President Donald Trump has promised the largest deportation operation in American history. Yet history suggests that roadblocks may stand in the path of such an effort. One vivid example from history involves an incident from nearly 100 years ago when conservatives attempted to impeach Frances Perkins—Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary and the first woman to be a cabinet secretary—for not deporting Harry Bridges, a union organizer from Australia.
Perkins’ defense made clear the real limits on the executive branch when it comes to deportations. It also exposed the tension between politics and the law when it comes to deportations, potentially foreshadowing the choice that will confront Trump Administration officials soon.
Conservatives took note of Bridges in 1932, when he became a spokesman for a group of West Coast longshoremen seeking unionization. In 1933, their unionization efforts succeeded. The following year, the longshoremen went on strike after employers refused to bargain with their newly founded union. Bridges traveled the West Coast coordinating a strike of all longshoremen and warehousemen.
The effort proved successful, forcing employers to consent to fewer hours, higher pay, and safer workplace conditions. “We showed the world that when working people get together and stick together there’s little they can’t do,” Bridges once wrote.
Bridges’ alleged communist beliefs and labor organizing made him a target in an era of strong anti-communism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
In 1937, the District Director of the Immigration Naturalization Service (INS) in Seattle applied to arrest Bridges on vague charges of subversion. Before Perkins became Labor Secretary in 1933, the District Director's belief that Bridges had committed a crime would have been sufficient to arrest him. At the time, the INS fell under the purview of the Labor Department and thus Perkins’ leadership. She changed policy out of concern that INS was doing things that harmed immigrants. This meant the District Director needed approval from above to arrest Bridges, and department officials determined that his request included insufficient evidence to warrant doing so.
The INS officials, however, didn't take that as the final word. Instead, they sent a small team to the West Coast to continue investigating. The investigators later traveled to New York to depose Bridges. Then, Congress took notice.
In January 1939, New Jersey Representative J. Parnell Thomas, an anti-Communist and opponent of the New Deal, introduced a resolution to impeach Perkins. He claimed she had committed “treason” by refusing to deport the alleged Communist. Thomas misconstrued Bridges’ Communist beliefs to suggest that he supported overthrowing the government and that Perkins, in refusing to deport him, was aiding and abetting this cause.