DEPORTATION CHARGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 8, 10 July 1939, Page 9

DEPORTATION CHARGES

TRIAL OF BRIDGES

SECLUDED COURT

GREAT INTEREST IN U.S.A.

(Received July 10, 10 a.m.)

SAN FRANCISCO, July 9

The charges against the Labour leader Harry Bridges have aroused national interest. The hearing will open on Monday on the bleak Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay, a short distance from Alcatraz Island. Only •Judge James Landis, who is Dean of the Harvard Law School, officials, and a limited number of reporters will be present. . The defence counsel will be led by Miss Carol King, the veteran of the Sacco and Vanzetti trials. On April 21 it was announced that Miss Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labour, had notified Mr. James I. Houghteling, Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalisation, to proceed promptly in the "ase of Harry R. Bridges. West Coast longshoremen's leader, and to hold hearings as soon as possible on charges that he was deportable because he believed in or was a member of an organisation which advocated the overthrow of the Government by violence. Instructions were sent to the immigration officials at San Francisco, Portr land, and Seattle to bring together all ■.he evidence they have in order to hold clearings in the case of the Australian)orn representative of the dl.O. Miss Perkins said at a Press conferncp that she acted as soon as the .Supreme Court had handed down its iecision m the case of Joseph G. Strecker, Austrian-born Hot Springs (Arkansas) restaurant owner. The Court held that past membership in Jie Communist Party was not sufficient iause for deporting an alien. While the Secretary said that she did aot know what the exact effect of the Strecker decision would be. she believed that, in order' to deport Mr Bridges, it would have to be proved that he was a member of an organisation, alleged to be the Communist Party, at the time the deportation warrant was issued in March, 1938, and that the Communist Party advocated overthrow of the Government by force or violence. According to her, there was no evidence in the Department of Labour's files which showed that Mr, Bridges advocated overthrow of the Government "by force or violence." He has denied that he is or was a member of the Communist Party. Eleven other cases alleging membership in the Communist Party as a deportable offence, and which have been delayed pending the outcome of the Strecker case, are to be reopened, under Mis? Perkins's order, as "active" cases similar to that of the West Coast union leader. When tht warrant of arrest was L-sued by the immigration authorities for Mr Bridges last year it was tantamount to an order on him to show cause why he should not be deported The esse was "suspended" and hearings were delayed when the Fifth Cir cuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans held that an alien who was acknowledged to have been a member of the Communist Party was not. on that ground, deportable under the immigration laws.