The movement responds to the raids, arrests, and fear in immigrant communities as the Dies Bill goes into effect.

‘Protect the Foreign Born!’ by Peter Chaunt from Labor Defender. Vol. 8 No. 8. August, 1932.

Mass protests of “sundry citizens and organizations,” from 19 states, as laid before the Senate by Vice Pres. Curtis day after day since the House adopted the Dies bill, forced a compromise on the government. The Senate deferred action on the proposed deportation law but this temporary retreat is by no means surrender. On the contrary it is a maneuver to disarm the country-wide mass indignation. An attempt to avoid the issue of foreign-born persecution in the approaching presidential elections. In the meantime mass deportations continue with increased intensity.

The hysteria that characterized the notorious Palmer raids of 1920 is now tactfully avoided. Newspapers today do not flare headlines about the new hundreds of foreign-born workers arrested, abused and held for deportation.

Quietly without even a back page press account, the government dragnet is set and hundreds of men, women and children are snatched from their jobs and homes. Others are pounced upon at welfare offices, employment agencies, union day rooms, picket lines and club rooms. Even the parks are combed by federal bloodhounds, terrorizing picnic crowds and homeless unemployed. Negro neighborhoods are the scenes of daily mass raids. Illiterate men and women are deported to the West Indies, Latin America, and the South, only to be hired out as virtual slaves no plantation owners and manufacturers. Hundreds of Mexicans are literally kidnapped in Colorado, California and Florida. Citizens and aliens, children and adults alike are “repatriated” to Mexico.

Torture and death are meted out to militant workers by this government conspiracy. Tuberculosis, contracted in the Boston deportation jail, is the death sentence for Edith Berkman, courageous leader of the Lawrence Textile Strike. Inquisition at the hands of the notorious Rumanian feudal military henchmen is ordered for Louis Bebrits, Editor of the Daily Uj Elore, fearless witness at the Fish Committee hearings. Nine Californian workers are scheduled to face death or life sentence by Japan’s war government. Jack Schneider, militant needle trades strike leader of New York, A.W. Mills, national organizer of the Hunger March. Frank Borich and Vincent Kamenevich, organizers of many heroic struggles of the miners, are ordered deported.

Every step of successful protection of the deportees is the result of militant public mobilization under the leadership of the International Labor Defense. The government is determined. In the desperate wrestling with working class solidarity the full force of capitalist government is summoned. “There is no more important work before the government”–declared U.S. Labor Secretary Doak, summarizing his annual report to Congress than the administration of the Immigration Laws. These laws have a two-fold purpose:

“1. To protect the social and political structure of American civilization from persons who seek to come here with strange new doctrines which threaten the institutions and practices that we, in this country, regard as essential…and

“2. To give economic protection particularly as to available employment to those who for both legal and moral (?) reasons should receive first consideration in the blessings (sic) of a work-a-day life.”

Indeed nothing is found wanting in the Dies Bill (H.R. 12044), saviour of the social and political structure of Mr. Doak’s civilization. “The enactment of this proposed bill into a law,” reported Senator Hatfield, approvingly, “will not only render alien Communists, as such, subject to exclusion and expulsion, but it will relieve the government of much difficult proof.” The army of dry agents, government racketeers, underworld gangsters, now in government pay are employed overtime in the deportation raids. “We’ll have the boys busy with deportations after the repeal of prohibition,” boasted an Ellis Island official.

Government economy is not considered when it comes to hounding and persecution of labor. Listen to Congressman LaGuardia; the same LaGuardia who pretended to be the friend of labor by opposing the Dies Bill: “I was speaking with the Com missioner General of Immigration–he said a few days later in Congress, discussing a proposed reduction in the Immigration Bureau’s budget and as far as the enforcement of deportation is concerned, which Congress is set on, with an appropriation of $10,000,000 it will be crippled in its work.” The pretender is worried. The capitalist “social and political structure must be protected” at all costs and by all means.

The fascist character of the Dies Bill lies with its provision to exempt workers from deportations who prove that they became members of militant labor organizations “on account of fear, duress, compulsion, misrepresentation, or fraud.” This invites spying frame-up provocation. On July 7th Mr. Doak already substantiated this. He laid the ground for the fascist application of the Dies Bill. On this day he held a conference with selected representatives of the Russian Consolidated Mutual Aid Society and Lithuanian, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian, Italian, and other foreign language organizations. He asked for “cooperation to unveil the smuggling in of aliens.” Mr. Doak grew dramatic, “My heart aches when I see how some unsuspecting aliens become victims of passport racketeers.” The conference concluded with establishing a committee of foreign language societies to report cases of undesirable aliens. To emphasize the role of public cooperation in government terror Mr. Doak became the permanent chairman of this spy and frame-up institution.

Workers are persecuted in the mills by immigration agents. Organize factory defense committees. Families are terrorized in their homes. Have neighborhood defense committees protect them. A defense committee for every union, one for every club.

Enlist all labor organizations in a militant united front to stop deportations and to defeat the anti-labor Dies Bill. Build committees for the Protection of Foreign Born. “There is no more important work” before the International Labor Defense today.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n08-aug-1932-LD.pdf