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 835 (and counting) individual deportees I have identified. This list is a work in progress, and entries are being added and updated as I obtain additional information.
Who is included:
This list includes radicals and suspected radicals who were deported between 1917 (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, Brooke Thompson, and Nargis Azaryun, 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 sources on 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: 1888, Riga, Russia (present-day Latvia) Nationality: Russian Ethnicity: Jewish Occupation: Carpenter; editor Migration: Immigrated to US 1915 Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
A Social Democrat in Russia before emigrating to Paris in 1912, he then immigrated to the United States in 1915.
In America he became an anarchist and joined the Union of Russian Workers in Cleveland in 1916, later transferring to the organization’s First Branch in New York. He was also a member of the Anarchist Red Cross and the partner of fellow URW member and ddeportee Dora Lipkin. Became national secretary of the URW and succeeded Peter Bianki as editor of its newspaper Khleb i Volia. During questioning, he delared: “Why did I become an anarchist? I have suffered from injustices and oppression and have seen that the people in general also suffer from injustices and oppression.” He also stated, “I think the only way is to use the same methods that the United States people used against England in 1776 when the United States people got their freedom…You know what they did.” Arrested during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919 and deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
In Russia he became a “Soviet anarchist” who critically supported the Communist dictatorship as a temporary necessity, and in 1921 he founded the Union of Russian Anarchist Workers Repatriated from America. In February 1921 he spoke at the funeral of Peter Kropotkin, upsetting many present by mentioning and criticizing Kropotkin’s wartime support for the Allies. In March 1921 he joined Berkman and Emma Goldman in an unsuccessful attempt to mediate between the Red Army and the Kronstadt sailors. Arrested several times after the uprising, he later studied at the Moscow Institute of Journalism, and by 1930 had joined the Communist Party. He was killed at an unknown date during Stalin’s purges.
Sources: INS file 54709/116; Victor Serge, Anarchists Never Surrender: Essays, Polemics, and Correspondence on Anarchism, 1908–1938; Alexander Berkman Papers, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam; The J. Abrams Book: The Life and Work of an Exceptional Personality, trans. Ruth Murphy, ed. Brian Moen; Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America.
Filippo Perrone (a.k.a. Vincenzo Lentini)
Filippo Perrone, c. 1922. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Italy.
Born: 1881, Agrigento (Sicily), Italy Nationality: Italian Ethnicity: . Occupation: Laborer Migration: Migrated to US 1901 Affiliation: Anarchist
Lived in Tampa, New York, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Closely associated with Luigi Galleani’s newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva, he joined a group of Italian anarchists who in 1911 participated with the Partido Liberal Mexicano in Tijuana during the opening phase of the Mexican Revolution, but he soon became disillusioned and returned to the United States, where he openly criticized both the PLM and the revolution. On September 25, 1911 he was arrested in San Francisco after he “spoke disparagingly about the American flag, condemned law and order, denounced all forms of government and ended with a tirade against the Pope”; the case sparked a successful free speech fight supported by anarchists and IWW members, and charges were dropped. Around 1922 he was arrested again in Seattle and deported on August 8, 1922.
In 1923 he was arrested in Ventimiglia while attempting clandestine emigration. The following year he illegally emigrated to France and then to the United States under the alias Vincenzo Lentini, and remained active in the Italian-American anarchist movement. After World War II he was deported again and died shortly thereafter in Sicily.
Sources: CPC busta 3875; Michele Presutto, La rivoluzione dietro l’angolo gli anarchici italiani e la rivoluzione messicana, 1910-1914; Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America; Un trentennio di attività anarchica (1915-1945).
Pietro Giovanni Perruchon (a.k.a. Ursus)
Pietro Perruchon, 1918. National Archives.
Pietro Perruchon in the year following his deportation. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Italy.
Born: 1885, Arnaz (Aosta), Italy Nationality: Italian Ethnicity: . Occupation: Miner Migration: Migrated to US 1907 Affiliation: Anarchist; IWW
Migrated to the United States in 1907, returning to Italy in 1910 before coming back to the U.S. in 1911. His wife Maria Rosa Joly joined him in 1912, and their daughter Lotta was born in 1914. Worked as a miner in Colorado and Arizona and became an anarchist before his second migration. He distributed literature and correspondence for Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva, published a militant antiwar article in La Questione Sociale in 1915, and belonged to the IWW’s Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union. Participated in the IWW’s 1917 miners’ strike in Globe and Miami, Arizona. Arrested March 26, 1918 in Globe for distributing radical literature and was convicted under the Espionage Act at a Tucson trial in May 1918 after a jury deliberation lasting only ninety seconds. Sentenced to two years in Leavenworth, he was detained for deportation after release and denied permission to visit his wife and daughter before removal. Deported March 27, 1920.
Back in Italy he founded the Gruppo di emancipazione in 1920 and was sentenced to five days in prison that June for violating Article 19 of the criminal code. Subscribed to Carlo Tresca’s Il Martello and Errico Malatesta’s Pensiero e Volontà. Arrested in April 1921 on suspicion of involvement in the La Diana Theater bombing, he was released in June. Migrated to France for work in 1923, returned to Italy in 1924, and went back to France in 1925, working as a chauffeur in Paris, where his adult daughter joined him. Italian authorities described him as having “demonstrated a specific tendency toward terroristic action.” In 1937 he briefly returned to Italy to claim an inheritance, was arrested, claimed to have abandoned radicalism, and was released. He spent his remaining decades in France, corresponding with Italian anarchists in the United States until his death there in 1967.
Born: 1887, Bulgaria. Nationality: Bulgarian. Ethnicity: . Occupation: Laborer. Migration: Migrated to Canada 1910; migrated to US 1917. Affiliation: IWW.
Paraliett Kutzman Petcoff was born in Bulgaria in 1887. He migrated to Canada in 1910, where a workplace accident caused the loss of sight in one eye, and then migrated to the United States in 1917. In March 1919 he joined the IWW’s Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union No. 800. Arrested June 11, 1919 in Cleveland, he claimed to come from a wealthy Bulgarian family, but immigration authorities concluded that although anarchist charges were unproven, he had been likely to become a public charge at entry. He was deported January 22, 1920.
Sources: INS file 54616/220.
Born 1887, Bulgaria. Laborer. 1910 migrated to Canada. Lost the sight in one eye due to workplace accident. Migrated to US 1917. Joined the IWW’s Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union no. 800 in March 1919. Arrested June 11, 1919 in Cleveland. Claimed to be from a wealthy family in Bulgaria, but immigration authorities concluded, “While the Bureau is unable to find that any of the anarchistic charges contained in the warrant are substantiated, it is of the opinion that the alien was a person likely to become a public charge at the time of entry.” Deported January 22, 1920.
INS file 54616/220
José Petit y Fernández (a.k.a. Casimiro Petit Fernández; Jesus Sánchez)
José Petit y Fernández, 1919. The Tampa Times, June 20, 1919.
Born: 1879, Oviedo, Spain Nationality: Spanish Ethnicity: . Occupation: Cigar worker Migration: Immigrated to US c. 1914 Affiliation: Anarchist
An anarchist, he immigrated to the United States around 1914 and married Maria Alvarez in Tampa that January. Around 1917 he returned alone to Spain, then reentered the United States on November 19, 1918 to rejoin his wife and three children (and avoid military service in Spain). In February 1919 he was arrested for fraudulently using his deceased brother’s passport to enter the country . A Bureau of Investigation agent described him “too ignorant to take any initiative in anarchistic and Bolsheviki propaganda or plots but he is a dangerous man to be at large to be used as a tool for those who have the initiative.” Deported to Cuba with his family on June 22, 1919.
He was reportedly still living in Cuba in 1946.
Sources: FBI file OG 335078; Tampa Times, April 24 and June 20, 1919; Tampa Tribune, February 1, 1914, February 5 and June 24, 1919, and May 21, 1946.
Konstantin Petrashka (a.k.a. Kontatin Petrosham; Kostativ Petroshak)
Born: 1898, Stanki, Russia (present-day Poland) Nationality: Russian Ethnicity: Occupation: Millworker Migration: Immigrated to US 1914 Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
Joined the Union of Russian Workers branch in New London, Connecticut, in July 1919 and became its secretary. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919, he was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
Sources: INS file 54709/528; FBI file OG 8000-382590.
Settimio Petruccioli
Settimio Petruccioli. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Italy.
Born: 1888, Bevagna, Italy Nationality: Italian Ethnicity: . Occupation: Laborer; barber Migration: Immigrated to US 1913 Affiliation: Anarchist
Belonged to the anarchist Circolo di Studi Sociali in Kensington, Illinois, and supported Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva. Arrested in June 1919, he was deported on December 20, 1919.
In February 1920 he emigrated to Canada, and he may have illegally returned to the U.S. sometime before the Second World War.
Sources: INS file 54616/215; CPC busta 3912; Ancestry.com.
Born 1889, Minsk, Russia (present-day Belarus). Laborer; machinist. Migrated to Argentina 1909, then Panama 1912, then to the US 1913. Employed by the Ford Motor Company. 1918 joined Detroit’s Russian Branch No. 3 of the Socialist Party of America, which in September 1919 transferred into the Communist Party of America. Arrested during the second Palmer Raids, January 1920. “Voluntarily departed” via Canada, October 16, 1920.
INS file 54859/973, FBI files OG 386338 and BS 202600-710-1
Josef Teichman (Joe; Feichman)
Born 1890, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary (present-day Poland). Miner. Migrated to US 1912. Worked in a mine in Vestaburg, Pennsylvania. Joined the Socialist Party of America branch in Vestaburg in 1918; 1919 transferred into the Communist Party of America. Pittsburgh. December 1919 became branch secretary. According to Immigration Inspector in Charge W. W. Sibray, “He is a nice clean-cut appearing fellow and does not impress me as being one who would be implicated in a project against the interest of this government. He does, however, belong to the Communist Party of America and is its secretary, and if it is the policy of the Department [of Labor] to deport persons who belong to that organization, then this man should be deported to the country whence he came.” “Voluntarily departed” to Poland, October 20, 1920.
INS file 54809/281; FBI file OG 386882
Nik Telatitski
Telatitski’s URW membership card
Born 1893, Brest-Litovsk, Russia (present-day Brest, Belarus). Laborer. Migrated to US 1913. Wife in Russia. Union of Russian Workers. Youngstown, Ohio. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids, November 1919. Deported on the Buford.
INS file 54709/541; FBI file OG 8000-379688
Afanasy Timonatnko
Deported to Russia, October 16, 1920. No further information found.
Included on list of deported radicals in INS file 54325/36G
Jacob Tiomny
Born c. 1892, Minsk Governorate, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1910. Reamer. 1918 joined Socialist Party of America in Baltimore; transferred into Communist Party of America in 1919. Wife and three US-born children in Baltimore. Deported to Russia, February 1, 1921.
INS file 54809/704
Konrad Tkach (Конрад Ткач; Kondrat; Conrad Kachur)
Born c.1888, Volhynia, Russia (present-day Poland). Migrated to the US 1913. Member of the Communist Party of America in Bayonne, New Jersey. Deported to Russia December 23, 1920.
INS file 54810/946
See also: The Morning Post (Camden NJ), December 12, 1920.
Mike Tkach
Born c.1894, Russia. Migrated to US 1914. Steelworker. Member and financial secretary of Pittsburgh local the Communist Party of America. Arrested February 20, 1920. Married after his arrest and petitioned for his new wife to accompany him to Russia. Deported to Russia February 1, 1921.
FBI file OG 8000-193906; INS file 54861/186
Gerasim Tkachuk (Harry; aka Levchenko)
Tkachuk and his family
Born 1893 in Brest-Litovsk, Russia (present-day Belarus). Migrated to US 1910. Laborer; autoworker. Married wife Maria 1913, had three US-born children. Contracted rheumatism as a tunnel worker. Employed at Ford Motor Company and family lived in Hamtramck. Arrested November 7, 1919 in Detroit. Denied being a member of the Union of Russian Workers, but admitted to attending “over 100” radical meetings in Detroit and “lecturing on socialism.” Deported March 18, 1921.
1922 reported to be in New York, having secretly returned as a representative of the Communist International.
INS files 54709/289 and 54709/447
Benjamin (“Benny”) Tobak (Toback; Tabak; aka Benjamin Pasweg)
Born 1898, Austria-Hungary. Printer. Date of migration to the US unknown. Member of the Communist Party of America in New York. Arrested December 8, 1919, and again in January 1920 and charged with “criminal anarchy.” Refused to answer questions during his immigration hearing. Deported to Austria June 19, 1920.
Illegally returned to the US via Mexico; arrested and in February 1926 sentenced to five months imprisonment in El Paso County Jail. May 1948 the FBI reported that he had been seen in New York City. Further investigation revealed no further information.
INS file 54860/999; FBI file OG 377698
See also: New York Herald, November 3, 1919
Spas Todorov (Спас Тодоров; Sam; Todoroff)
Born 1898, Bulgaria. Construction worker. Migrated to US 1917. 1918 lived in Toledo, Ohio. 1919 joined the Communist Party of America in Buffalo. Arrested December 28, 1919 in Lusk Committee raid on Buffalo’s CP headquarters. Initially indicted for “criminal anarchy,” but then turned over to Immigration authorities for deportation. Deported September 8, 1920.
Included on list of deported radicals in INS file 54325/36G
See also: Ancestry.com; Buffalo Courier, December 30, 1919; Buffalo Evening News, January 10, 1920
Nicholas Torbiak (Nick)
Born 1895, Galicia, Russia (present-day Ukraine). Ukrainian. Migrated to the US 1909. Miner. Wife Martha and infant son in Coal Run, Pennsylvania. Member, along with wife, of the Ukrainian Federation Branch No. 59 of the Communist Party, in Coal Run. Involved in 1919 miners’ strike. Martha, pregnant, died in custody along with newborn child. Deported to Russia, March 18, 1921.
INS file 54885/74; FBI file OG 8000-385816
Iacopo Tori (Jacopo; Jacob; aka Louis Tori)
Born 1892, Montecarlo, Lucca, Italy. Laborer. Migrated to US with his father circa 1907; both returned to Italy circa 1908; Tori again migrated to the US 1909. 1913 became an organizer for the IWW and an active member of its Latin Branch in San Francisco. Arrested September 19, 1916 for “disturbing the peace” while protesting the conviction of Warren Billings. Active in anti-conscription agitation during World War I; in 1917 he hand-wrote a placard displayed at the IWW’s headquarters in South San Francisco reading: ” The clergy and the capitalists want war but they are not going to war. Imitate them!” December 20, 1917 arrested in San Francisco for avoiding the draft (for which he was not legally eligible!); he was in possession of a false passport and allegedly planning to make is way to Tijuana. Defendant along with 45 other IWW members in federal trail in Sacramento for violating the Espionage Act; engaged with most of the other defendants in a “silent defense” by refusing to participate in the proceedings. Sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth Penitentiary. In Leavenworth he was repeatedly disciplined for refusing to do work. August 1919 authorities at Leavenworth confiscated a letter from Tori to his older brother in Italy, reading: “The penal institutions of this rotten bawdy-house, American democracy, will never succeed in keeping in chains within the walls of shame the spirit of good men; this rises above the walls and goes where it will. I am sorry to hear that you are still a solider. I understand very well, though I have not tried it myself, that being a soldier in a monarchy is a dog’s life. Military life is a dog’s life anyway.” Sentence commuted December 1923 on condition of deportation. On eve of their deportations, Tori and two other IWW members “asserted that they will carry on the work of the Industrial Workers of the World when they are released, whether it be in this country or in a foreign land.”
Deported March 29, 1924. Imprisoned in Italy upon arrival for avoiding Italian military service and conscripted into the 79th Infantry Regiment until October 1925. Returned to Montecarlo, where authorities in 1936 reported his “good conduct in general, without giving rise to any kind of political remarks”; he was removed from the Italian government’s list of “subversives” that same year. On August 12, 1944, during the German occupation of Italy, he was seized by Nazis and executed for illegal possession of a handgun.
FBI file OG 110181; CPC busta 5160
See also: Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America; Iacopo Tori, Il processo muto di Sacramento, Cal. (1919); St. Joseph Gazette (St. Joseph MI), December 27, 1923; Vasco Ferretti, La Resistenza nel pistoiese e nell’area Tosco-Emiliana (1943-1945): rivisitazione e compendio di una terribile guerra di liberazione, guerra civile e guerra ai civili.
