migration and labor issues. In the years leading to World War I, America had experienced a huge surge in immigration. By 1914, more than a third of U.S. citizens had been born abroad. Some of these immigrants, like the Irish, Germans and Italians, were sympathetic to the Central Powers at the beginning of the war. Many had also joined domestic socialist organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and participated in strikes. The presence of so many aliens in the United States caused a surge of xenophobia that rose to the top of the U.S. government. President Woodrow Wilson in his State of the Union address on December 7, 1915 claimed that the “citizens of the United States…born under other flags… poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life.” He warned that these immigrants “debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue.” The accusations were exaggerated but he urged the Congress to enact laws to crush the “disloyal,” “anarchic,” and “infinitely malignant” “creatures of passion.” America’s entry into World War I provided the urgency that was needed to move forward with the legislation. Following the lead of Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage Act of June 1917, issued to prevent disloyalty in time of war, disproportionately targeted foreigners, socialists and labor unions. To Wilson and many Americans, there was a very thin line between enemy alien agents and radical labor organizations. The most dangerous group, they believed, was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an inclusive labor union formed in 1905 that attracted low wage immigrant workers and supported socialism. In 1916, the leaders of the IWW, like much of the country, condemned war. They further called for “class solidarity among the workers of the entire world” and promoted a general strike in all industries to prevent capitalists from battling each other. A year later, the union became the first victim of what Attorney General Thomas Gregory called the “hysteria” that developed around the Espionage Act. In July, 1917, a month after the Act was passed, the IWW sponsored a labor strike in Bisbee, Arizona. Soon after the strike was called, rumors circulated that it had been infiltrated by pro-Germans prompting the Los Angeles Times to warn that “on our soil is an enemy…preaching revolution and invoking anarchy…the IWW… is filled with foreigners, officered by convicts, and is attempting vaguely to guise its sabotage behind the specious title of Industrial Workers of the World.” No German spies were found but more than 1,000 laborers were deported to Mexico. Another attack on the union took place on September 5, 1917 when national and local law enforcement agents raided every IWW office in the United States as well as the homes of leading members. The documents they found were used to prosecute more than 100 IWW leaders on Espionage Act charges of “conspiring to hinder the draft, enc>