The 1930s Case That Sparked a Debate About Deportation
President Donald Trump has promised the largest deportation operation in American history. Yet history suggests that roadblocks may stand in the path of such an effort. One vivid example from history involves an incident from nearly 100 years ago when conservatives attempted to impeach Frances Perkins—Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary and the first woman to be a cabinet secretary—for not deporting Harry Bridges, a union organizer from Australia.
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Perkins’ defense made clear the real limits on the executive branch when it comes to deportations. It also exposed the tension between politics and the law when it comes to deportations, potentially foreshadowing the choice that will confront Trump Administration officials soon.
Conservatives took note of Bridges in 1932, when he became a spokesman for a group of West Coast longshoremen seeking unionization. In 1933, their unionization efforts succeeded. The following year, the longshoremen went on strike after employers refused to bargain with their newly founded union. Bridges traveled the West Coast coordinating a strike of all longshoremen and warehousemen.
The effort proved successful, forcing employers to consent to fewer hours, higher pay, and safer workplace conditions. “We showed the world that when working people get together and stick together there’s little they can’t do,” Bridges once wrote.
Bridges’ alleged communist beliefs and labor organizing made him a target in an era of strong anti-communism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
In 1937, the District Director of the Immigration Naturalization Service (INS) in Seattle applied to arrest Bridges on vague charges of subversion. Before Perkins became Labor Secretary in 1933, the District Director’s belief that Bridges had committed a crime would have been sufficient to arrest him. At the time, the INS fell under the purview of the Labor Department and thus Perkins’ leadership. She changed policy out of concern that INS was doing things that harmed immigrants. This meant the District Director needed approval from above to arrest Bridges, and department officials determined that his request included insufficient evidence to warrant doing so.
The INS officials, however, didn’t take that as the final word. Instead, they sent a small team to the West Coast to continue investigating. The investigators later traveled to New York to depose Bridges. Then, Congress took notice.
In January 1939, New Jersey Representative J. Parnell Thomas, an anti-Communist and opponent of the New Deal, introduced a resolution to impeach Perkins. He claimed she had committed “treason” by refusing to deport the alleged Communist. Thomas misconstrued Bridges’ Communist beliefs to suggest that he supported overthrowing the government and that Perkins, in refusing to deport him, was aiding and abetting this cause.
On Jan. 21, 1939, Perkins sent a written statement to Congress, responding to an invitation to explain her reasoning for not deporting Bridges. She had “been given no roving commission by Congress to deport all aliens whose activities happen to be unpopular with many people,” she explained. If Congress legislated that she had to deport anyone with unpopular opinions, Perkins added, the Labor Department would follow suit. Likewise, she said she would follow the law if the courts decided that alleged Communism qualified as grounds for deportation. In fact, a case was winding its way through the judiciary on this very topic at the time. Yet, Perkins also reminded congressional conservatives that no one could prove that Bridges was plotting to overthrow the government, because, as she observed, “there is no such evidence.”
In a climate of broad anti-Communism sentiment, however, a lack of evidence did not stop Perkins’ critics. This was especially true as business interests, working to undermine progressive New Deal labor policies such as a federal minimum wage and unemployment insurance, openly equated support for these policies with Communism. Perkins received a slew of hate mail from people who loathed her and Bridges, claimed she too was a Communist, or some combination of the two.
Some of these letters were full of conspiracy theories and antisemitism—despite Perkins explicitly stating that she had “no Jews in my ancestry.” One letter writer charged that Perkins wouldn’t deport the “dirty Harry Bridges” because he belonged “to the same gang” as her. “If you ever would go to see Hitler, he would know what to do to you and the likes of your Jew or Jewess,” read one especially hateful message.
On Feb. 8, 1939, Perkins testified before Congress to defend her handling of the Bridges case. The hearing took place behind closed doors in a dimly lit, narrow room. She could bring only her Solicitor of Labor. “Do you remember the priest that walked beside Joan of Arc when she went to the stake?” she asked him, signaling how righteous her cause felt. He nodded affirmatively.
At the hearing, Perkins clarified that she wasn’t a Communist. Rather, she wanted to fix capitalism by reforming it with progressive legislation and social programs. She viewed her reluctance to deport Bridges as a defense of freedom of speech in line with democracy and core American values.
Then she turned her attention to U.S. immigration law. She explained that previous administrations had deported people arbitrarily. Perkins, by contrast, had “imposed restraints upon the arbitrary use of this power.” She did so because she recognized that it was necessary to proceed “in all cases with scrupulous fairness” in order “to build and maintain confidence in our institutions.”
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Furthermore, Perkins argued that arbitrary deportations violated the law—which only Congress could change. Perkins could deport Bridges only if Congress commanded her to, if he had entered “unlawfully,” if he became a public charge, if he committed a crime of “moral turpitude,” or if he attempted to overthrow the government. The latter provision meant that she could even deport him for joining a formal organization that set out to overthrow the government. But Bridges had committed none of these crimes. Perkins reminded Congress that she couldn’t deport him just for disliking him. Doing so would be illegal.
The secretary, however, found that a critical mass of lawmakers wasn’t interested in protecting the rights of people who weren’t citizens, nor did they seem invested in upholding the integrity of the law. Their focus was on politics, specifically redbaiting Perkins to undermine the liberal policies she supported.
Yet, Perkins made a case for why this was the wrong approach. She concluded her testimony by emphasizing the importance of the democratic method and liberty: by refusing to deport Bridges she was safeguarding these fundamental American values. Had he threatened those values, she would have deported him. Instead, she argued, the biggest threat to those principles was the effort to impeach her for following the law.
The House never did impeach Perkins. But the process was so loud, the dismissal proceedings so quiet, and the political ramifications so severe that Perkins continued to feel their effects for years. In 1940, President Roosevelt successfully urged Congress to transfer the INS from the Labor Department to the Justice Department in anticipation of American entry into World War II. The impeachment had cemented Perkins’ reputation as both pro-immigrant and a political liability, and Roosevelt wanted to avoid a wartime controversy about how she handled immigration issues.
It wasn’t just that most lawmakers and voters didn’t want a pro-immigrant Labor Secretary to welcome foreigners during wartime. It was also that they didn’t want to spend government resources and political capital on fair proceedings.
Given Trump’s promises on immigration, once again, officials could face pressures to err on the side of deportations.
But the case presented by Perkins is a clarion call for abiding by the law, protecting due process, and leaving political sentiments aside. Her example teaches us how such practices can protect innocent people while preventing political chicanery from undermining faith in the American system of governance.
Rebecca Brenner Graham is author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany. She is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
