alien enemies and taking them to Ellis Island for indefinite detention. Literally overnight, Ellis Island’s role changed from an immigrant inspection station to a military detention facility.
As for targets, officials did not have to look far. Less than a mile up the Jersey coast from Black Tom stood Hoboken: the “Mile Square City,” the self-proclaimed birthplace of baseball and the hometown of Frank Sinatra, who was just a sixteen-month-old toddler when America declared war on Germany. In 1916, the tiny city had a large German population, thanks in part to the fact that the North German Lloyd and Hamburg-American steamship lines docked at Hoboken.
With war declared against Germany, steamships owned by German companies docked at American piers on April 6, including the President Lincoln and President Grant, were seized by the federal government. All German nationals working on those ships or on the docks were rounded up and taken to Ellis Island.
These men who made their living bringing immigrants to the United States now found themselves in detention. The ships whose steerage sections once carried immigrants would soon be shuttling American troops to the European front. A year later, German torpedoes would sink the President Lincoln off the coast of France.
The German officers and crew members were not prisoners of war and did not receive trials. Deemed alien enemies, they were rounded up and detained using the administrative apparatus of immigration law. The almost 1,500 Germans caused little trouble during their stay on Ellis Island, although they complained that they could not get beer. The men filled their days with calisthenics, games, and reading. The commissioner of Ellis Island found the men “obedient to discipline” and resigned to their situation.
One exception was the case of George Begeman, an officer on the North German Lloyd’s steamship George Washington. Begeman, along with three other colleagues, was granted a leave to visit a dentist in Hoboken. While the guard was getting a sandwich, Begeman fled the dentist’s office. He was last seen in a