No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2021
“Policing, Profits, and the Rise of Immigration Detention in New York's ‘Chinese Jails’” explains how Chinese exclusion law created a “detention economy” in upstate New York. From 1900–1909, Northern New York jails held thousands of Chinese migrants who had been apprehended by immigration authorities crossing the U.S.-Canada border, and had filed habeas corpus claims in district courts. While scholarship on Chinese Exclusion has addressed the legal battles around due process, it has overlooked the detention infrastructure that these claims produced. Because the federal immigration service had no detention facilities in the region, they “boarded out” Chinese detainees at local jails, paying counties a nightly rate for each migrant held. These contracts transformed Chinese migrants into a commodity for rural communities looking to secure federal cash, with four Northern New York counties constructing separate “Chinese Jails” in order to increase the number of Chinese migrants they could incarcerate. This article challenges the scholarship that has presented immigration detention as a Cold War era development, instead showing how communities profited off jailing migrants at the turn of the century. Through the case of U.S. v. Sing Tuck, I argue that immigration officials eventually turned to the courts to streamline deportations and reduce their need for jail space.
She thanks Mae Ngai, Jake Purcell, Rebecca Kobrin, Gerald Neuman, Josh Schwartz, Scot McFarlane, Mitra Sharafi, and colleagues from the 2019 Hurst Summer Institute for their feedback on this article, as well as Beth Lew-Williams for her advice on sources. She also thanks Gautham Rao and the anonymous reviewers for their generous and thorough comments. This research was assisted by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.
1. Seaver, Frederick J., Historical Sketches of Franklin County and its Several Towns (Albany: J.B. Lyon Co. Printers, 1918), 1Google Scholar.
2. Poultney Bigelow, “The Chinaman at Our Gates,” Collier's, September 12, 1903, 9.
3. Prison Association of New York, Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York for the Year 1902 (Albany: Argus Co. Printers, 1903), 69.
4. Ibid. Neighboring Clinton County also cited $20,000 as the expected income of the sheriff, noting that “[If] the Chinese business holds good for the coming three years the next sheriff of Clinton county can rest comfortably on the sunny side of easy street for the remainder of his days.” Malone Farmer, August 28, 1901, 1.
5. Bigelow, “The Chinaman at Our Gates.”
6. On the centrality of local power in generating and carrying out immigration law in the nineteenth century, see Hirota, Hidetaka, “The Moment of Transition: State Officials, the Federal Government, and the Formation of American Immigration Policy,” The Journal of American History 99 (2013): 1092–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gerald L. Neuman, Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
7. Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1892); on the Fong Yue Ting precedent, see: Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 64–91; and Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) 128–31.
8. David L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Kil, Sang Hea, “Fearing Yellow, Imagining White: Media Analysis of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,” Social Identities 18 (2012): 663–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9. On the multiple strategies of resistance employed by Chinese migrants, see Estelle T. Lau, Paper Families: Identity, Immigration Administration, and Chinese Exclusion (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
10. Aaron Korthuis, “Detention and Deterrence: Insights from the Early Years of Immigration Detention at the Border,” Yale Law Journal 129 (2019), https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/detention-and-deterrence#_ftnref67 (accessed December 20, 2020).
11. Ledger from Port Henry Chinese Jail, Vols. 1 & 2, July 1901–December 1903, Moriah Historical Society, Port Henry, New York, digitized by the Museum of Chinese in America; 2018.017; and Barde, Robert and Bobonis, Gustavo J., “Detention at Angel Island: First Empirical Evidence,” Social Science History 30 (2006): 103–36Google Scholar.
12. Young, Elliott, “Caging Immigrants at McNeil Island Federal Prison, 1880–1940,” Pacific Historical Review 88 (2019): 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13. On Chinese migration through Canada, see: Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Elliott Young, Alien Nation: Chinese Migration in the Americas from the Coolie Era through World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014); and Adam McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
14. “Dispatch from New York Journal,” Chateaugay Record and Franklin County Democrat, November 30, 1900, 5.
15. Lee, At America's Gates, 153.
16. Ibid.
17. From 1901 to 1903, 1,689 of the Chinese arrests were in districts “East of Ohio,” whereas 571 were in districts “West of Ohio.” Department of Commerce and Labor, Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration (Washington, DC: GPO, 1903), 102.
18. Ibid., 94
19. Ibid.
20. “Porter Discharged,” The Malone Farmer, January 24, 1900, 1.
21. Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1903, 96.
22. Lee, At America's Gates, 156.
23. Department of Commerce and Labor, Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration (Washington, DC: GPO, 1904), 164; and Torrie Hester, Deportation: The Origins of U.S. Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 22.
24. John L. Lott to Attorney General, September 28, 1903, Series A: Subject Correspondence Files, Part I (National Archives Microfilm Publication, Roll 18, Image 2), RG 85.
25. United States House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Compilation from the Records of the Bureau of Immigration of Facts Concerning the Enforcement of the Chinese-Exclusion Laws (Washington, DC: GPO, 1906), 100.
26. Ibid.
27. “Alleged Illegal Entry into the United States of Chinese Persons,” Senate Document No. 167, 55th Cong., 1st sess., 1897.
28. “Accused of Malfeasance,” New York Times, November 29, 1896, 1.
29. “Col. Scharf Vindicated,” Baltimore Sun, November 21, 1898, 1.
30. Rebecca M. McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 202–3.
31. State of New York Commission of Prisons, Third Annual Report of the State Commission of Prisons, 1897, 184.
32. “The Influx of Chinese,” The Malone Palladium, November 22, 1900, 2.
33. Ibid.
34. Hastings D. Hart, United States Prisoners in County Jails: Report of the Committee of the American Prison Association on Lockups, Municipal and County Jails (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1926), 8.
35. State of New York Commission of Prisons, Sixth Annual Report of the State Commission of Prisons, 1900, 146.
36. Ibid., 151.
37. “The Influx of Chinese,” Malone Palladium, November 22, 1900, 2.
38. Ibid.
39. The longest detentions recorded in the Essex County ledger books are for Hoo Fing and Lee Cheung Gin, both of whom spent 563 days in detention.
40. “The Chinese Must Go—to Plattsburgh,” Chateaugay Record and Franklin County Democrat, September 28, 1900, 8.
41. “Herding Chinese Malone's Monopoly,” Chateaugay Record and Franklin County Democrat, November 23, 1900, 8.
42. “Dispatch from New York Journal,” Chateaugay Record and Franklin County Democrat, November 30, 1900, 5.
43. Ibid.
44. "Canton's School Case," The Ogdensburg Journal, July 15, 1901, 4.
45. "Dispatch from New York," Chateaugay Record and Franklin County Democrat, November 30, 1900, 5..
46. “Trouble Over Chinamen,” The Ogdensburg Advance and St. Lawrence Weekly Democrat, September 27, 1900, 1.
47. “Chinese Matters,” The Malone Palladium, December 13, 1900, 6.
48. “Commissioner Paddock's Statement on the Chinese Situation,” The Malone Palladium, December 13, 1900, 1.
49. Ibid.
50. Plattsburgh Sentinel, May 24, 1901, 4.
51. “To Restrict Immigration Through Canadian Ports,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 13, 1901, 5.
52. State of New York Commission of Prisons, Seventh Annual Report of the State Commission of Prisons, 1901.
53. “Of Local Interest,” The Malone Farmer, May 8, 1901, 1.
54. “Invasion of Chinese,” Ogdensburg Journal, March 5, 1901, 4.
55. Ibid.
56. “Orientals’ Jail Life,” St. Lawrence Republican and Ogdensburg Weekly Journal, October 9, 1901, 6.
57. “The Chinese Situation,” The Malone Farmer, December 5, 1900, 1.
58. Baldwin, Rev. S.L., “Chinese and Other Exclusion,” Western Christian Advocate 68 (1902): 10Google Scholar.
59. “Chinese Smugglers Busy,” Malone Palladium, March 1, 1900, 1.
60. Seventh Annual Report of the State Commission of Prisons, 155.
61. Ibid.
62. See: Ruggles-Brise, Evelyn, “An English View of the American Penal System,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 2 (1911): 366CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63. “Want Chinese With Them,” Commercial Advertiser, January 8, 1902, 2.
64. Bigelow, “The Chinaman at Our Gates.”
65. Ruddell, Rick and Leyton-Brown, Ken, “All in the Family: The Role of the Sheriff's Wife in 20th-Century Mom and Pop Jails,” Women & Criminal Justice 23 (2013): 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66. See Ruggles-Brise, “An English View of the American Penal System,” 366–67; and Moley, Raymond, “The Sheriff and the Constable,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 146 (1929): 28–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67. On the move away from the fee system, see Michael Willrich, City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Nicholas R. Parrillo, Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780–1940 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
68. Critics at the time noted that sheriffs were particularly inclined to fining and arresting tourists and non-citizens to maximize fees, while reducing alienation of potential voters. See Moley, “The Sheriff and the Constable”; and Kellor, Frances A., “Justice for the Immigrant,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 52 (1914): 159–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69. Philip Klein, Prison Methods in New York State (New York: Columbia University, 1920), 164–65.
70. "Short Locals," Commercial Advertiser, February 5, 1902, 1; Clinton County followed suit, making the sheriff a salaried position at the end of 1902. The Chateaugay Journal, December 18, 1902, 1.
71. “Annual Meeting,” Elizabethtown Post and Gazette, January 12, 1905, 3.
72. Lee, Erika, “Enforcing the Borders: Chinese Exclusion along the U.S. Borders with Canada and Mexico, 1882–1924,” The Journal of American History 89 (2002): 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
73. Ibid.
74. Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1903, 101.
75. Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii 1900–1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 28.
76. Ledger from Port Henry Chinese Jail, Vols. 1 & 2, Moriah Historical Society.
77. U.S. v. Sing Tuck, Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1903.
78. U.S. v. Sing Tuck, 194 U.S. 161 (1904).
79. “Saint Paul and Sing Tuck,” The Nation 79 (1904): 191.
80. Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1904, 139.
81. Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 108–13.
82. U.S. v. Sing Tuck, Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 6.
83. Ibid., 4–5.
84. “The Yellow Peril Here,” The Malone Palladium, March 3, 1904, 1.
85. “Smuggling in Chinese,” New-York Tribune, November 22, 1903, 7.
86. U.S. v. Sing Tuck, Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 7; and U.S. v. Sing Tuck, Motion to Advance, No. 591.
87. Illness was common in Northern New York jails, although it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of migrant deaths. The Essex County ledgers indicate two migrants “discharged by death” between July 1901 and December 1903. Newspaper mentions of deaths are typically imprecise. For example, in a December 1903 lawsuit about Chinese detainees at Malone, the Massena Observer writes that the Chinese in custody “comprised a large party, some of whom died in the summer months.” “Chinese to be Liberated,” The Massena Observer, December 10, 1903, 8. A 1903 report of the St. Lawrence Purchasing Committee listed “Casket for Chinese” as a budgetary line item. “Report of Purchasing Committee,” Courier and Freeman, November 25, 1903, 6.
88. Facts Concerning the Enforcement of the Chinese-Exclusion Laws, 99.
89. “Home Matters,” The Malone Farmer, January 13, 1904, 5.
90. R.J. Wilding, M.D. to E.V. Skinner, January 18, 1904, Series A: Subject Correspondence Files, Part I (National Archives Microfilm Publication, Roll 18, Image 259), RG 85.
91. “Home Matters,” The Malone Farmer, January 13, 1904, 5.
92. Chin, Gabriel J., “Regulating Race: Asian Exclusion and the Administrative State,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 37 (2002): 41Google Scholar.
93. United States v. Sing Tuck, 165.
94. Ibid., 178.
95. Ibid., 162.
96. Ibid., 169.
97. Owen M. Fiss, Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, 1888–1910, History of the Supreme Court of the United States, vol. 8 (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 318.
98. Fiss writes that “little of the promise” of Sing Tuck's more liberal notes were realized, particularly as the following year's Supreme Court decision in United States v. Ju Toy solidified that an administrative ruling on the claim of nativity must be final. Fiss, Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, 318; and United States v. Ju Toy, 198 U.S. 253 (1905).
99. The Malone Farmer, June 22, 1904, 1.
100. Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1904, 140.
101. “Fighting Yellow Men,” Ogdensburg Journal, June 24, 1904, 4.
102. “The County Legislature,” The Malone Farmer, December 7, 1904, 4; and “What it Costs to Run the County,” The Massena Observer, November 23, 1905, 8.
103. Moy Suey v. United States, 147 F. 697, 698 (7th Cir. 1906).
104. Hester, Deportation, 76.
105. Department of Commerce and Labor, Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration (Washington, DC: GPO, 1910), 138.
106. United States v. Wong You, 223 U.S. 67 (1912). For immigration officials’ discussions about the rise in Northern New York migration see File 52541/27, Subject Correspondence, RG 85 (National Archives, Washington, DC).
107. Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 77.
108. “General News Items,” Madrid Herald, November 21, 1907, 4.
109. Essex County Board of Supervisors Meeting, 1906. Pyrke's appeal did not work and the county cancelled the lease at the end of 1906 “Resolution—Chinese Jail,” Elizabethtown Post, January 17, 1907, 4.
110. Department of Commerce and Labor, Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration (Washington, DC: GPO, 1913), 174.
111. Ngai, Mae M., “The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy in the United States, 1921–1965,” Law and History Review 21 (2003): 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
112. Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276 (1922).
113. Hart, United States Prisoners in County Jails.
114. “Northern Jails Crowded May Boost U.S. Prisoners’ Board,” Chateaugay Record and Franklin County Democrat, October 2, 1925, 7.
115. Ryo, Emily and Peacock, Ian, “Jailing Immigrant Detainees: A National Study of County Participation in Immigration Detention, 1983–2013,” Law & Society Review 54 (2020): 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.