American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [175]
This did not prevent Congress from initiating three days of hearings in November 1919 at Ellis Island to look into charges that Howe’s administration was lax, especially regarding suspected radical detainees. Howe had already weathered one congressional hearing dealing with his alleged lenient treatment of alien prostitutes.
During this second hearing, Congressman John Box of Texas called the inspection of immigrants at Ellis Island a farce, a characterization that Howe’s deputy, Byron Uhl, did not dispute, saying that it had become “largely a matter of checking names.” The committee chairman, Albert Johnson, asked Uhl whether it was Howe’s desire to turn Ellis Island into “a place of individual government, letting everyone do as he pleased.” Uhl had been fairly taciturn in his responses, but answered that that had been his impression. In addition, he admitted that nearly all employees at Ellis Island were of the opinion that Howe’s policies were “utterly improper.” Uhl admitted that under Howe each detainee at Ellis Island could just about do as he or she pleased.
The committee also released at letter from anarchist Emma Goldman to Howe in 1915, addressed to “My Dear Fred.” Critics argued that the letter implied a friendship between the two, yet another piece of evidence that Howe was soft on radicals.
Howe was present during the hearings at Ellis Island, but was not on the witness list. At a number of points during proceedings, he tried to answer charges but was silenced by the chairman. Later, Howe made his case to the press outside the hearing, explaining that he had never released anyone from Ellis Island without the explicit order from the Labor Department. In a literal sense, what Howe said was true. The decision to parole or release detained radicals was made by his superiors, but it was Howe’s intercession that stalled the proceedings and allowed the radicals a second chance to make their case to Washington.
Back inside the hearing, the congressmen seemed particularly bothered that not only were the Red Special detainees, as well as others held at Ellis Island, released on their own recognizance, but the government had no idea where they were. “Whereabouts now unknown,” was the phrase that attached itself to name after name of suspected radicals. In the course of the hearings, it came out that 697 warrants of arrest had been issued for the deportation of suspected radicals between February 1917 and November 1919. Of that number, only 60 had actually been deported.
The press had a field day with the revelations. The most colorful, if overwrought, description came from the Cleveland News, which described Ellis Island as a “government institution turned into a Socialist hall, a spouting ground for Red revolutionists . . . a place of deceit and sham to which foreign mischief-makers are sent temporarily to make the public think the Government is courageously deporting them.” The New York World complained that Ellis Island was in danger of becoming a “perpetual joke,” where a workforce of guards consisting of “one-legged, one-armed or decrepit old men” was in danger of losing control to anarchists.
The case of the Red Special detainees was a false start in the government’s battle against suspected alien radicals. The next round of arrests and deportations, which were already underway during the Howe hearings, would be much different.
The next series of roundups had their genesis on the desk of A. Mitchell Palmer, the attorney general. But there was a problem: the power of deportation lay not with the Department of Justice but with the Department of Labor. William B. Wilson, who headed the newly created department, reminded Palmer of this fact in a letter, temporarily derailing Palmer’s crusade. But Wilson had become increasingly disengaged from his job and was in no position for bureaucratic infighting. His wife had recently suffered a stroke, so he took an extended leave from his job to care for her. Adding to his burdens, Wilson himself fell sick and was rarely seen in his office