The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-04-06

Washington-Quite often the i'm migration service gets a letter from an indignant citizen who demands to know why Uncle Sam doesn't deport Al Capone.
 The answer is, of course, that Ca pone is an American citizen. He was born in this country and served in the American army during the war, with a good record as a soldier. The federal government, while making a special effort to cooper ate with all local authorities in such war as they may be making on gangs and racketeering, can't de- port gangster simply because he has foreign-sounding name or simply because he is an alien. He is safe from deportation if he is a citizen. He is safe from deporta- ton in any case if he has not vio- lated the immigration law or has not been convicted of an offense in- volving moral turpitude.
 May Deport for Morals Cause Any alien convicted of a moral
 turpitude crime within five years of
 his entry into the country becomes
 deportable and one who is twice
 convicted and sentenced for year
 or more may be deported regardless
 of the time of his entry. If an alien
 gangster entered the country ille-
 gally before 1924 he is safe insofar
 as that offense is concerned; if he
 entered illegally after that, he is de-
 portable.
 ''We are trying to help local au-
 thorities every way we can,' says
 Assistant Secretary of Labor w. w. Husband. But we think we have
 right to feel that if a city govern
 ment can't arrest and convict its own
 gangsters it's little too much to expect the immigration service to solve gangster problems"
 The biggest strike in the labor departments anti-gangster activity has been the deportation proceed ings against Tony Volpe, Chicago's Public Enemy No. 2" and said to be Capone's right-hand man. Volpe
 is charged by the immigration serv- ice with being an alien who has been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. He is also deport- able, it is alleged, because he re- entered this country from Cuba by falsely claiming American citizen ship. Aliens cannot be deported for prohibition law violations be- cause those, according to court de- cisions, don't constitute moral tur- pitude.
 Aim at Communists
 The deportation drive has also been directed with special emphasis against communists, but of course many communists are also citizens and although Husband says there has been a real increase this year in the number of communists de- ported he complains that attempts at such deportation often mean long hard court fights. Radical aliens, he explains, are often defended by the American Civil Liberties Union or some other group.
 Anarchists are deportable under the law and the labor department contends that 1t has authority to deport an active alien communist who has well defined connections with an international movement and whose actions in pursuance of the purposes of that movement are aimed at the overthrow of the gov- ernment by force and violence. Rus- sians, however. are safe because we haven't relations with the soviet and can't deport people there. Although the department has of- ten been criticized for hard boiled attitude in deportation cases involving aliens who are fin bad with their home governments--es- especially anti-fascist Italians-Hus- band says that immigration officials still follow the policy of acting