American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [173]
The detainees were a random lot of IWW organizers, political radicals, and eccentrics. Among them was thirty-four-year-old E. E. McDonald, who had been born in Denmark and had come to the United States when he was eight. A local newspaper called the picturesque McDonald the poet laureate of the Ellis Island detainees. He even composed a poem there called “Song of the Alien Deportees.”
In the shadow of the statue
That Bartholdi’s hand designed We are waiting for the mandate That will make us leave behind All the friends and kin and loved ones We have here on this fair shore We are waiting to be exiled
From this land forevermore.
McDonald and the other passengers of the Red Special were still at Ellis Island when Fred Howe returned from Europe. When Howe complained about the status of the detainees, his superiors told him to mind his own business and follow orders. Howe was also dismayed that his colleagues at Ellis Island were “happy in the punishing power which all jailers enjoy, and resented any interference on behalf of its victims.”
Howe was swimming against the tide when it came to the country’s attitude toward radicals. Congress had added anarchists to its list of excluded groups back in 1903, and the 1917 Immigration Act expanded the definition of excluded or deportable immigrants to include not just anarchists, but also “persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States.” The following year, Congress gave officials more latitude to define alien radicals. Undesirable immigrants were now defined as those “opposed to all organized government,” who advocated or taught “the unlawful destruction of property,” and who belonged to an organization that advocated any of the above measures.
This expansion of the law allowed Anthony Caminetti, commissioner-general of immigration, to launch a personal crusade against foreign-born, nonnaturalized radicals living in the United States. One of his first targets in 1918 was the Home Colony, a radical commune on the west side of Puget Sound some forty miles from Seattle. An investigation by government officials showed that the Home Colony was a kind of utopia-turned-sour whose middle-aged members seemed more interested in free love than revolution. It was small potatoes when compared to the IWW.
Though he was out of step with American anti-radical laws, Fred Howe did have one trump card at his disposal. He simply postponed all deportations, allowing the IWW lawyers to present their case to Washington. With additional time to hear the cases, the acting secretary of labor, John Abercrombie, overruled Caminetti and issued a memorandum to all immigration officials stating that the department had never declared the IWW to be an anarchistic organization and therefore its members could not be deported. In all future cases, he declared, a Wobbly’s actions, and not simply his membership, would be the basis for deportation.
Using this new standard, the department took up the case of James Lund, an immigrant from Sweden and a member of the Seattle IWW. The Labor Department found, contrary to earlier findings, that there was little evidence that he advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government. Therefore, it ordered Lund released on his own recognizance, or in effect paroled. The cases of eleven others were deemed to be similar to Lund’s and they too were paroled on March 17. In the next six weeks, eleven more alien radicals were set free. One suspected radical escaped from custody, while four others were discharged outright and one was found to be an American citizen.
For those Red Special radicals still in custody at Ellis Island, attorneys Lowe and Recht pursued a round of habeas corpus writs to free the detainees. Judge Augustus Hand ruled in the case of Sam Nelson that he could only find that the detainee believed in an “irreconcilable conflict between employer and employee.” This was not enough, in the eyes