172 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

They said, “Yes; you were born there.” They had a hearing, and in
that hearing it developed that his father lived in that section, and he
was one of the descendants of the original owners of the land who
became American citizens by the Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hildalgo.
I drew up an elaborate and very learned brief for the State Department,
 and they gave an order for that man to be deported. I asked
the man to give me three days, and I secured writ of a habeas corpus
by a telegram; and then when it came down to the judicial decree,
of course they never even pressed the case.
They have sent many men, the descendants of these American citizens—whose
 fathers were American citizens, and. who have been
born there, across the border. Why? For this reason, my friends.
At that time we did not have any doctors. The only doctors who
were around there would be American doctors. Many of them lived
in there, moved in there after the Civil War and stayed there.
They used to send their people over there where they could have a
place, and be born there; and the boys would come and work over
here [indicating on map], and then be incorporated in our condition
of land, and they decided to be American citizens. You ask them
where they were born, and they will say, “We were born in Mexico al
but that does not make you a Mexican citizen by virtue of that fact.
But these people have nothing to go by except the instructions
from the immigration commissioner, or your Secretary of Labor, as
the case may be, and they will not obey the decisions of the Supreme
Court. They just simply enforce those instructions; and, as a consequence,
 many American citizens have been driven right over across
the river on the pretense that they are Mexicans who have become
obnoxious over here. As a matter of fact, what those officials want to
do is to make a good showing here in Washington as to how efficient
they are, so as to keep them In their jobs there. That is all there is
bo it, in that matter. Now, just to give you a little tradition—
Mr. GissoN. You say they take this action in order to show the
officials here in Washington that they are on the job?
Mr. Canaves. Yes, to give that impression. The condition we
have to-day is, they go in there, and men that have been living in
our country, in our district, since 1909, would be around there working,
 especially at the very time that they have to gather tomatoes.
You know you have to gather tomatoes before they are ripe, and then
the price goes down. At one time a man may be rich in tomatoes one
day and to-morrow he is poor, because a break in the market takes
place. At the time when tomatoes are being gathered an official
will come in there and say to a man, “ Where were you born?’ “In
Mexico.” “All right; you go across the border.” They do not come
to you and tell you they are going to deprive you of this labor ; they
will not talk with you.” They put them in jail and you go and try
to talk with them and they will not let them talk with any lawyer
until they are, one by one, brought in a statutory proceeding, and
Shere they make him admit a fact which does not give you the truth.
Now, these conditions have given rise to this, that many of our
efficient laborers who have been there for 15 or 20 years and have a
richt to stay in there, have been, all of a sudden, taken in great
bunches and put across into Mexico, and that deprives us of the very
thing of this labor which we have had theretofore and which we have