In the early hours of January 2, 1920, federal agents across more than 30 cities kicked down doors, raided meeting halls, and arrested people without warrants. No charges were read. No lawyers were provided. Thousands were rounded up and held in detention — some for weeks — based on nothing more than their political beliefs. This was the Palmer Raids — the largest mass arrest in American history up to that point — and it was carried out by the United States Department of Justice against its own citizens. The Climate of Fear The year was 1919. The Russian Revolution had just installed a communist government. Labor strikes were sweeping the United States — over 4 million workers walked off the job that year, including steelworkers, coal miners, and Boston police officers. The press called it a "Bolshevik threat." Then the bombs started. In April 1919, a group of anarchists mailed 36 pipe bombs to prominent Americans — including Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan. Most were intercepted, but one exploded at the home of a US Senator. In June, a bomb exploded outside Palmer's own home in Washington, D.C., killing the bomber and damaging the residence. Palmer was terrified. And he was furious. A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover Palmer created a new division within the Justice Department: the General Intelligence Division, tasked with gathering information on radicals and subversives. He put a 24-year-old lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover in charge. Hoover built an index card system tracking over 200,000 individuals and organizations. He compiled dossiers on labor unions, socialist groups, anarchist collectives, and immigrant communities. The system had no oversight and no legal framework. It was a domestic surveillance program built on fear. "The blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order... eating its way into the homes of the American workman." — A. Mitchell Palmer, 1920 The Raids The Palmer Raids occurred in two major waves: November 1919 — Agents raided the Union of Russian Workers in over a dozen cities. Approximately 1,000 people were arrested. Many were beaten during the raids. In Detroit, 800 people were held for a week in a windowless corridor with no beds, no sanitation, and inadequate food. January 1920 — The largest sweep. Over 6,000 people were arrested in a single night across more than 30 cities. Agents entered homes and meeting halls without warrants. People were held for days without being charged. In Boston, prisoners were paraded through the streets in chains. Of the thousands arrested, the vast majority were never charged with any crime. Most were held and then released. But the damage was done — organizations were dismantled, communities were terrorized, and a message was sent: dissent will be punished. Deportations: Emma Goldman and Others The Palmer Raids resulted in the deportation of approximately 556 people, including some of the most prominent political figures of the era. Emma Goldman — Anarchist, feminist, and free speech advocate who had lived in the United States for 34 years. She was arrested, detained on Ellis Island, and deported to Soviet Russia on December 21, 1919, aboard the USS Buford — a ship the press nicknamed the "Soviet Ark." Alexander Berkman — Anarchist and companion of Goldman, deported on the same ship. The deportations targeted immigrants disproportionately. The legal justification was the Immigration Act of 1918, which allowed deportation of non-citizens who advocated the overthrow of the government — a standard so broad it could include anyone who criticized capitalism. Jailed for a Speech: Eugene Debs Eugene V. Debs was one of the most prominent political figures in America. He had run for president five times as the Socialist Party candidate, earning nearly a million votes in 1912. On June 16, 1918, Debs gave a speech in Canton, Ohio, praising socialists who had been imprisoned under the Sedition Act and criticizing the draft. He did not call for violence. He did not urge anyone to break the law. He expressed an opinion. He was arrested and charged under the Sedition Act of 1918 — an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 that made it a crime to "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States." At his sentencing, Debs told the court: "While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. He ran for president again in 1920 — from his cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary — and received nearly 1 million votes. He was not pardoned until 1921, when President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence. Debs was not alone. Approximately 1,000 Americans were convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 for the content of their speech. Many more were indicted. Some received sentences of up to 20 years. Crushing Labor, Crushing Dissent The Palmer Raids were not just about stopping bombs. They were about crushing movements. The targets of the raids overlapped almost perfectly with the labor movement: union organizers, socialist newspapers, immigrant worker groups, and anyone advocating for better wages or working conditions. The fear of communism was the pretext. The suppression of labor power was the result. The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) — a radical labor union — was effectively destroyed by the raids. Its offices were ransacked, its leaders imprisoned, its members blacklisted. The union never recovered its former strength. The Aftermath Palmer predicted a massive communist uprising on May Day 1920. It never happened. His credibility collapsed. A group of prominent attorneys and academics, including Harvard's Zechariah Chafee, published a report condemning the raids as unconstitutional. The Department of Labor began pushing back against Palmer's deportation requests. But the apparatus Hoover built did not disappear. The General Intelligence Division became the foundation of what would eventually become the FBI — the same institution that would go on to run COINTELPRO against civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and anyone else the government decided was a threat. The Sedition Act of 1918 was repealed in 1920 — but the Espionage Act of 1917 remains in force to this day. It has been used to prosecute whistleblowers from Daniel Ellsberg to Reality Winner to Julian Assange. Why It Matters The First Red Scare established a template that has been reused throughout American history: manufacture or exaggerate a threat, expand government power, crush dissent, and then — when the panic fades — leave the expanded institutions in place. The Palmer Raids proved that the government could arrest thousands without warrants, deport people for their beliefs, and imprison a presidential candidate for a speech — and face almost no consequences. The apparatus built during that panic became the foundation for a century of domestic surveillance and political suppression. They didn't ask if we wanted to know that the tools of authoritarian control were tested on American soil first. The machinery is still running. _- The Department_