After Ashleigh was released from Leavenworth Prison at the end of 1921 and lost his appeals, he was deported as described below. He found his way to Moscow for the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International in November, 1922 and in time to see Lenin give one of his final speeches.

‘Charles Ashleigh Deported in an Iron-Bound Cage’ from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 6 No. 7. February 17, 1922.

New York. Charles Ashleigh, young English idealist and poet, has been deported by the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

The U.S. government seems to have been in great fear of this young man who never carried a weapon and who believes wars and brutality are wrong, because, when he surrendered himself at Ellis Island for deportation, the United States, through its duly authorized and accredited agents, took him below decks on the steamship “Aquitania,” thrust him into an iron-barred cage and turned the lock on him until the boat should have left the harbor.

The fact became known by the merest accident. None of Ashleigh’s friends were permitted to know when the deportation was to take place; but thirty minutes before the liner sailed he was permitted to telephone his attorney, Harry Weinberger. It happened that Weinberger had just collected a sum of money for Ashleigh from friends and sympathizers. The boat’s whistle was sounding “all ashore,” when Weinberger reached the docks, but the attorney managed to get aboard.

There was no Ashleigh in sight. All over the big liner Weinberger raced in a fruitless search. Finally one of the ship’s officers took him below. There was Ashleigh, caged. The money was handed to him through the bars. He didn’t want to accept it, but was practically forced to.

“They seem to have put me here,” he said, “for fear the statue of Liberty might see me as I go by.

“Perhaps it is well for me to leave America caged, for it seems to be symbolic of the American heart and mind which have also been regimented and caged.”

Ashleigh, who was sentenced to five years in Leavenworth for membership in the I.W.W., was freed by President Harding last Christmas on condition that he be deported. Among those who petitioned for his release were Hudson Maxim, Mary Heaton Vorse, Vachel Lindsay and Capt. Alexander Sidney Lanier, who during the war was with the military intelligence office.

In a statement just before presenting himself at Ellis Island for deportation, Ashleigh expressed his thanks to those who aided him to secure his freedom.

“But my enjoyment of freedom is marred,” he said, “by the thought of the men I have left behind in that gray place of stone and steel. I cannot forget Ralph Chaplin, his strong artist’s soul being gnawed away by the slow rat-like minutes of a 20-years sentence. I cannot forget Vincent St. John, whose conviction was absolutely unbased on any but these flimsiest kind of evidence and who was not even a member of the I.W.W. I cannot forget Sam Scarlett, who is serving his 20-years term with such splendid courage and gay gallantry. I cannot forget none of those splendid youths and men, poets, artists, workmen, who lie in prison for having uttered their opinion.”

Federated Press.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

PDF of full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1922-02-17/ed-1/seq-1