The use of immigration authorities to break unions and smash strikes is detailed in this important addition to the history of Gallup, New Mexico inter-racial, international miners’ struggle. A.L. Wirin, a lawyer observes the immigration hearings of Mexico-born miners facing deportation in the aftermath of the events of April 4, 1935 in which the local sheriff was killed. Over 100 miners would be deported.

‘Gallup, New Mexico: Uncle Sam Mops Up’ by A.L. Wirin from Pacific Weekly (Carmel). Vol. 2 No. 26. June 28, 1935.

IN THE aftermath of San Francisco’s general strike, in July, 1934, “citizens”, Legionnaires, and just ordinary hoodlums. “mopped up” radical headquarters and labor organizations. The performance of vigilantes and thugs in Pacific Coast cities last summer was re-enacted by deputy sheriffs, coal company “gun thugs” (that is what the workers call them) and black hooded mobsters in Gallup this summer.

In Gallup vigilantism, mob violence and the terrorizing of militant workers found a helpful ally in the Government of the United States. Even now United States immigration officials are putting the finishing touches to the “mopping up” process initiated by state officials and company storm troopers at noon on April 4, a few minutes after the fatal shooting of a sheriff and two workers.

Please don’t misunderstand me–there is now no open terror in Gallup; half drunk and fully armed “special deputies” no longer patrol the streets day and night. Lawyers for the defense have not been kidnaped, beaten and threatened with death in the last fortnight; workers’ shacks have not been ransacked for Communist literature and membership cards in the International Labor Defense or the Unemployed Council; nor have any miners or their wives or children been beaten, third-degreed, arrested or “questioned” in the last few days. All is quiet, for the moment, on this erstwhile bloody class war western front.

But quietly, methodically, secretly-literally behind closed doors Uncle Sam continues to “mop up”. Frances Perkins is conducting deportation “hearings” in Santa Fe. Those miners upon whom the state prosecuting attorney could pin no semblance of responsibility for the violation of any one of New Mexico’s thousands of “crimes” are now in the process of being removed from the scene of the miners’ struggles for labor rights, by Uncle Sam’s most effective strike breaking, anti-labor weapon-deportation.

Take the case of Jesus Pallares who has just received such a “hearing”. First, who is Jesus Pallares? Arriving in the United States from old Mexico in 1908 he has for the last twenty-seven years been a miner in the coal pits of the Gallup American Coal Company, the Albuquerque and Cerrilos Coal Company at Madrid, New Mexico. For some time he has been the fearless leader of the militant Liga Obera, New Mexico’s Spanish-speaking workers’ organization. As such, it was he who organized the protest march on the Governor April 5, the day following the shooting at Gallup and secured promises from New Mexico’s governor “of a fair deal to the workers the innocent will be protected and have nothing to fear”. It was he, too, who led a similar march of indignant Mexican workers to New Mexico’s capital while the last Legislature was still in session, to oppose New Mexico’s proposed state sedition law, a march so effective that it is generally credited by both reactionaries and liberals in New Mexico to have been responsible for the defeat of the proposed Fascist measure. Jesus Pallares is and for many months has been New Mexico’s local agitator number 1.

On May 17, Pallares gets his “day in court”. Nick D. Collaer, immigration inspector, is the “judge”; J.M. Wilson, immigration inspector, is the official reporter; David Levinson, International Labor Defense attorney, (an ugly scar on his forehead still bears mute evidence of what it means to be an I.L.D. attorney) represents the alien; everyone else is barred; a Spanish interpreter of the alien’s own choosing is excluded, as is Philip Stevenson, New Mexico’s most devoted friend of radical workers; after much negotiation, as counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union I am suffered to remain present on the express stipulation, however, that my mouth is to be shut–I am not to participate in the hearing in any manner.

And then the hearing proceeds. At last, after weeks in jail Pallares is informed of the charge. He is a “predicant” according to the unique code phrases these immigration authorities make use of that is, he is charged with “being a member of an organization that believes in the overthrow of the government of the United States by force and violence”. It appears very rapidly that Mr. Collaer, who sits now as judge, has already appeared as a witness against the prisoner and has already recommended that the warrant of arrest for deportation issue.

But the “fair and impartial” hearing proceeds. The record discloses that Pallares has been questioned before, back in the days of 1933 during the miners’ strike at Gallup. Thus, the following took place:

Question: “Is it true that you have been trying to organize a labor union in Madrid?”

Answer: “Yes, that is true. There is no harm in this, is there?”

Question: “What kind of a labor organization have you been trying to perfect there?”

Question: “Do you belong to the National Miners Union?”

Question: “What are the doctrines of the National Miners Union?”

Question: “Do you know whether the National Miners Union is a Communist organization?”

(Isn’t there something in Section 7a about workers joining any labor organization of their choosing, and the right to be free from intimidation or persecution because of such membership?)

And then Pallares:

Answer: “I know why you are really here. You were brought here by the coal company to try to get rid of me because they don’t want me here or anyone else that would interfere with the way they run things.”

The next witness was A.R. Clauser, coal company physician, who testified that he “impresses me as being a quarrelsome fellow. He urged the miners to join the National Miners Union for the protection of their rights”. Then comes J.W. Collier, scab, who declares that Pallares is “the chief agitator in the coal strike. He is a no good so and so. He complains the company isn’t giving him a fair deal. He is a born trouble maker. This company pays as good or better wages than any coal company in the southwest.”

Question: “Have you ever heard him make inflammatory speeches about the government?”

Answer: “No, not exactly–he urges the Mexicans to fight for their rights.”

And then, a statement by the “judge” himself, Nick D. Collaer:

“My survey of Communist activities in New Mexico established that Jesus Pallares was one of the most obnoxious agitators in the state…he has apparently been successful in inciting the native Mexicans through the Communist-led organization known as the “Liga Obera”.”

The next witness against Pallares was a fellow worker of his, José Martinez, who gave his testimony in the McKinley County courthouse on April 7, 1935. Here is a piece de resistance:

Question: “José, if there ever should come a time when the workers had arisen and perfected an army of such strength as to attempt to overthrow the government, would you side with the workers?”

Answer: “I would want to be in the army that would win.” Pressed further as to what he would do in the event both armies were of equal strength man for man and gun for gun, José capitulated and countered: “I would stay with the government,”

(Not so long ago a United States Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Rosika Schwimmer, a woman pacifist seeking citizenship, decided a person’s rights and liberties were not to be tested by “conundrums”; the Supreme Court of the United States disagreed with and reversed the decision. Presumably, such questions by immigration officials are in order.)

In any event, after the philosophic discussion set forth above, Martinez went on to say that he had joined the Communist Party and Pallares had persuaded him so to do.

What promises were used to secure this “confession” from him on the one hand and what threats or terror were employed on the other are still unknown. A general idea of the nature and extent of the terror that swept over all Gallup and must have filled the hearts of the 200 or more prisoners in the McKinley County courthouse when José Martinez made his “confession” on the 7th day of April, 1935, three days after the shooting, can now be had, however.

Summoned by a prearranged signal, a blow of the fire siren, two hundred armed Legionnaires, mine guards and ranchers were deputized as sheriffs shortly after the shooting; they rounded up and jailed practically all of the workers in Gallup’s mining community. “Bearing shotguns, rifles, the city’s single submachine gun and pistols of all descriptions,” declared the Gallup Independent, the morning after, “the special deputies combed Chiahuahuita, northwest Gallup and Black Diamond Canyon for radical suspects. ‘We are going to arrest everyone identified with the radical movement here,’ the sheriff said.”

The assistant district attorney in charge of the case admitted “questioning” 601 persons. The houses of more than one hundred miners were raided and searched, in most instances without any search warrant at all, in many cases under warrants issued on the pretense that a revolver from one of the officers “was stolen”. Half a hundred warrants were is sued for the search for this revolver, on an affidavit which recited that this same revolver was being concealed at the very same time in half a hundred different workers’ homes. The raids netted “communistic literature” which consisted for the most part of membership cards in the workers’ unions or their unemployed organization.

While all of Gallup during those raids remained a terrorized camp, of the two or three hundred workers in jail, the wo men and children were kept in the County Jail for two nights and two days, while the men were corralled in the County Courthouse, which was used as a “concentration camp” guarded by these specially deputized gun thugs.

Some workers were beaten, others third degreed, many threatened and still others promised immunity if they would turn state’s evidence against their comrades. All were “questioned” first by the armed guards, many of whom were drunk–a bullet hole in the ceiling of the courthouse still bears evidence of one of the guns that “accidentally” opened fire in the middle of the night–then by the state officials; then in turn by the immigration authorities. Apparently, there was a prearranged plan to deport those against whom no evidence of any violation of state law could be manufactured or “discovered”. All those jailed were under charges of murder. Obviously, it was not very difficult to bargain deportation to a terrorized Mexican worker for the electric chair.

When the authorities had gathered all the “evidence” they thought they needed against the miners, a program designed to railroad all of them, some for deportation and others to the state penitentiary and to the electric chair was at once initiated and carried forward with dispatch. On Saturday morning, within forty-eight hours of the shooting, the defendants were formally charged with murder; within an hour they were arraigned before the justice of the peace; they were induced to waive their preliminary hearing by the district attorney; informations were filed against them before a District Judge, who was conveniently present to take over the proceedings from the justice of the peace; they were held without bond and shipped off to the state penitentiary at Santa Fe to be quartered in the death cell there–all this without the presence of a lawyer and after being denied a postponement to procure a lawyer, and the right to have counsel.

The Gallup Independent, which fights communism and stands for Americanism, described the proceedings thus:

“Unparalleled in New Mexico court annals was the courtroom scene and procedure last night as Gallup men and women were held on charges of murdering Sheriff M.R. Carmichael in Thursday’s riot. District Judge Luis Armijo, who presided, said never in his long career at the bar had he ever seen or heard of such a proceeding. Even the charges themselves were unusual. A seldom used territorial law was invoked against all who could be identified in the mob that killed the officer. The courtroom scene had never been equaled in color of the backdrop of 36 turbulent hours when the town was under a semi-military rule of 250 special deputies. A 30-30 caliber Winchester rifle lay on the judge’s desk as first Justice William M. Bickel and District Judge Armijo presided for the preliminary hearing and the arraignment. Arms bristled through the courtroom, heavily guarded both at the door and inside the courtroom railing. Rifled deputies stood about the judge’s and prosecutor’s table and occupied the jury box. As a matter of fact, there is no record of the territorial statute referred to ever having been used before, even in territorial days, and certainly not in modern times.”

In Santa Fe later the assistant district attorney told me that the men had been removed from Gallup “for their own benefit”, to be away from the gun thugs and vigilantes. I have it on good authority that Judge Armijo insisted upon the Winchester rifle on his desk as personal protection against the gun thugs, so many of whom were irresponsibly drunk.

It was during the height of such a reign of terror that José Martinez, and other workers gave testimony to the immigration authorities against themselves and their comrades, which evidence is now the basis for deportation proceedings against a score or more of New Mexico’s mine workers and strike leaders.

It isn’t often that labor has in its possession written admissions of lawlessness by the prosecuting authorities; it is even more rare for such admissions to be under oath. Such evidence, however, is now at hand. In the course of a petition for writ of habeas corpus filed in behalf of the workers in the District Court at Santa Fe before Judge M.A. Otero, Jr., Sheriff D. W. Roberts under oath and in writing had this to say: “That since the commission of said crime on the 4th day of April, 1935, more than one hundred persons have been taken into custody by your respondent for investigation concerning their connection with said riot and murder, and just as rapidly as the investigation of each individual party has been completed, complaint charging murder has been filed against them or the prisoners have been discharged or released from custody.” (The sheriff admits “more than 100”; the actual figure is somewhere between 200 and 600.)

The sheriff goes on to say that the prisoners were “arrested and taken into custody by this respondent or his deputies…upon orders issued by the District Attorney…for investigation and said prisoners are being held pending the completion of said investigation.”

The law is clear that no one may be arrested for investigation; that an arrest may be made only when the arresting officer has “reasonable cause to believe that the person arrested has committed an offense.” Sheriff Roberts has confessed, accordingly, wholesale unlawful arrests.

But what is even more significant with respect to other prisoners, the sheriff stated that he was “acting merely as a temporary custodian for the United States…and working in conjunction and in comity with the immigration authorities of the United States”; no deportation warrants of arrest had been issued the detention was clearly unlawful both under Federal and state law.

The only justification offered by the sheriff was, as suspected by the workers and their friends, “comity” between the state and Federal officials–a comity which in the face of the facts set forth above means nothing short of a conspiracy by the Government of the United States and the State of New Mexico to railroad workers first to the electric chair if possible, and secondly out of the state and out of the country as an alternative.

Relying upon the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Scottsboro cases, Judge Otero declared all the proceedings in Gallup void and ordered new hearings.

Additional evidence of this conspiracy came in the course of the new preliminary hearing before Judge Otero. Forty-eight workers were on trial on charges of first degree murder; in the course of the trial twenty of them were not only not identified as being anywhere near the scene of the shooting, but their names were not even mentioned in the course of the entire hearing. The District Attorney ceremoniously arose and announced that he was ready to dismiss the charges against three of the workers, Crescenciano Villa, Pillar Rodriguez and Albino Cass. Of course, counsel for the defense welcomed the move and were frankly shocked at this act of apparent generosity by the prosecuting officials. When I inquired of the District Attorney, however, as to what arrangements had been made for the transportation of these workers from Santa Fe back to Gallup, 220 miles away, the assistant district attorney replied with a smirk, “There is no need for transportation arrangements; they will be seized at once by the United States Marshal for deportation,” It was then that counsel for the defense talked of “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” and demanded that the prisoners continue within the jurisdiction of the state court as witnesses for the defense; and it was in the course of that proceeding that Judge Otero announced that although he had no control over the Federal immigration authorities no arrests should be made in his courtroom. But this was after the three workers were arrested in open court by the marshal and when Attorney David Levinson was placed under technical arrest for advising the workers of their rights.

Further, after the preliminary hearing was over two of the workers released were immediately rearrested on deportation warrants, and five of the ten awaiting trial for murder were also rearrested on deportation charges.

Word comes from Washington now that Frances Perkins has ordered the program of intimidation of witnesses for the defense by her immigration agents to cease, and the terror to halt, and all further deportation proceedings to be postponed until after the murder trial–this through the insistence and persistence of Congressman Vito Marcantonio and tremendous protest and pressure which have poured in on her, and from working class organizations and liberals throughout the country. That is well.

But the outraged, indignant, harassed miners of New Mexico still feel that the Government of the United States, Frances Perkins and her immigration inspectors have served well the interests of the Gallup American Coal Company and that the immigration laws of the United States have been used (and abused) quite effectively as anti-labor weapons against workers fighting exploitation and starvation.

Pacific Weekly, based in Carmel, California was edited by William K. Bassett, Lincoln Steffans, and Ella Winter from late 1934. A Popular Front-era ‘fellow-traveler,’ magazine that became more of a Party press over its life. With a strong literary and arts focus, something of a West Coast ‘New Masses’, the weekly did not survive long after Steffans death in June, 1936. Though its run was short, Pacific Weekly is a rich record of left-wing 1930s writing with authors like publishing work in its pages.

PDF of full issue: https://archive.org/download/ccarm_008375/ccarm_008375_access_text.pdf