On May 14, 1903, one Lewis Feighner deliberately took twenty aliens over the border of North Dakota in wagons. Of these, nineteen were afflicted with trachoma, and all of them had been lawfully excluded from the United States. Feighner set the law at defiance and furnished wagon transportation when the railroad companies refused to carry them.
The whole party was taken into custody at Grand Forks, N. Dak., and returned to Winnipeg by officers of the Bureau, and Feighner placed under arrest. The grand jury indicted him (Feighner) on June 12, and the following day rescinded its action, and he is at present free and unpunished.
On the same date a United States attorney refused to prosecute an offender of this class for reasons not yet disclosed.
This offender presented himself at our Winnipeg office and demanded to know why his brother could not go to the United States, and he was told that it was because he was contagiously diseased.
He took said alien into the United States with him, in utter defiance of the officers of the law. The alien was arrested on a Treasury Department warrant and in due time was deported to Europe, and the offender was arrested also and held under bail for action of the grand jury, but when the grand jury met the United States attorney refused to prosecute.
It is difficult to understand why a sworn officer of the law could refuse to prosecute so serious a violation of the law.
In striking contrast with this case is that of an alien who, after being duly inspected at Quebec, forged an additional name to his certificate, by virtue of which he attempted to take a diseased alien with him into the United States, over the Vermont border. The violation was discovered, and both were prevented from entering, the diseased alien being deported, and the offender has suffered imprisonment in default of bail (five months) and paid a fine of $50.
Attempts to defeat the law have been made by providing aliens with naturalization papers, but on investigation we discovered sufficient evidence to warrant us in calling the matter to the attention of the Department of Justice, and on June 25, 1903, we succeeded in convicting the principal figure in the scheme, and he is now undergoing a two years’ term of imprisonment in the Detroit house of correction.
The public press somewhat severely criticised us during the month of September, 1902, owing to a young Syrian girl having committed suicide while being deported to Europe.
The press did not, however, publish the fact that the same girl had been twice deported to Europe from New York, and that when taken into custody at Detroit she was being smuggled into the United States by a lawless element who not only ignore our laws but who derisively defy the officers of the law.