As part of the ongoing research for my book on the global history of immigrant radicals who were deported during America’s First Red Scare, I have posted brief profiles of 836 (and counting) individual deportees I have identified. This list is a work in progress, and entries are being added updated as I obtain additional information.
Who is included:
This list includes radicals and suspected radicals who were deported between 1918 (following America’s entrance into the First World War) and 1925, when the last of the foreign-born radicals arrested between 1917 and 1920 were expelled, some after serving prison sentences or being interned as “enemy aliens.” It includes both those who were deported by government order and those who were ordered deported but “voluntarily departed” at their own expense with the government’s consent (both categories were included in US government deportation statistics). It does not include those who fled the country to avoid arrest or deportation. It includes both individuals deported for belonging to legally-defined “anarchistic classes,” and others who were suspected of radicalism but deported on other grounds (most commonly for entering the country without inspection or being retroactively deemed “likely to become a public charge” at the time of their entry).
This is not a complete list. In the fiscal years (June-July) 1918-1926, the United States deported 979 aliens as “anarchists,” and an unknown number of additional radical immigrants under other statutes. The largest single group of deportees, composed of 242 alleged radicals (as well as seven unrelated deportees) departed on the USAT Buford on December 21, 1919. However, it appears that no complete list of Red Scare deportees was produced by either the Bureau of Immigration or the Bureau of Investigation. I have instead had to rely on partial lists and mentions of individual cases included in these organizations’ files, congressional testimony, radical publications, newspaper reports, and other sources.
How to use this site:
Profiles have been posted in small batches. They are organized in alphabetical order by last name, followed by alternate spellings and pseudonyms in parentheses. (The Cyrillic spellings of Russian names are generally my best guess; American sources from the era were wildly inconsistent in their spellings of such names. The same is true of the transliteration of Chinese names in the Roman alphabet.) You can also browse the Index of Names.
Birth years are often approximate, usually having been calculated from an individual’s age at the time of their examination by immigration authorities, and some may therefore be off by a year.
You can search by individuals’ nationalities (country of birth and, in some cases, ethnicity [i.e. Jewish, Lithuanian, etc.]) by using the tags above.
Occupations describe the individuals’ employment in the US, not necessarily the work they engaged in before arrival or after their deportation.
Political affiliations represented include the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the anarcho-syndicalist Union of Russian Workers of the United States and Canada (URW); the anarchist Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM); anarchists unaffiliated with larger organizations; the Communist Party of America (CP); the Communist Labor Party (CLP); the Socialist Party of America (SP); the Socialist Labor Party (SLP); and unaffiliated socialists. You can search by political affiliation by using the tags above.
You may also use the “Search” box at the top of the page to look for individual names, locations, etc.
The main sources used for compiling these profiles are case files from the Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Record Group 85, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC; the Old German Files (OG) and Bureau Section Files (BS) of the Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Record Group 65, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (as digitized at fold3.com); and (for Italians) the Casellario Politico Centrale (CPC), Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy.
A special thanks to Molly Thacker and Brooke Thompson, who photographed hundreds of INS files for me; Malcolm Archibald, who has translated a number of Russian-language sources; D.J. Alperovitz, who has provided photographs of several IWW members; and the dozens of other archivists, translators, activists, and colleagues who have helped me locate, acquire, and read material from across the globe while undertaking this research.
Finally, if you have additional information about any of the deportees, or spot an error, please contact me!
Born 1892, Ancona, Italy. Shoemaker. Migrated to US 1911. Anarchist militant associated with Luigi Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva. Wife and two children in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Arrested 1918. Subsequently suspected by police (but not most historians) of involvement in the robberies and murder for which Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested. Deported April 18, 1920; joined by family in Italy. According to Eugene Lyons, Coacci’s “yellow-haired wife wept for the vanished glories of life in a New England shoe town,” and “The man’s shelves were lined with brochures on the home manufacture of bombs and he professed himself a terrorist of the Galleani school.” October 1921 migrated to Argentina, where involved in anarchist “expropriations” and bombings, associated with Severino Di Giovanni. Arrested Buenos Aires 1930 with two other Italian anarchists in connection with robbery of a bus company.
INS file 54379/396; FBI file OG 387205; CPC busta 1382
See also: Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia; Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background
Umberto Colarossi
Born 1894, Carpineto, Italy. Bookkeeper. Migrated to US 1913. Became anarchist “After a few months I arrived in this country.” Associated with Luigi Galleani and Cronaca Sovversiva. In Mexico 1917-1919 to avoid US draft. Arrested Chicago, May 1919. Deported July 1920. September 1921, wrote letter to Italian government repenting and renouncing his pas radicalism. 1922 inducted into Italian military. In Italy became manager for the Singer Corporation. 1929 fascist government reported that “he has maintained a sincere attitude of sympathy towards the current regime, also showing loyalty to the current institutions, thus giving evident proof of repentance.”
INS file 54616/214; CPC busta 1400
See also: Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background
Sam Colbus (aka Colbas, Colbun, Kolbun)
Born 1879, Russia. Minder. Migrated to US 1910. Wife and two children in Russia. Joined Union of Russian Workers 1919. Arrested during first Palmer Raids, November 1919, in Fairmont, West Virginia. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/592
Amy Colyer (née Withall)
Born 1881, London, England. Housewife. Joined the Independent Labour Party. 1915 married William Thomas Colyer. Migrated to US 1915 with husband. 1916 joined the Socialist Party of America in Boston, 1917 became branch secretary; joined the Communist Party of America in 1919; secretary of Boston CPA branch. Arrested with husband during second Palmer Raids, January 1920; arrested again in 1922 and detained at Deer Island Prison; formed a prisoners’ “soviet.” Told immigration agents, “As a communist I am opposed to all capitalist governments.” When asked “Do you understand the form of government that you are enjoying in the United States?” she replied, “I am not enjoying it, but I think I understand it.” Appealed their case to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit but lost; both deported April 11, 1922. Joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Labour Party; then became active in the Independent Labour Party again.
Born 1883, London, England. Civil servant. Opposed the First World War; joined the Independent Labour Party. Migrated to US 1915 with his new wife, Amy Colyer. 1916 joined the Socialist Party of America in Boston; became a leading figure in the Massachusetts branch of the SPA, which he helped transfer into the Communist Party of America 1919. Wrote for several radical publications, and on the editorial staff of The Communist. Made a declaration of intent to naturalize in 1916, but abandoned plans to become a US citizen “Because of the treatment I have received and because I have discovered that the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence and the historic speeches of Lincoln are interpreted entirely different by the authorities from any way which I could possibly imagine by reading those documents.” Arrested with Amy during second Palmer Raids, January 1920; arrested again in 1922 and detained at Deer Island Prison; formed a prisoners’ “soviet.” Appealed their case to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit but lost; both deported April 11, 1922. Later that year he published a scathing critique of the US titled Americanism: A World Menace. Joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Labour Party. 1926 became secretary of the Greater London Left-Wing Movement (an organization created to expand Communist influence within the Labour Party), then secretary of the National Left-Wing Movement, but resigned from the CPGB around this same time and forced to resign from the NLWM after less than a year for resisting CPGB control of the organization. Became chair of the Kent Federation of Labour Parties; ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1931 and 1935 as a Labour Party candidate. 1942 resigned from Labour Party and rejoined the Independent Labour Party, for which he eventually served on the National Administrative Council. Died 1956.
IWW member; led group of 200 draft resisters in Rockford, Illinois, where all were arrested and 112 convicted. Deported to England sometime before October 1919. Continued as street speaker for the Merseyside IWW branch in Liverpool.
Included on list of deported IWW members in One Big Union Monthly, October 1919
See also Gerald E. Shenk, “Work or Fight!”: Race, Gender, and the Draft in World War One; Socialist Review (London), February 1, 1959
George Cyzyk (Cysyk, Cyzik, Chizhik, aka Paul Gigalko; Paul Zygaloff)
Born 1896, Vilnius, Russia (present-day Lithuania). Laborer. Migrated to US 1912. Member of and lecturer for Union of Russian Workers. Arrested Cleveland, February 1918, then New York during first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Anarchist literature, including copies The Anarchist Soviet Bulletin, found in his home. Suspected involvement in a counterfeiting scheme. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54379/125; FBI file OG 375385
Jan Dalkovksy (Ян Далковский; Dalkowsky)
Born 1896, Plotsk Governate, Russia (present-day Poland). Polish. Laborer. Migrated to US 1913. Joined Polish Local No. 28 of Socialist Party of America in Erie, Pennsylvania in January 1918; transferred into Communist Party in 1919. Also a member of the IWW. Arrested January 1920. Deported to Poland, February 26, 1921.
INS file 54809/280
Ivan Danilovich (Иван Данилович, John Danilovich)
Born 1895, Grodno, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1914. Wife in Russia. Member of the Union of Russian Workers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Arrested during first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown
INS file 54709/390; FBI file OG 388677
John Dardzinski
Born c.1905, Russia. Polish. Migrated to US 1912; shade maker. Member of the Communist Party. Arrested in Hamtramck, Michigan, January 1920. Deported March 18, 1921.
Born 1897, Podolia, Russia (present-day Ukraine). Printer. Had been a student in Russia and apprenticing as a pressman; worked as a sailor to pay for passage to US in 1914 (entered without inspection). Worked as printer in US. Joined Union of Russian Workers circa 1917; member of the editorial board of URW newspaper Khleb i Volia. Arrested March 1919 in New York. Released on bail; collaborated on producing the illegal Anarchist Soviet Bulletin; arrested with Ethel Bernstein in September 1919 for distributing copies of that paper. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54616/115
See also: Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech
Joe Kaunas (Bogdanas)
Russian-born coal miner and Communist Party member in Indianapolis. Arrested January 9, 1920. Claimed Lithuanian citizenship, but deported to Russia March 18, 1921.
INS file 54860/713
Teleso Kavalianskas (Stanley; Kavalionskas, Kavalauskas; Talespor Kavalanchas)
Born 1881, Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). Lithuanian. To US 1912. Secretary of Branch No. 43 of the Lithuanian Federation the Communist Party of America in Detroit. Arrested during second Palmer Raids, January 1920. “Voluntary departure” October 20, 1920 via Canada.
INS file 54709/954; FBI file BS 202600-155-1
Joseph (“Joe”) Kennedy
Born 1885, Belfast, Ireland. Miner. Migrated to US 1905. Joined IWW 1917; became secretary of Metal Mine Workers’ Industrial Union No. 800 in Butte, Montana. Arrested multiple times for IWW activity. Worked with IWW organizer Frank Little before Little was lynched in Butte in 1917. Also “active…in the cause of Irish independence.” Arrested February 1919, in aftermath of miners’ strike. Deported June 1919. Joined Merseyside IWW branch in Liverpool. 1924 reportedly intended to return to US illegally. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54616/74
See also: Butte Daily Bulletin, June 13, 1919; Socialist Review (London), February 1, 1959
Ilya Kerczuk (Ellis Kerchuk; Navul Kerchuk)
Born c. 1898, Grodno, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1913. Deported to Russia February 1, 1921. No further information found. Laborer and longshoreman in Camden, New Jersey and New York. Arrested May 1919 in Philadelphia by company guards of Pusey and Jones Shipbuilding Company of Gloucester City, NJ, for distributing “Bolshevik circulars” on company grounds. Deported February 1, 1921.
INS file File 54616/173
Boris Keretchuk
Born 1894, Grodno, Russia (present-day Belarus). Laborer. Migrated to US 1916. Joined the Union of Russian Workers branch in Newark. Arrested during first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/358
Nuval Kerget (Nabul; Нувал Кергет)
Lumber worker. Member of the Union of Russian Workers in Seattle.Deported to Russia, February 26, 1921.
INS file 54860/569; FBI file OG 389514
Ivan Kesevich
Deported to Yugoslavia, September 1, 1920. No further information found.
Included on list of deported radicals in INS file 54325/36G
Olan Killen
IWW member. Deported October 31, 1919. No further information found.
Included on list of deported IWW members in One Big Union Monthly, March 1920
William Kircher
Born 1892, Hesse, Germany. Laborer. Migrated to US 1906. Joined IWW 1917. Arrested May 1918 in Seattle; interned as “enemy alien” at Fort Douglas, Utah. “Voluntary departure” 1919. Subsequent activities unknown.
Born 1894, Minsk, Russia (present-day Belarus). Jewish. Bookbinder. Migrated to US 1907. 1917 a member of New York’s militant Jewish anarchist Shturem Group, which in 1918 became the Frayhayt Group. Arrested, with Molly Steimer, while distributing radical leaflets protesting US intervention in the Russian Civil War on August 23, 1918. Beaten while interrogated and convicted, with other members of the group, for violation of the Espionage Act; sentenced to 20 years in prison and a $1,000 fine. October 1919 told immigration agents: “I am an alien and an anarchist…I am opposed to all organized government. Not only the Government of the United States but any government…I’m an anarchist and proud of it.” By 1921, however, he had become disillusioned in prison and no longer believed in anarchism. Deported November 23, 1921 after losing landmark Supreme Court free-speech case Abrams v. United States. Returned to Minsk, where he started a family and stayed out of politics. Reportedly died of natural causes.
INS file 54517/74
See also: Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech; Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America
Charles Lindsay Lambert
Born 1881, Arbroath, Scotland. Baker; oil worker. Migrated to US 1901 or 1902. Joined the IWW in 1911; secretary of Local No. 453 of the Oil Workers’ Industrial Union in Taft, California, 1913, then of IWW mixed locals in Sacramento, 1914-1917. Secretary-Treasurer of the Wheatland Defense Committee 1914-1915, in which role he advocated sabotage; elected to IWW’s General Executive Board 1916. Defendant at federal IWW trial 1917-1918; sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. 1922 sentence commuted in exchange for “voluntary departure” to Scotland; sailed March 31, 1923. Upon arrival he began “attending meetings of various trade unions…persuading them to send protests to President Harding, the Ambassador and the Consul General against the imprisonment of the I.W.W.’s in the United States.” May have traveled to Tampico, Mexico to work in the oil fields in the 1920s; appears to have illegally returned to the US undetected, then returned to Scotland via New York in 1926. 1930s employed as oil worker in the Caribbean; returned to UK 1933. Appears to have dropped out of radical politics; later a diamond prospector in British Guiana and then worked as a runner for a bookmaker in London, where he died circa 1961.
INS file 54616/59; FBI file OG 8000-160053
See also: Industrial Workers of the World Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; Richard Brazier, “The Mass I.W.W. Trial of 1918: A Retrospect,” Labor History 7, no. 2 (1966); Eric Thomas Chester, The Wobblies in Their Heyday: The Rise and Destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World during the World War I Era; Eric Thomas Chester, Yours for Industrial Freedom: The Industrial Workers of the World from the Inside; https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=1518&h=13557765&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=SAX498&_phstart=successSource
Manya Lansky
Born 1898, Pieski, Russia (present-day Belarus). Jewish. Garment worker. Orthodox Jewish parents. Migrated to US 1915 for work. Became an anarchist in New York shortly thereafter. A distributor of the Union of Russian Workers’ paper Golos Truda. Arrested July 4, 1920 en route to a radical picnic in Cleveland. According to the Immigration Inspector in Charge in Cleveland, “she is the most typical of the usual conception of the anarchistic type that one may have occasion to observe.” Regarding Russia, she declared, “I am not in sympathy with the leaders of the Soviets, but am in sympathy with the Russian people.” Deported to Russia February 1, 1921. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54885/2
Ivan Lapitsky (John; Lapinsky; Lapitzky)
Born 1893, Mogilev, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to Canada 1913, then US 1917. Dye worker. Member of Buffalo’s Russian Branch of the Communist Party. Arrested January 2, 1920; denied party membership but then admitted it after shown documents confirming it. Deported March 18, 1921.
INS file 54809/491
Ivan Laposanko (Lapczanko; aka John Lapko)
Born 1890, Chernihiv, Russia (present-day Ukraine). Migrated to US 1913. Laborer, coal miner, steel worker. Wife in Russia. Joined the Union of Russian Workers in Pittsburgh in 1914. Delegate to URW convention in New York, January 1919. Arrested in Erie, PA during “May Day Riots” on May 1, 1919. Arrested in Erie again December 12, 1919. Testified: “Yes, I am an anarchist; but I am not the violent anarchist that is pictured in different forms. I am studying the question of Anarchy, as it is something I would like to know, although I am not very much versed in it now.” Deported to Russia on January 22, 1921.
INS file 54709/642
James Larkin (Jim; “Big Jim”)
Born 1876, Liverpool, England. Irish. Laborer; union organizer. Grew up in poverty in Ireland. 1893 joined the Independent Labour Party; 1905 began working as a labor organizer full time for the National Union of Dock Labourers, but expelled 1908; founded Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, influenced by the American IWW; 1912 cofounded the Irish Labour Party and elected to the Dublin city government (but removed after one month). 1913 co-led the dockers’ strike that resulted in the Dublin Lockout with James Connolly, and cofounded the paramilitary Irish Citizen Army. Migrated to US 1914. Joined the Socialist Party of America and associated closely with (but did not join) the IWW; lectured across the country and arrested repeatedly. He played a leading role in the SPA’s pro-Bolshevik Left Wing; 1919 expelled from the SPA and joined the new Communist Labor Party. Wished to return to the United Kingdom in 1919, but the British consulate denied his requests for a passport eleven times. Arrested and sentenced to five to ten years under New York’s “criminal anarchy” law; pardoned by Governor Al Smith in 1923; deported April 1923. In Ireland, he formed the Irish Worker League (a Communist Party officially recognized by the Comintern) and became head of the Communist-aligned Worker’s Union of Ireland, a breakaway from the ITGWU. In 1924 he attended Fifth Congress of the Communist International, where he was elected to its executive committee. Soon, however, Larkin and the Soviets fell out with each other. 1927 he was elected to the Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann), but unable to take his seat; 1936 again elected to the Dublin city government; 1937 elected to the Dáil Éireann, but lost reelection the following year. 1941 rejoined the Irish Labour Party; served in the Dáil Éireann 1943-1944. Died 1947.
See: Emmet O’Connor, “James Larkin in the United States, 1914-23,” Journal of Contemporary History 37, no. 2 (April 2002); Emmet O’Connor, Big Jim Larkin: Hero or Wrecker?
Ludwig Lau
Deported to Poland September 1, 1920. No further information found.
Included on list of deported radicals in INS file 54325/36G
Stefan Lavrichuk (Стефан Лавричук; Lawrichuk; aka Steve Liunsky)
Deported to Russia, October 20, 1920. No further information found.
Included on list of deported radicals in INS file 54325/36G
Mikal Lavrinuk (Микал Лавринюк; Michael Lawrinuk; Michail)
Born 1891, Russia. Hotel worker. Migrated to US 1914. Joined the Union of Russian Workers in New York circa 1918; also joined IWW 1919. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/489
Giacamo Lavrio (James; Laverio; Lavero)
Born 1884, Turin, Italy. Miner. Migrated to US 1901 (returned to Italy 1905-1907). Worked in mines throughout the country. Became anarchist in US; supported Cronaca Sovversiva and carried out extensive correspondence with several fellow Italian American anarchists. Arrested in St. Charles, Michigan, May 1919, while on strike. Married widow Maria Perocchetti while on bail; promised to give up his radicalism for her. Deported December 20, 1919. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54616/206
William Lawna (Launa; Lauwa; Lauva; aka Alfred Schmidt)
Born 1886, Libau, Russia (present-day Latvia). Locksmith. Migrated to US 1906. Joined the Union of Russian Workers in 1919; allegedly became secretary of its Elizabeth, New Jersey branch and hosted Leon Trotsky in his home during Trotsky’s time in the US, but denied this. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Wife in the US. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/103
Andrey Lazarevich (Андрей Лазаревич; Andrew Lazarewich; Lazarowitz)
Born 1895, Minsk, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1913. Alleged member of the Union of Russian Workers in Newark, although the only evidence against him was a membership card for the Executive Committee of the Second Russian All-Colonial Convention of the United States and Canada (a meeting of various leftwing groups held in New York in January 1919). Arrested during the first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Wife Mary in US. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/347
Maria Lazarevich (Мария Лазаревич; Mary Lazarewich, née Kott)
Born 1896, Minsk, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1913. Housewife. Anarchist since 1917; member of URW. Wife of fellow deportee Andrey Lazarewich. Fourteen-month-old child in February 1921. Deported to Russia, February 26, 1921.
INS file 55009/14
Simeon Lebed (Sam)
Born 1893, Novovolynsk, Russia (present-day Ukraine). Ukrainian (“Little Russian”). Migrated to US 1912. Laborer. Joined the Socialist Party, then Detroit’s Communist Party Branch No. 22. Arrested January 1920. Deported March 18, 1921.
Born 1871, Dreary, Ireland. Protestant parents. Laborer. Migrated to US circa 1890s. Itinerant laborer throughout US, Canada, and Mexico. Arrested in Centralia, Washington, November 1919. He was “ashamed to say” that, due to lack of funds, he was not dues paying IWW member, but he believed in its ideology, and stated the only government he supported was that of Soviet Russia. Deported April 2, 1920. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/581; FBI file OG 378240
Dimitry Remar
Born 1896, Podolsk, Russia. Migrated to Canada 1915, then to US 1918. Laborer. Member of Detroit’s Russian Branch No. 5 of the Communist Party. Arrested January 1920. Deported to Russia, March 18, 1921.
INS file 54859/796
Benjamin Repsys (Repshys)
Born 1894, Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). Lithuanian. Migrated to US 1913. Autoworker. Employed at Ford. 1918 joined Detroit’s Branch No. 116 of the Lithuanian Socialist Federation, then transferred into Communist Party. Arrested November 15, 1919 for receiving radical literature, but released. Arrested again January 1920; deported to Russia March 18, 1921.
INS file 54859/658
Manuel Rey y García (Manuel Rey; aka Louis G. Raymond)
Born 1888, Castrofoya, Spain. Galician. Sailor; union organizer; house painter. Father killed in the Cuban War of Independence. 1905 migrated to Cuba; 1909 to 1914 worked as sailor throughout Atlantic Ocean; 1914 migrated to US (without inspection; jumped ship). Anarchist. Joined the IWW circa 1914 and became secretary of the IWW’s Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union in Philadelphia; April 1917 moved to Niagara Falls, New York, and elected secretary of the local IWW organization. Arrested three times over the next six months for failure to register for the draft and for speaking against the war. Defendant at mass IWW trial 1917-18; sentenced to twenty years and a $20,000 fine. During his incarceration corresponded with Jewish anarchist Lilly Sarnoff, who became his lifelong companion. Sentence commuted December 1922 on condition of deportation; deported March 22, 1923. Illegally returned; again deported 1926. Returned again under the name “Louis G. Raymond.” Continued to be active in the anarchist movement; lived in the anarchist community of Stelton, New Jersey; coedited the newspaper Freedom (1933-34). Died in New York in 1990 at age 101.
INS file 54297/18; FBI file OG 8000-160053
See also: Industrial Workers of the World Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; Peter Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia; Bieito Alonso, “Spanish Anarchists and Maritime Workers in the IWW,” in Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW; Bieito Alonso, Anarquistas galegos en América; Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America
Federico Ricci (aka D. Federico Ricci)
Born 1887, Cesenatico, Italy. Shoemaker. In Italy was a socialist. Migrated to US 1905; became anarchist circa 1910; returned to Italy 1911; migrated to US agains 1913. Arrested in Haverhill, Massachusetts in January, 1918, for failure to register for the draft; sentenced to a year in prison. Stated, “I do not believe in any form of government, because the people have no liberty.” Deported May 22, 1919. 1920 arrested in Naples for desertion; released on probation. Moved back to Cesenatico, “where he lives a solitary life.” 1925 emigrated to France; returned to Italy 1929. Under surveillance until 1941, but no radical activity noted.
INS files 54379/2 and 54379/3; CPC busta 4302
Daniel Rice (Reisch; Risch)
Born 1885, Tolkova (Grodno), Russia (present-day Belarus?). Laborer. Migrated to US 1909. Joined the Union of Russian Workers in 1919 in Newark. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Stated, “I was so much dissatisfied with the Russian Government as I knew it, that I am since that time reluctant to believe that any government is good…I am not satisfied with the United Sates Gov’t and do not believe it is acting as a free government.” Deported on the Buford. Wife and child in Newark. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/340
Augusto Rigoni (August)
Born 1893, Afiago (Vicenza), Italy. Laborer. Not radical in Italy. Year of migration unknown. In Kensington, Illinois joined the anarchist Circolo Studi Sociali; supported Luigi Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva. Deported December 20, 1919. After his return, according to Italian authorities, he “demonstrated sympathy with socialism” but withdrew from political activity and “was not considered a politically dangerous element.” Married, had children, and “devoted himself exclusively to the work of the fields of his property together with his brothers.” 1932 developed “symptoms of mental alienation” and confined to provincial psychiatric hospital in Vicenza, where he died that same year.
CPC busta 4329
See also: Cronaca Sovversiva, July 15, 1916
Thomas Rimmer
Born 1886, England. Sailor; miner. Migrated to Canada 1912; from there migrated to US 1914 (without inspection). Radicalized in US; joined the Socialist Party of America and the Western Federation of Miners; then joined the IWW circa 1914. One of the organizers of the 1917 miners’ strike in Butte, Montana; elected to the strikers’ publicity Committee; spoke at funeral of IWW organizer Frank Little. 1918 became IWW delegate. Arrested May 6, 1918, on police raid of IWW hall in Seattle. While detained in Seattle, befriended fellow deportee Moses Baritz, beginning a lifelong “political and personal friendship.” Deported March 9, 1919, as “likely to become a public charge” at the time of his entry because “a man of the character and disposition he clearly was [sic] would almost certain sometime to come into conflict with the laws of any country like the United States and get into jail.” In Liverpool, joined the Merseyside IWW branch. 1921 joined the small, breakaway Socialist Party of Great Britain, of which Baritz was already a member. That same year he was “believed to be traveling frequently between England and Canada.” After a period of lapsed membership, rejoined the SPGB in 1933. Died 1952.
Born 1896, Volynia, Russia. Machinist. Migrated to US 1913. Employed at the Singer Sewing Machine Company in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Joined the Union of Russian Workers 1919. Arrested in New York during the first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/457
Librado Rivera
Born 1864, Rayón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Teacher; laborer; journalist. 1888 became teacher in Mexico. 1900 cofounded a “liberal” group in San Luis Potosí to combat Catholic influence on government. Arrested 1902 for political activities and imprisoned for a year. 1903 collaborated with Enrique and Ricardo Flores Magón on the paper El hijo del Ahuizote and arrested for “ridiculing public officials.” Migrated to US 1905. That same year cofounded the Partido Liberal Mexicano; around this time became an anarchist. 1906 arrested in St. Louis and US government attempted to illegally extradite him to Mexico, but eventually released. 1907 moved to Los Angeles, where arrested without warrant, along with other PLM leaders, by agents of the Furlong Detective Agency on behalf of the Mexican government; convicted of violating US neutrality laws but then released. 1910 a founding editor of the PLM newspaper Regeneración. 1911 arrested with other PLM leaders, again charged and convicted for violating neutrality laws for organizing and supplying PLM fighters in the Mexican Revolution. 1914 released from McNeil Island Prison. 1918 arrested and convicted for violating the Espionage Act with material published in Regeneración; sentenced to 15 years. 1920 transferred from McNeil Island to Leavenworth Penitentiary. 1923 his sentence was commuted on condition of deportation to Mexico. Offered positions in the government of San Luis Potosí, which he declined. Founded and edited a succession of anarchist newspapers. 1927 arrested and sentenced to 6 months for “insulting the president” and “inciting the public to anarchy.” 1932 died after being hit by a car in Mexico City.
See: Alicia Perez Salazar, Librado Rivera, un soñador en llamas; Ricardo Flores Magón, Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magón Reader; Donald C. Hodges, Mexican Anarchism after the Revolution; Aurora Mónica Alcayaga Sasso, “Librado Rivera y los hermanos rojos en el movimiento social y cultural anarquista en Villa Cecilia y Tampico, Tamaulipas, 1915-1931” (PhD diss., Universidad Iberoamericano); http://www.libradorivera.com/; http://www.antorcha.net/biblioteca_virtual/politica/viva_tierra/libradoindice.html
Deported to Russia, January 21, 1921. No further information found.
Included on list of deported radicals in INS file 54325/36G
Nicholas Shattovaleff
Deported to Russia, January 27, 1922. No further information found.
Included on list of deported radicals in INS file 54325/36G
Stepan Shatuka (Степан Шатука; Stephen)
Born 1888, Mogilev region, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1914. 1918 joined the Union of Russian Workers in Seattle. Arrested during the second Palmer Raids, January 1920. When asked what the URW stood for, replied, “To destroy to the power of the capitalists…By a world wide revolution.” Original warrant for deportation listed Poland as his destination; he successfully petitioned to have it changed to Russia. Deported January 22, 1921. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54861/28
John Sheehan
Sheehan’s IWW organizer credentials
Born 1863, Roscommon, Ireland. Construction worker; lumber worker. Migrated to US 1904. 1917 joined the IWW; became an organizer and delegate. Arrested January 1918 in Yakima, Washington. Denied British citizenship, declaring, “I never owed allegiance to England; I was a native of Great Britain in my boyhood, but when I came here I…no longer belonged to that.” Deported February 27, 1919. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54379/54
Gordei Sheika (Гордей Шейка)
Born 1883, Streli, Russia (present-day Belarus). Metalworker. Migrated to US 1912. Wife and three children in Russia. Joined the Union of Russian Workers in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Also a member of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers and participated in the 1919 steel strike as an employee at the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
INS file 54709/546; FBI file OG 378918
Mikail Sheleg (Микаил Шелег; Shelef)
Born 1893, Minsk, Russia (present-day Belarus). Printer. Year of migration to US unknown. Joined the Communist Party of America in Bayonne, New Jersey, 1919. Arrested during the second Palmer Raids, January 1920. Deported December 23, 1920.
See: Morning Post (Camden NJ), December 23, 1920; Ancestry.com
Nestor Mikhailovich Sheleg (Нестор Михайлович Шелег; Nasto; Michaelovich)
Born 1895, Minsk, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1914. 1919 joined the Union of Russian Workers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Employed at Singer Sewing Machine Company. Arrested during first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Deported on the Buford. Subsequent activities unknown.
