FREE FERRERO and SALLITTO •
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000389 FIGHT AGAINST DEPOR TATION FREE FERRERO and SALLITTO • H ••• humbly and fervently to beseech the kind Author of these blessings ... to render this country more and more a safe and propitious asylum for the unfortunate of other countries. " GEORGE WASHINGTON ])HIOE ;:; CE X'l'S SOCIALIST· lABOR .LORIDA _ lIItVERStn COllECHOI . LIBRARY Demand the Right 0/ Political Asylum Deportation Is a Weapon Against Labor and Liberty G IVE ~IE YOUR TIRED, YO UR POOR, Y O UR H UD DLED ~l AS S E S Y EA RXIXG T OB REATHE FREE, THE " -H ETCHED R EFU SE OF YO UR T E E~ll X G SHORE; SEXD THEf'E, THE H ul\lELESS, T E~l P EST T OST, TO M E; J LIFT lilY L AlIlP B ESI DE THE GO L DE:" DOOR. (In scription Oil S tatile of Liberty) FREE FERRERO AND SALLITTO • ?;he Fatls "Our Liberty depends on freedom of the press." - Thomas Jefferson. Vincent Ferrero and Domenick Sallitto have lived in these United States thirty and fifteen years respectively. They entered the country legally and have since been working and supporting themselves while living the simple and honest life of workers. They are, admittedly, of clear record and of high moral character. Sallitto has a motherless, Amer ican-born, three year old child who would be left .alone, should he be deported. On the night of April 11, 1934, these two men were .arrested by U. S. Immigration Authorities in Oak land, California. Their homes were raided in the dead of night; their premises were searched and their papers and personal letters seized without a search warrant. They were thrown and kept in the County Jail for three days and then released on a bail of $1000 each. Ferrero and Sallitto were charged with no crime, for they had committed no overt act of any kind. Nevertheless, after a sequence of star chamber hearings, they were ordered deported to Fascist Italy. The men were never given a public trial. Indeed, it would be impossible to bring a charge against them which might stand the publicity of an open trial. Why, then, have these men been so summarily condemned to deportation? Because they are designate victims of the Depor tation Laws, mainly and essentially meant to be a means of persecution against workers, organized labor and political dissenters with radical leanings. Ferrero and Sallitto, in the Spring of 1934, owned a small restaurant which they ran themselves. 3 · Above the kitchen there was a small mezzanine floor which they sublet for office space to various people, among whom was the editor of the Anarchist magazine "Man". This latter particular, however, was held to be a crime by the tools of reaction, and Ferrero and Sallitto became the target of persecu-) tion for having assumed to be sufficiently free citizens to rent office space to the editor of an Anarchist monthly which was sponsoring the cause of the workers and which was and still is circulat ing through the U. S. Mail. The ruthless anti-labor attitude of the authorities in California-where the rabid red-baiting spirit of William R. Hearst reigns supreme-is well known. There the agricultural workers' unions have been brutally suppressed. There the year 1934 witnessed the strike of the longshoremen who were beaten, gassed and shot down. There, too, took place the conviction of the Imperial Valley strikers and to add to this torture inflicted upon workers by the same servants of Hearst, we cannot help but men tion the San Francisco General Strike and the farcical trial and tragic convictions in connection with the Sacramento Criminal Syndicalism case. Any unorthodox opinion is persecuted in the attempt to defeat Labor's efforts to organize and raise its living standards. The Immigration Laws prove to be of great help in this attempt; in fact out of 103 workers arrested during the general strike, 73 were held for deportation proceedings. In the early months of 1934 the Immigration Autorities-evidently after having obtained the mailing list from the local Post Office-hounded the readers of "Man". Anyone of them who could be accused or suspected of being foreign-born was an noyed and threatened with being driven out of the country. So it was as a part of the general proceed ings of suppression that Ferrero and Sallitto, who had rented office space to so persecuted a journal, should fall victims of the drive and be arrested for deportation. 4 Star chamber hearings were the only "trial" ever given these two men. The hearings were . held by the inspector in charge of the Oakland Immigration Service, one E. E. Benson, who also acted as arrest ing officer and prosecution witness. The procedures used by this Benson were such that he could be ac cused of crime himself with much more ground than Ferrero and Sallitto. The inspectors, in defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, had ransacked, not only the homes of Ferrero and Sal litto, but also their restaurant. The evidence thus illegally obtained-even if it were of any con sequence, which it was not-could not have been properly introduced at the hearings. But of what value is the Constitution in comparison with the .authority of an Immigration inspector? In fact, one of them, a certain J. Farrelly, testified that he was not familiar with the Fourth Amendment and that nothing in the Constitution could stop him from searching the home of a radical without a warrant. Besides, he added, this was the custom of his department. The above statements made by people whose duty is to carry out the law even to the point of risk ing their own lives, gives us the opportunity to make an important conclusion. It is not the law alone that is bad, but worse than the law are the inspectors and officers, men and women whose sole .duty by solemn oath is to apply the law, but whose .sole practice and custom is to interpret it as they .see fit and as it suits them, to the point of making it worse than it is. Lest our statements on the summary, inquisitorial .and autocratic methods of the Immigration Service hirelings seem too far fetched we shall quote from .a speech (January, 1926) of the late Louis Marshall, one of America's leading constitutional lawyers: "At any time an immigration inspector (salary .$1800) comes to the conclusion that any person is an alien, that he did not observe to the letter everyone of the numerous provisions in the immigration law 5 he may bring that mctn before himself. (Our ital lic-Ed.) . Mr. Immigration Inspector becomes. at once judicial officer. He is to determine the fate of the ma n whom he has arrested and brought be fore himself. He now becomes examining council. He begins to bullyrag the individual, to apply the third degree. He tries to get such evidence as he may from other persons. He makes a record such as he pleases of the facts he thus elicits. He then presents those facts with his conclusion to the Sec retary of Labor. The Secretary of Labor submits that to a clerk (salary $2400) to consider as to whether or not, upon the face of the papers, there is sufficient ground for the deportation of that mdividual. He then decides that the person is to be deported..... There never has been anything more shocking than that in our legislation. It is practical ly allowing one official to determine whether or not a person is entit led to remain in this country with out any chance to review his determination." At one of the hearings Ferrero was questioned as to whether or not he was an Anarchist. To this he replied that he refused to recognize anyone's right to probe into his own thought and beliefs, an inqui sitorial pretense against which a few years ago Prof. Einstein revolted saying that he would re nounce coming into the United States rather than submit to it. We need only look on page 18 of the Dec. 6, 1932 issue of the N. Y. Times which reported an inter view between Prof. Einstein and an American consul in Germany before he sailed for this Country, an interview in which he stated: "What's this an inquisition? Is this an attempt at chicanery? I don't propose to answer such silly questions. I didn't ask to go to America. Your coun trymen invited me; yes begged me. If I am to enter your country as a suspect I don't want to go at all. If you don't want to give me a visa please say so. Then I' ll know where I stand- T),ut don't ask me humiliating questions." 6. In Japan they have a law making it a crime to entertain thoughts against the Government. We are not far from this in our own country if two men can be arrested and deported for opinions they may hold, regardless of their acts and with comp lete lack of evidence of any sort against them-in fact, solely on suspicion of thought. In March, 1935, Ferrero was suddenly notified to be ready in five days to be deported to Italy. In view of the very short notice, an extension of time was obtained. Meannwhile, the Department of Labor granted him a permit for "voluntary departure" to a country of his choice. This is nothing but the rankest sort of bluff, since the Italian Consul re fuses to issue a passport for any foreign country and insists that both men must return to Italy to meet the tragic fate that awaits there all those op posed to Fascism.