In June 1919 a package bomb destroyed the front of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house in Washington and killed a passing night watchman, part of a bombing campaign by followers of an Italian anarchist. Amid postwar strikes, race riots and fear after the Russian Revolution, Palmer asked Congress for $2 million and received $100,000. After a federal judge threw out a July 1919 case in Buffalo as protected free speech, Palmer turned to immigration law, under which foreign-born people could be deported as an administrative matter simply for belonging to anarchist groups. He put 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover in charge of a new intelligence division, though only the Department of Labor could issue deportation warrants.
The November 7, 1919 raids on the Union of Russian Workers swept up bystanders and night school students, and of 650 people arrested in New York only 43 were deported. Hoover then persuaded Labor officials to change Rule 22 so detainees could not see a lawyer until after interrogation. The January 1920 sweeps hit more than 30 cities and at least 3,000 people. Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis Freeland Post, reading the files, voided warrant after warrant, so that only a few hundred of roughly 10,000 detainees were deported, and he faced down an impeachment attempt. A May 1920 ACLU report and Judge George W. Anderson’s ruling followed, and when Palmer’s predicted May Day uprising never came, his presidential hopes collapsed.
- Detainees were held in unheated barracks on Deer Island in Boston, and in Detroit 800 people shared one windowless corridor with one bathroom.
- Across thousands of arrests, agents recovered a total of four ordinary handguns.
- U.S. Attorney Francis Fisher Kane resigned in protest, warning that the raids would drive real extremists underground.
- President Woodrow Wilson refused to fire Post and warned Palmer against seeing communist plots everywhere.
- The anarchist bombing campaign continued intermittently for another 12 years after the raids.
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