What did the Palmer Raids do?

The Constitution faced a major test on this day in 1920 when raids ordered by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer saw thousands of people detained without warrants merely upon general suspicion. This occurred during the “Red Scare” of the 1920s, a period of anti-Communist fervor in the United States.

Facilitated by a young Justice Department official, J. Edgar Hoover, what became known as the Palmer Raids peaked on the night of January 2, 1920, when between 3,000 and 10,000 people in 35 cities were detained on suspicion of sympathizing with Communists or anarchists.

Earlier raids were smaller and one led to the deportation of anarchist Emma Goldman. “A. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney General, personally directed the raids tonight in radical centers throughout the country,” reported the New York Tribune, repeating Justice Department statements. The department said the arrests were lawful because the suspects advocated the overthrow of the United States government.  Specifically, the department said their alleged membership in the Communist Party or the Communist Labor Party qualified them for deportation, subject to final decisions made by immigration officials.

Prominent lawyers protested that the arrests were unconstitutional. A group of legal scholars including future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Ernst Freund, and Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound published a scathing critique of the raids, saying they lacked arrest warrants, directed officers to seize documents at will, and permitted unrestrained force. The newly formed American Civil Liberties Union was a sponsor of the critical report.

“For more than six months we, the undersigned lawyers, whose sworn duty it is to uphold the Constitution and Laws of the United States, have seen with growing apprehension the continued violation of that Constitution and breaking of those Laws by the Department of Justice of the United States government,” the group said.

“We are concerned solely with bringing to the attention of the American people the utterly illegal acts which have been committed by those charged with the highest duty of enforcing the laws - acts which have caused widespread suffering and unrest, have struck at the foundation of American free institutions, and have brought the name of our country into disrepute,” they argued, citing numerous Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and Eighth Amendment violations.

Undeterred, Attorney General Palmer justified the actions on several grounds, including a planned insurrection in the United States on May 1, 1920. Palmer also had aspirations to run for President that year, and the Palmer Raids had been met with some popular support.

However, the Immigration Bureau led by Assistant Labor Secretary Louis Post dismissed many of the warrants that had been served. Palmer’s supporters in Congress attempted to have Post impeached, but that effort failed when Post’s testimony supported his actions.

On April 30, 1920, Palmer warned of assassination attempts against “more than a score” of government officials the next day. But on May Day, nothing happened, and Palmer lost momentum as a presidential candidate.

By January 1921, Palmer has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the lawyers who wrote the report. Freund told the Senate that for the first time in the United States history, “aliens lawfully in this country are proceeded against without violating any law, but solely on belief of opinion.” Another scholar, Edwin Borchard, demanded that the Senate investigate Palmer since he believed the Attorney General didn’t believe equal protection applied to aliens on American soil.

And in a February 1921 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, a statement from Columbia Law Dean Harlan Stone called Palmer’s acts “lawless and subversive of constitutional liberty for citizens and aliens alike.”

Palmer left office in March 1921 when the Harding administration took over the White House. Today, his name is primarily associated with the controversial Palmer Raids and the Red Scare.

The turn of the 20th century brought many changes to the lives of the American public. The influx of foreign immigrants to America created a vast array of cultures within American society. While the spread of various viewpoints might have produced an ideological melting pot, the first two decades of the 20th century saw the rise of fear and discrimination against those who espoused radical political solutions.

One of the most aggressively persecuted groups was the anarchist movement. Anarchism was growing in popularity, especially with the continuous arrival of immigrants from nations such as Germany where anarchism was well established. The fear and anger directed toward anarchism occurred primarily because of the misunderstanding of anarchism and anarchist thought. Many people simply thought that anarchists sought to destroy all governmental control and raise chaos. This misconception was mainly caused by the media's portrayal of anarchist violence incited by the anarchist call for "propaganda of the deed." Many anarchists chose to further their ideological goals through the use of violence. This frightened many people, especially in capitalist America.

From the fear of foreigners and violence, there grew a bitter hatred of anarchists in American society. With the rise of fervent nationalism attached to World War I, the anarchists were considered unpatriotic outsiders by more and more Americans. The growing agitation within the labor movement, to which many anarchists were attached, also frightened mainstream America, causing many to identify anarchists as a threat to America. This fear and discrimination gave way to anoter Red Scare.1

The well-off capitalists backed the government's targeting of the anarchists. The notion that capitalists were righteous men fighting against the ruthless and chaotic anarchists was spread through the newspapers and governmental documents. The anarchists, however, were very limited in that the government went to great end to silence the anarchist movement through censorship.

Men like A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover wielded tremendous power in the government, rising to power nearly solely on their record of harassing and discriminating against those from the left. Thousands of so-called "radicals" were jailed or even deported on bogus charges. The persecution and deportation of leaders such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman made this time period one of the most tense and controversial in contemporary history.

The Palmer Raids took place during November 1919 and January 1920. The U.S. Department of Justice, under the leadership of the Attorney General Alexander M. Palmer, sought to arrest and/or deport all radicals and anarchists living in the United States. Palmer used his connections with officials in the Labor Department and Bureau of Immigration to establish probable cause on those affiliated with any labor, socialist, anarchist, or Russian immigrant groups. The main purpose of the raids was to purge the United States of anarchists and radical socialists; however, while many of those deported (over 500 in total) were anarchists, many were simply members of immigrant organizations such as the Union of Russian Laborers.

1Similar campaigns against radicals occured after the Haymarket bombing and after McKinley's assassination.

From: "Civil Liberties and National Security Time Line." USA Patriot Act Civil Liberties Time Line. The Duncan Group, 2011..

Time Line:

World War I, Palmer Raids and Red Scare

1917 -  With the entry of the United States into World War I, the government became increasingly concerned about rising anti-war sentiment and a growing labor and radical movement. Organized labor was lobbying for higher wages, the right to collective bargaining as well as reduced work hours. Inflation was high and workers were striking. By order of the War Department army officers were authorized to repress any activities committed under the vague umbrella of "seditious intent." The government stepped up its campaign against left-wing activists and foreign immigrants. There were mass arrests. By order of the Postmaster General, magazines, including Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and Max Eastman's The Masses, expressing anti-war sentiment were refused access to the mail. Under the law the Postmaster General was given the ability to declare "unmailable", any material that in his opinion violated the law. The Espionage Act passed in 1917 established stiff fines and hefty prison terms for anyone found encouraging disloyalty or obstructing the draft.

1918 - The Sedition Act, a further refinement of the Espionage Act, was passed. This wide-ranging law made it illegal to criticize the government or hamper the war effort in almost any manner. Thus many labor activists, dissidents and radicals became the targets of government prosecutors. To be a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union put one at the risk of deportation. Anyone found violating these acts could be fined up to $10,000 and/or sentenced up to twenty years in jail. Rose Pastor Stokes, Eugene V. Debs, Victor Berger and Emma Goldman were notable individuals that were arrested and charged under these laws.

1919 - The Red Scare and the Palmer Raids.  The Bolshevik Revolution and fear of communism that spread in its wake resulted in the development and use of aggressive tactics against suspected anarchists and communists. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, assisted by J. Edgar Hoover, then a young lawyer, conducted a series of raids against groups suspected of communist sympathies. Groups such as The Union of Russian Workers and International Workers of the World (IWW) were targeted. In one raid more than one hundred Russian-born aliens were arrested and then deported to the Soviet Union. In a later raid several hundred people in over thirty cities were arrested. Many were deported. It is estimated that by the time the "Palmer Raids" were completed several thousand had been arrested and several hundred had been deported.

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