Bisbee Deportation
Encyclopedia
The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal deportation
of about 1,300 striking
mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 vigilante
s on July 12, 1917. The workers and others were kidnapped
in the U.S. town of Bisbee, Arizona
and held at a local baseball park. They were then loaded onto cattle cars
and transported 200 miles (321.9 km) for 16 hours through the desert without food or water. The deportees were unloaded at Hermanas, New Mexico, without money or transportation, and warned not to return to Bisbee.
In 1917, the Phelps Dodge Corporation owned a number of copper and other mines in Arizona. Mining conditions in the region were difficult, and working conditions (including mine safety, pay, and camp living conditions) extremely poor. Discrimination against Mexican American
workers by Caucasian supervisors was routine and extensive. During the winter of 1915–6, a successful if bitter four-month strike in the Clifton-Morenci district led to widespread discontent and unionization among miners in the state.
However, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers
(IUMMSW) and its president, Charles Moyer
, did little to support the nascent union movement. Between February and May 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) stepped in and began signing up several hundred miners as members. The IWW formed Metal Mine Workers Union No. 800. Although Local 800 counted more than 1,000 members, only about 400 paid dues.
In May 1917, IWW Local 800 presented a list of demands to Phelps Dodge. They asked for an end to physical examinations (used by the mine owners to counter theft), two workers on each drilling machine, two men working the ore elevators, an end to blasting while men were in the mine, an end to the bonus system, no more assignment of construction work to miners, replacement of the sliding scale of wages with a $6.00 per day shift rate, and no discrimination against union members. The company flatly refused all the demands.
IWW Local 800 called a strike to begin on June 26, 1917. When the strike occurred as scheduled, not only the miners at Phelps Dodge but those at other mines also walked out. More than 3,000 miners—about 85 percent of all mine workers in Bisbee—went on strike.
Although the strike was peaceful, local authorities immediately asked for federal troops to break the strike. Cochise County
Sheriff Harry Wheeler set up his headquarters in Bisbee on the very first day of the strike. On July 2, Wheeler asked Republican
Governor Thomas Edward Campbell
to request federal troops, interpreting the situation against the background of World War I
: "The whole thing appears to be pro-German and anti-American." Campbell quickly telegraphed the White House
and made the request, but President
Woodrow Wilson
declined to send in the Army
, and instead appointed former Arizona Governor George W. P. Hunt as a mediator.
The president of Phelps Dodge at the time was Walter S. Douglas. He was the son of Dr. James Douglas
, developer of the Copper Queen mine and a member of the board of directors of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Walter Douglas was a political opponent of Hunt and had virulently attacked him for refusing while he was governor to send the state militia to suppress strikes in the mining industry. Walter Douglas was also president of the American Mining Congress, an employer association, and had won office by vowing to break every union in every mine and restore the open shop
. Determined to keep Bisbee free of IWW influence, in 1916 Douglas established a Citizens' Protective League composed of business leaders and middle-class local residents. He also organized a Workmens' Loyalty League, some of whose members were IUMMSW miners.
, struck Phelps Dodge. Douglas ordered his Phelps Dodge mine superintendents to remove the miners from the town. Mine supervisors, joined by 250 local businessmen and members of the IUMMSW, began rounding up suspected IWW members at dawn on July 10. More than 100 men were kidnapped by these vigilantes and held in the county jail (with the cooperation of the Yavapai County
sheriff). Later that day, 67 of them were deported by train to Needles, California
. When the IWW protested to Governor Campbell, he declared that the IWW had "threatened" the governor.
The Jerome deportation proved to be a test run for Phelps Dodge, which moved to implement the same plan in Bisbee.
On July 11, 1917, Sheriff Wheeler met with Phelps Dodge corporate executives to plan the deportation. Some 2,200 men from Bisbee and the nearby town of Douglas
were recruited and deputized as a posse
—the largest posse ever assembled. Phelps Dodge officials also met with executives of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad
, who agreed to provide rail transportation for any deportees. The morning of July 12, the Bisbee Daily Review carried a notice announcing that:
A similar notice was posted throughout the town on fence posts, telephone poles and walls.
At 4:00 a.m. the 2,200 deputies dispersed through the town of Bisbee and took up their positions in pre-identified, strategic places. Each wore a white armband for identification, and carried a list of the men on strike. At 6:30 a.m., the deputies moved through town and arrested every man on their list as well as any man who refused to work in the mines. Several men who owned local grocery stores were also arrested, and the deputies helped themselves to the cash in the registers and to all the goods they could carry. Many male citizens of the town were arrested seemingly at random, and anyone who had voiced support for the strike or the IWW was also seized. Two men died: One was a deputy shot by a miner he had tried to arrest, and the other was the miner himself (shot dead by three other deputies moments later).
At 7:30 a.m., the 2,000 arrestees were assembled in front of the Bisbee Post Office and marched two miles (3 km) to Warren Ballpark
. Sheriff Wheeler oversaw the march from a car outfitted with a loaded Marlin
7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun
. At the baseball field, the arrestees were told that if they denounced the IWW and went back to work, they would be freed. Only men who were not IWW members or organizers were given this choice. About 700 men agreed to these terms, while the rest sang, jeered or shouted profanities.
At 11:00 a.m., 23 cattle cars belonging to the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad arrived in Bisbee. The remaining 1,286 arrestees were forced at gunpoint to board the cars, many of which had over three inches (76 mm) of manure on the floor. Although temperatures were in the mid-90s Fahrenheit, no water had been provided to the men since the arrests began at dawn.
The train stopped 10 miles (16.1 km) east of Douglas to take on water, some of which was provided to the deportees on the packed cars. Two machine guns guarded the train from nearby hilltops, while another 200 armed men patrolled the tracks. The train continued to Columbus, New Mexico
(about 175 miles (281.6 km) away), arriving at about 9:30 p.m. The train slowly traveled another 20 miles (32.2 km) to Hermanas, not stopping until 3:00 a.m.
During the Bisbee Deportation, Phelps Dodge Corporation executives seized control of the telegraph and telephones to prevent news of the kidnappings from being reported. Company executives refused to let Western Union
send wires out of town, and stopped Associated Press
reporters from filing stories. News of the Bisbee Deportation was made known only after an IWW attorney, who met the train in Hermanas, issued a press release.
With 1,300 penniless men in Hermanas, the Luna County
sheriff worriedly wired the Governor of New Mexico
for instructions. Governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey
said the men should be treated humanely and fed, then urgently contacted President Wilson and asked for assistance. Wilson ordered U.S. Army
troops to escort the men to Columbus. The deportees were housed in tents meant for Mexican refugees who had fled across the border to escape the Army's Pancho Villa Expedition
. The men were allowed to stay in the camp until September 17, 1917.
. Hundreds of citizens were tried and most of them were deported and threatened with lynching
if they returned. Even long-time citizens of Bisbee were deported by this "court". Only a handful of deportees ever returned to Bisbee.
When ordered to cease these activities by the Arizona Attorney General, Wheeler fumbled to explain his actions. Asked what law supported his actions he answered: "I have no statute that I had in mind. Perhaps everything that I did wasn't legal....It became a question of 'Are you American, or are you not?'" He told the Attorney General: "I would repeat the operation any time I find my own people endangered by a mob composed of eighty percent aliens and enemies of my Government."
National press reaction to the Bisbee Deportation was muted. Although many newspapers carried stories about the event, most newspapers editorialized that the workers "must have" been violent and therefore "gotten what they deserved." Some major papers said that Sheriff Wheeler had gone too far, but declared that the sheriff should have imprisoned the miners rather than deported them. The New York Times criticized the violence on the part of the mine owners and suggested that mass arrests "on vagrancy charges" would have been appropriate. Former President Theodore Roosevelt
announced his view that "no human being in his senses doubts that the men deported from Bisbee were bent on destruction and murder."
Deported citizens of Bisbee pleaded with President Wilson for protection and permission to return to their homes. In October 1917, Wilson appointed a commission of five individuals, led by Secretary of Labor
William B. Wilson
(with support from Assistant Secretary of Labor Felix Frankfurter
), to investigate labor disputes in Arizona. The commission heard testimony during the first five days of November 1917. In its final report, issued on November 6, 1917, the commission denounced the Bisbee Deportation. "The deportation was wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal," the commissioners wrote.
On May 15, 1918, the U.S. Department of Justice
ordered the arrest of 21 Phelps Dodge executives, Calumet and Arizona Co. executives, and several Bisbee and Cochise County elected leaders and law enforcement officers. The arrestees included Walter Douglas. Sheriff Wheeler was not arrested only because he was serving in France
with the American Expeditionary Force
during World War I
. A pre-trial motion by the defense led a federal district court to release the 21 men on the grounds that no federal laws had been violated. The Justice Department appealed, but in United States v. Wheeler
, 254 U.S. 281 (1920), Chief Justice
Edward Douglass White
wrote for an 8-to-1 majority that the U.S. Constitution did not empower the federal government to enforce the rights of the deportees. Rather it "necessarily assumed the continued possession by the states of the reserved power to deal with free residence, ingress and egress." Only in a case of "state discriminatory action" would the federal government have a role to play.
Arizona officials never initiated criminal proceedings in state court. Some workers filed civil suits, but in the first case the jury determined that the deportations represented good public policy and refused to grant relief. Most of the other suits were quietly dropped, although a few workers received payments in the range of $500 to $1,250.
The Bisbee deportations were later used as an argument in favor of stronger laws against unpopular speech. Such laws would empower the government to suppress disloyal speech and activity and remove the need for citizens groups to take actions the government could not. During World War I
the federal government used the Sedition Act of 1918
to prosecute people for statements in opposition to the war or that even suggested a lack of enthusiasm for the war effort. At the end of the conflict, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
and others advocated for a peacetime equivalent and used the Bisbee events as a justification. They claimed that the only reason people had taken the law into their own hands was that the government lacked the power to suppress radical sentiment directly. If the government were armed with appropriate legislation and the threat of long prison terms, private citizens would not feel the need to take the law into their own hands. Writing in 1920, Harvard Professor Zechariah Chafee
mocked that view: "Doubtless some governmental action was required to protect pacifists and extreme radicals from mob violence, but incarceration for a period of twenty years seems a very queer kind of protection."
The later history of American deportations did not follow the precedent of Bisbee and Jerome, which were vigilante actions by private citizens. Instead, later deportations were authorized by law and executed by government agents, though their advisability as public policy and constitutionality were questioned by contemporaries and later analysts. The most notable include the deportation of supposed anarchists during the Red Scare of 1919-20
; mass deportations of up to 2 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans
in the 1930s; the relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps
during World War II
; the 1954 removal of approximately a million Mexican-Americans by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
, in what is known as Operation Wetback
.
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
of about 1,300 striking
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 vigilante
Vigilante
A vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....
s on July 12, 1917. The workers and others were kidnapped
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
in the U.S. town of Bisbee, Arizona
Bisbee, Arizona
Bisbee is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States, 82 miles southeast of Tucson. According to 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city was 6,177...
and held at a local baseball park. They were then loaded onto cattle cars
Stock car (rail)
In railroad terminology, a stock car or cattle wagon is a type of rolling stock used for carrying livestock to market...
and transported 200 miles (321.9 km) for 16 hours through the desert without food or water. The deportees were unloaded at Hermanas, New Mexico, without money or transportation, and warned not to return to Bisbee.
Background
Mexican American
Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican descent. As of July 2009, Mexican Americans make up 10.3% of the United States' population with over 31,689,000 Americans listed as of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans comprise 66% of all Hispanics and Latinos in the United States...
workers by Caucasian supervisors was routine and extensive. During the winter of 1915–6, a successful if bitter four-month strike in the Clifton-Morenci district led to widespread discontent and unionization among miners in the state.
However, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers
Western Federation of Miners
The Western Federation of Miners was a radical labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles...
(IUMMSW) and its president, Charles Moyer
Charles Moyer
Charles Moyer was an American labor leader and president of the Western Federation of Miners from 1902 to 1926. He led the union through the Colorado Labor Wars, was kidnapped and accused of murdering an ex-governor of the state of Idaho, and shot in the back during a bitter copper mine strike...
, did little to support the nascent union movement. Between February and May 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
(IWW) stepped in and began signing up several hundred miners as members. The IWW formed Metal Mine Workers Union No. 800. Although Local 800 counted more than 1,000 members, only about 400 paid dues.
Strike
The town of Bisbee had about 8,000 citizens in 1917. The city was dominated by Phelps Dodge (which owned the Copper Queen Mining Company) and two other mining firms—the Calumet and Arizona Co., and the Shattuck Arizona Co. Phelps Dodge was by far the largest company in the area, and not only owned one of the three largest employers in town but also the largest hotel, the hospital, the only department store, the town library, and the town newspaper, the Bisbee Daily Review.In May 1917, IWW Local 800 presented a list of demands to Phelps Dodge. They asked for an end to physical examinations (used by the mine owners to counter theft), two workers on each drilling machine, two men working the ore elevators, an end to blasting while men were in the mine, an end to the bonus system, no more assignment of construction work to miners, replacement of the sliding scale of wages with a $6.00 per day shift rate, and no discrimination against union members. The company flatly refused all the demands.
IWW Local 800 called a strike to begin on June 26, 1917. When the strike occurred as scheduled, not only the miners at Phelps Dodge but those at other mines also walked out. More than 3,000 miners—about 85 percent of all mine workers in Bisbee—went on strike.
Although the strike was peaceful, local authorities immediately asked for federal troops to break the strike. Cochise County
Cochise County, Arizona
-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*78.5% White*4.2% Black*1.2% Native American*1.9% Asian*0.3% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*4.0% Two or more races*9.6% Other races*32.4% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...
Sheriff Harry Wheeler set up his headquarters in Bisbee on the very first day of the strike. On July 2, Wheeler asked Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Governor Thomas Edward Campbell
Thomas Edward Campbell
Thomas Edward Campbell was the second governor of the state of Arizona, United States. He is the first Republican and first native-born governor elected after Arizona achieved statehood in 1912....
to request federal troops, interpreting the situation against the background of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
: "The whole thing appears to be pro-German and anti-American." Campbell quickly telegraphed the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
and made the request, but President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
declined to send in the Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, and instead appointed former Arizona Governor George W. P. Hunt as a mediator.
The president of Phelps Dodge at the time was Walter S. Douglas. He was the son of Dr. James Douglas
James Douglas (businessman)
James S. Douglas was a Canadian mining engineer and businessman who introduced a number of metallurgical innovations in copper mining....
, developer of the Copper Queen mine and a member of the board of directors of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Walter Douglas was a political opponent of Hunt and had virulently attacked him for refusing while he was governor to send the state militia to suppress strikes in the mining industry. Walter Douglas was also president of the American Mining Congress, an employer association, and had won office by vowing to break every union in every mine and restore the open shop
Open shop
An open shop is a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union as a condition of hiring or continued employment...
. Determined to keep Bisbee free of IWW influence, in 1916 Douglas established a Citizens' Protective League composed of business leaders and middle-class local residents. He also organized a Workmens' Loyalty League, some of whose members were IUMMSW miners.
Jerome
On July 5, 1917, an IWW local in Jerome, ArizonaJerome, Arizona
Jerome is a town in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the town is 353.-History:...
, struck Phelps Dodge. Douglas ordered his Phelps Dodge mine superintendents to remove the miners from the town. Mine supervisors, joined by 250 local businessmen and members of the IUMMSW, began rounding up suspected IWW members at dawn on July 10. More than 100 men were kidnapped by these vigilantes and held in the county jail (with the cooperation of the Yavapai County
Yavapai County, Arizona
-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*89.3% White*0.6% Black*1.7% Native American*0.8% Asian*0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*2.5% Two or more races*5.0% Other races*13.6% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...
sheriff). Later that day, 67 of them were deported by train to Needles, California
Needles, California
Needles is a city located in the Mojave Desert on the western banks of the Colorado River in San Bernardino County, California. It is located in the Mohave Valley, which straddles the California–Arizona border. The city is accessible via Interstate 40 and U.S. Route 95...
. When the IWW protested to Governor Campbell, he declared that the IWW had "threatened" the governor.
Bisbee
On July 11, 1917, Sheriff Wheeler met with Phelps Dodge corporate executives to plan the deportation. Some 2,200 men from Bisbee and the nearby town of Douglas
Douglas, Arizona
Douglas is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. Douglas has a border crossing with Mexico and a history of mining.The population was 14,312 at the 2000 census...
were recruited and deputized as a posse
Posse comitatus (common law)
Posse comitatus or sheriff's posse is the common-law or statute law authority of a county sheriff or other law officer to conscript any able-bodied males to assist him in keeping the peace or to pursue and arrest a felon, similar to the concept of the "hue and cry"...
—the largest posse ever assembled. Phelps Dodge officials also met with executives of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad
El Paso and Southwestern Railroad
The El Paso and Southwestern Railroad was a short-line American railway company which operated in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, with line extensions across the international border into Mexico. The railroad was known as the Arizona and South Eastern Railroad from 1888 to 1902.-Founding:James...
, who agreed to provide rail transportation for any deportees. The morning of July 12, the Bisbee Daily Review carried a notice announcing that:
- ...a Sheriff's posse of 1,200 men in Bisbee and 1,000 men in Douglas, all loyal Americans,
[had formed] for the purpose of arresting on the charges of vagrancy, treason, and of being disturbers of the peace of Cochise County all those strange men who have congregated here from other parts and sections for the purpose of harassing and intimidating all men who desire to pursue their daily toil.
A similar notice was posted throughout the town on fence posts, telephone poles and walls.
At 4:00 a.m. the 2,200 deputies dispersed through the town of Bisbee and took up their positions in pre-identified, strategic places. Each wore a white armband for identification, and carried a list of the men on strike. At 6:30 a.m., the deputies moved through town and arrested every man on their list as well as any man who refused to work in the mines. Several men who owned local grocery stores were also arrested, and the deputies helped themselves to the cash in the registers and to all the goods they could carry. Many male citizens of the town were arrested seemingly at random, and anyone who had voiced support for the strike or the IWW was also seized. Two men died: One was a deputy shot by a miner he had tried to arrest, and the other was the miner himself (shot dead by three other deputies moments later).
At 7:30 a.m., the 2,000 arrestees were assembled in front of the Bisbee Post Office and marched two miles (3 km) to Warren Ballpark
Warren Ballpark
Warren Ballpark is a baseball stadium located in Bisbee, Arizona. The ballpark was recently home to the Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings of the independent Arizona-Mexico League...
. Sheriff Wheeler oversaw the march from a car outfitted with a loaded Marlin
Marlin Firearms
Marlin Firearms Co., formerly of North Haven, Connecticut, is a manufacturer of high power, center fire, lever action, and .22 caliber rimfire rifles. In the past, the company made shotguns, derringers and revolvers...
7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun
Machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....
. At the baseball field, the arrestees were told that if they denounced the IWW and went back to work, they would be freed. Only men who were not IWW members or organizers were given this choice. About 700 men agreed to these terms, while the rest sang, jeered or shouted profanities.
The train stopped 10 miles (16.1 km) east of Douglas to take on water, some of which was provided to the deportees on the packed cars. Two machine guns guarded the train from nearby hilltops, while another 200 armed men patrolled the tracks. The train continued to Columbus, New Mexico
Columbus, New Mexico
Columbus is a village in Luna County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,765 at the 2000 census. The town is named after 15th century explorer Christopher Columbus.-History:...
(about 175 miles (281.6 km) away), arriving at about 9:30 p.m. The train slowly traveled another 20 miles (32.2 km) to Hermanas, not stopping until 3:00 a.m.
During the Bisbee Deportation, Phelps Dodge Corporation executives seized control of the telegraph and telephones to prevent news of the kidnappings from being reported. Company executives refused to let Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
send wires out of town, and stopped Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reporters from filing stories. News of the Bisbee Deportation was made known only after an IWW attorney, who met the train in Hermanas, issued a press release.
With 1,300 penniless men in Hermanas, the Luna County
Luna County, New Mexico
-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*77.7% White*1.1% Black*1.3% Native American*0.5% Asian*0.0% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*2.6% Two or more races*16.8% Other races*61.5% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...
sheriff worriedly wired the Governor of New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
for instructions. Governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey
Washington Ellsworth Lindsey
Washington Ellsworth Lindsey was an American politician and the third Governor of New Mexico.- Early life :...
said the men should be treated humanely and fed, then urgently contacted President Wilson and asked for assistance. Wilson ordered U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
troops to escort the men to Columbus. The deportees were housed in tents meant for Mexican refugees who had fled across the border to escape the Army's Pancho Villa Expedition
Pancho Villa Expedition
The Pancho Villa Expedition—officially known in the United States as the Mexican Expedition and sometimes colloquially referred to as the Punitive Expedition—was a military operation conducted by the United States Army against the paramilitary forces of Mexican insurgent Francisco "Pancho" Villa...
. The men were allowed to stay in the camp until September 17, 1917.
Aftermath
From the day of the deportations until November 1917, the Citizens' Protective League ruled Bisbee. Operating from a building owned by the copper companies, its representatives interrogated residents about their political beliefs with respect to unions and the war and determined who could work or obtain a draft deferment. Sheriff Wheeler established guards at all entrances to Bisbee and Douglas. Anyone seeking to exit or enter the town over the next several months had to have a "passport" issued by Wheeler. Any adult male in town who was not known to the sheriff's men was brought before a secret sheriff's kangaroo courtKangaroo court
A kangaroo court is "a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted".The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or...
. Hundreds of citizens were tried and most of them were deported and threatened with lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
if they returned. Even long-time citizens of Bisbee were deported by this "court". Only a handful of deportees ever returned to Bisbee.
When ordered to cease these activities by the Arizona Attorney General, Wheeler fumbled to explain his actions. Asked what law supported his actions he answered: "I have no statute that I had in mind. Perhaps everything that I did wasn't legal....It became a question of 'Are you American, or are you not?'" He told the Attorney General: "I would repeat the operation any time I find my own people endangered by a mob composed of eighty percent aliens and enemies of my Government."
National press reaction to the Bisbee Deportation was muted. Although many newspapers carried stories about the event, most newspapers editorialized that the workers "must have" been violent and therefore "gotten what they deserved." Some major papers said that Sheriff Wheeler had gone too far, but declared that the sheriff should have imprisoned the miners rather than deported them. The New York Times criticized the violence on the part of the mine owners and suggested that mass arrests "on vagrancy charges" would have been appropriate. Former President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
announced his view that "no human being in his senses doubts that the men deported from Bisbee were bent on destruction and murder."
United States Secretary of Labor
The United States Secretary of Labor is the head of the Department of Labor who exercises control over the department and enforces and suggests laws involving unions, the workplace, and all other issues involving any form of business-person controversies....
William B. Wilson
William Bauchop Wilson
William Bauchop Wilson was a American labor leader and politician. He is best remembered for his service as the first Secretary of Labor between 1913 and 1921 under President Woodrow Wilson.-Early life:...
(with support from Assistant Secretary of Labor Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
), to investigate labor disputes in Arizona. The commission heard testimony during the first five days of November 1917. In its final report, issued on November 6, 1917, the commission denounced the Bisbee Deportation. "The deportation was wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal," the commissioners wrote.
On May 15, 1918, the U.S. Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
ordered the arrest of 21 Phelps Dodge executives, Calumet and Arizona Co. executives, and several Bisbee and Cochise County elected leaders and law enforcement officers. The arrestees included Walter Douglas. Sheriff Wheeler was not arrested only because he was serving in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
with the American Expeditionary Force
American Expeditionary Force
The American Expeditionary Forces or AEF were the United States Armed Forces sent to Europe in World War I. During the United States campaigns in World War I the AEF fought in France alongside British and French allied forces in the last year of the war, against Imperial German forces...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. A pre-trial motion by the defense led a federal district court to release the 21 men on the grounds that no federal laws had been violated. The Justice Department appealed, but in United States v. Wheeler
United States v. Wheeler
United States v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281 , is an 8-to-1 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the Constitution alone did not grant the federal government the power to prosecute kidnappers, and that only the states had the authority to punish a private citizen's unlawful...
, 254 U.S. 281 (1920), Chief Justice
Chief Justice of the United States
The Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States...
Edward Douglass White
Edward Douglass White
Edward Douglass White, Jr. , American politician and jurist, was a United States senator, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the ninth Chief Justice of the United States. He was best known for formulating the Rule of Reason standard of antitrust law. He also sided with the...
wrote for an 8-to-1 majority that the U.S. Constitution did not empower the federal government to enforce the rights of the deportees. Rather it "necessarily assumed the continued possession by the states of the reserved power to deal with free residence, ingress and egress." Only in a case of "state discriminatory action" would the federal government have a role to play.
Arizona officials never initiated criminal proceedings in state court. Some workers filed civil suits, but in the first case the jury determined that the deportations represented good public policy and refused to grant relief. Most of the other suits were quietly dropped, although a few workers received payments in the range of $500 to $1,250.
The Bisbee deportations were later used as an argument in favor of stronger laws against unpopular speech. Such laws would empower the government to suppress disloyal speech and activity and remove the need for citizens groups to take actions the government could not. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the federal government used the Sedition Act of 1918
Sedition Act of 1918
The Sedition Act of 1918 was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds...
to prosecute people for statements in opposition to the war or that even suggested a lack of enthusiasm for the war effort. At the end of the conflict, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
Alexander Mitchell Palmer
Alexander Mitchell Palmer was Attorney General of the United States from 1919 to 1921. He was nicknamed The Fighting Quaker and he directed the controversial Palmer Raids.-Congressional career:...
and others advocated for a peacetime equivalent and used the Bisbee events as a justification. They claimed that the only reason people had taken the law into their own hands was that the government lacked the power to suppress radical sentiment directly. If the government were armed with appropriate legislation and the threat of long prison terms, private citizens would not feel the need to take the law into their own hands. Writing in 1920, Harvard Professor Zechariah Chafee
Zechariah Chafee
Zechariah Chafee, Jr. was an American judicial philosopher and civil libertarian. An advocate for free speech, he was described by Senator Joseph McCarthy as "dangerous" to the United States...
mocked that view: "Doubtless some governmental action was required to protect pacifists and extreme radicals from mob violence, but incarceration for a period of twenty years seems a very queer kind of protection."
The later history of American deportations did not follow the precedent of Bisbee and Jerome, which were vigilante actions by private citizens. Instead, later deportations were authorized by law and executed by government agents, though their advisability as public policy and constitutionality were questioned by contemporaries and later analysts. The most notable include the deportation of supposed anarchists during the Red Scare of 1919-20
First Red Scare
In American history, the First Red Scare of 1919–1920 was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. Concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and alleged spread in the American labor movement fueled the paranoia that defined the period.The First Red...
; mass deportations of up to 2 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans
Mexican Repatriation
The Mexican Repatriation refers to a mass migration that took place between 1929 and 1939, when as many as 500,000 people of Mexican descent were forced or pressured to leave the US. The event, carried out by American authorities, took place without due process. Some 35,000 were deported, amongst...
in the 1930s; the relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps
Japanese American internment
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; the 1954 removal of approximately a million Mexican-Americans by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
Immigration and Naturalization Service
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service , now referred to as Legacy INS, ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred from the Department of Justice to three new components within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as...
, in what is known as Operation Wetback
Operation Wetback
Operation Wetback was a 1954 operation by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to remove illegal immigrants, mostly Mexican nationals from the southwestern United States.-History:...
.