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      Politicsvertical orientation badge

      The Progressive Attorney General Who Raided Immigrants—And Paid the Price

      SECRET LIVES

      A. Mitchell Palmer had reached the peak of American politics, but his indiscriminate pursuit of terrorists backfired.

      Gil Troy

      Gil Troy

      Updated Aug. 20, 2019 11:15AM EDT / Published Feb. 19, 2017 12:15AM EST 

      Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

      The immigration raids were unexpected, unnerving, unjust. In one devastating American-dream-shattering, day, federal agents arrested more than 4,000 aspiring Americans for supposedly threatening America.

      This overreaction, the Big Red Scare of 1919, triggered a Red, White, and Blue Repair. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer became a laughingstock for initiating these immigrant-rousting “Palmer Raids.” And his nemesis, a lowly Assistant Secretary of Labor, Louis F. Post, became a hero.

      Before this immigration crackdown Palmer was known as a progressive Democrat, a Woodrow Wilson man and a man of conscience—while Post was considered a kook. Born in Moosehead, Pennsylvania, in 1872, a Quaker and Swarthmore graduate, trained as a lawyer, Palmer served in Congress from 1909 to 1915. He opposed child labor and endorsed lower tariffs, defying many constituents who feared free trade.

      Gil Troy

      Gil Troy

      @GilTroygiltroy@gmail.com

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