Deportation. Torrie Hester

place after the removal. H. F. Arthur Schoenfeld, U.S. chargé d’affaires in Mexico took up the case and wrote to General Aarón Sáenz, Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary. “I inform you that the action of the Mexican Government,” Sáenz replied, “was based on the request of persons established in the district on the ground that this gentlemen held a position in connection with police matters and on reports rendered by the authorities of this District from which it appears that the above-mentioned foreigner engaged in gambling operations and … his character thoroughly immoral.” The U.S. officials informed Wilkins of the grounds for his deportation, but in light of them, U.S. consular officials declined to pursue an international appeal.⁹¹

      The majority of the deportations from Mexico to the United States seem to have involved prostitution, gambling, and drugs. In 1920, Mexican authorities deported several U.S. citizens employed in and running a house of prostitution in Nuevo Laredo. They included proprietor John W. Donahue, a former deputy sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, and Mrs. Gussie Carter, Miss Mabel Smith, and Miss Geraldine Riokabaugh.⁹² In 1923, Thomas A. Green found himself deported from Tijuana to the United States. Green was a card dealer in a licensed gambling house in Tijuana that served largely American clients. He fought his deportation; he wanted to return to his job and stay near his family. A U.S. official contacted the Mexican authorities, which informed him that the grounds for Green’s removal also included drugs.⁹³ That same year, U.S. citizen David O. Guaderrama was deported from Mexicali. Guaderrama operated a club called the Black Cat, and in addition to running a house of prostitution, was long suspected of smuggling drugs into the United States.⁹⁴ In all these cases, U.S. State Department officials intervened diplomatically to determine the grounds of a deportation, but they refused to exercise the international appeal.

      A smaller subset of deportees from Mexico were U.S. citizens involved in public utilities, mining, petroleum, and textiles who ran afoul of the Mexican revolutionary government after 1917. In 1923, Harvey S. Leach fell into this category. At the time of his deportation, Leach managed the British-owned Tampico Electric Company and he had lived in Mexico for thirty-three years. Leach and some of his supporters asked the U.S. government to launch an international appeal. Among Leach’s supporters was W. F. Buckley (father to conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley, Jr.), who had himself been deported on similar grounds. At the request of Leach and people like Buckley, U.S. State Department officials appealed Leach’s deportation several times.⁹⁵ In response to the last appeal, General Sáenz informed them “that in view of the strike situation at Tampico President Obregón could not at that time revoke his [Leach’s] order of expulsion.” The grounds for Leach’s deportation, in other words, came from Leach’s response to a labor strike and mistreatment of Mexican workers. In light his actions, the revolutionary government would not grant the appeal and overturn the deportation.⁹⁶