| By almost any measurement, deportation is an enormous federal power. Simply in terms of numbers, the U.S. federal government removed more than 40 million immigrants from the U.S. between 1882 and 2000. Before 1882, however, the U.S. government did not have the power to deport anyone. This dissertation explains how the courts, the Congress, and the executive branch of the U.S. federal government built the power of deportation between 1882 and 1924. It also demonstrates the parameters that international relations and international law set around U.S. policy. The key expansions of early U.S. deportation policy involved classes of immigrants---first Chinese, then prostitutes, then political radicals---that were conceived of as especially serious threats to the nation. In assigning deportation to the category of protection rather than punishment, the government created a set of lesser rights, putting many of the constitutional protections available to U.S. citizens beyond the reach of immigrants. Racism was woven throughout the process and, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that deportation was not a punishment, government officials used deportations punitively. During this period, many of the nations and empires around the world either revised their immigrant removal policies or, as in the U.S. case, passed brand-new ones. Through treaties and international relations, nations built into international law standards of "legitimate" deportations, standards built on the values of liberalism, capitalism, and civilization. Western nations with independent sovereignty and economic power could exert more power in the international negotiations behind deportations and influence the outcome. But, receiving states, even ones with little economic power, had the power to refuse admittance. In 1922, the Soviet government in Russia used this power to limit deportations from the U.S. While the U.S. found its ability to deport Russians constrained, it stepped up use of the economic provisions of deportation law. The Bureau of Immigration increasingly using its power to deport to limit immigrants' access to social welfare services and to enforce contracts for low-wage workers, especially Mexican workers. In application, therefore, deportation had become a policy that the U.S. government could use beyond groups conceptualized as dire threats to national security. |
