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Illegal Alien? The Immigration Case Of Mohawk Ironworker Paul K. Diabo, Gerald F. Reid

Sociology Faculty Publications

In March of 1927 Paul K. Diabo, a thirty-six-year-old Mohawk ironworker from Kahnawake (Mohawk Nation Territory), Quebec, appeared before Judge Oliver B. Dickinson in federal court in Philadelphia to contest his deportation to Canada. According to the Department of Immigration, which had arrested him a year earlier, Diabo had violated the Immigration Act of 1924 and should be considered an illegal alien. As a member of the Rotinonhsionni (Iroquois) Confederacy, Diabo contended that he had a right to cross the international border without interference and restriction—a right, he argued, that had been recognized by the Jay Treaty of 1794. Diabo’s …