Faced with undeportable anarchists, communists, and criminals

This chapter describes how, in the early 20th century, particularly the United States and Canada struggled to formulate and implement deportation policies in response to the growing presence of undesirable but unremovable anarchists and communists. It highlights, for instance, the 1919 case in which United States authorities deported a group of Russian Bolshevik aboard the SS Buford, sending them to Latvia in an attempt to discard of undesirable but unremovable migrants. This episode sparked lengthy and fundamental debates around the legality and ethics of using indefinite detention for such individuals, and it prompted authorities to experiment with third-country resettlement as a solution to the issue of undesirable and unremovable migrants.