Roosevelt continues the deportation wave begun under Hoover, with labor organizers being the primary individual targets.

‘Deportations Go On Under the New Deal’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 10 No. 134. June 5, 1933.

Perkins Continues Doak Policy

The wave of deportations against militant workers has been directed particularly against two revolutionary unions, the National Textile Workers Union and the National Miners Union.

While some of the cases originated under Doak, Secretary of Labor under Hoover, nevertheless the present, much-touted “liberal” secretary, Frances Perkins, has not only continued the prosecution of these workers, but her department has intensified the campaign against foreign-born militants. Thirteen workers in Pittsburgh district are facing deportation, and 11 of them are members of the N.M.U.

These include Frank Borich, secretary of the N.M.U., Vincent Kamenevich, district organizer of the Western Pennsylvania district, whom the Department of Labor is trying to exile to fascist Jugoslavia; other members of the N.M.U. slated for deportation are Norman Davis, Joe Shafer, Joe Yakerlin, Stove Devanich and S. Vinich.

Many Arrests

With the chief fire in New England being directed against the National Textile Workers Union, at least three of its leaders are now facing deportation. These are Edith Berkman, now at a sanitarium suffering from tuberculosis; Anna Burlak, and June Croll, textile organizer arrested at a recent meeting of the National Board of the N.T.W.U. Anna Bloch is still held by the Department of Labor on heavy bail because of her activities in connection with the National Hunger March.

Bernard Cleegan, another fighter for the unemployed, has just been ordered deported. Those previously arrested are Saul Paul, Wasil Bilida, Joseph Guberskl, Benjamin Saul and Goldie Waldman. On May 8, Paul Martinove was arrested at a Cleveland unemployed demonstration, beaten up and held for deportation. A series of protest meetings protesting against the arrest of Martinove and the whole campaign against the foreign born are now being held by the I.L.D. and the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners. This, of course, is only a partial list of workers arrested and held for deportation.

The attack on the foreign-born is not limited to those districts, however. Agents of the Department of Labor continue to jail workers in various parts of the country, and scores of workers are picked off jobs and breadlines about whom the I.L.D. often does not learn. Many of these workers are charged with “illegal entry,” and are swiftly deported.

The Thomas Case

A sinister feature of the present campaign of the Department of Labor is shown in the case of B.C. (Jack) Thomas in Pittsburgh. Thomas has just been convicted and faces 15 years imprisonment, to be followed by deportation, on the ground that when he applied for American citizenship some years ago he was a member of the Young Workers (now Young Communist) League.

Arguing that “inasmuch as the Young Communist League is not attached to the principals of the U.S. constitution,” the prosecution demanded a conviction against Thomas on the ground that he swore falsely that he would support the constitution of the U.S. when he applied for citizenship.

Thomas is a former miner and steel worker, and his arrest and conviction is stirring the workers in the Pittsburgh district against this latest attack by the Department of Labor.”

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v010-n134-NY-jun-05-1933-DW-LOC.pdf