812.00Sonora/518: Telegram
The Consul at Nogales (Damm) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11:06 p.m.]
The Consulate has just been shown in confidence! an order by the inspector in charge of the immigration office at Nogales, Arizona, emanating from the district director’s office at El Paso, in which he is ordered to hold a board of inquiry upon and exclude all civil and military officers of the revolution, whether past or present, as well as the members of their families. This would seem to require the Consulate to refuse visaes to such persons. The effect will be to immeasurably increase the difficulty of the position of Americans in this territory, in fact certain individual officers of the de facto government who have received an intimation of this policy have let it be known that if it is applied Americans will feel the effect of it. The instruction contained in the penultimate paragraph of the Department’s telegraphic instruction to this office dated March 29, 6 p.m.40 whereby officials of the de facto government who had been friendly to American interests could be granted admission to the United States gave our consulates in rebel territory an effective weapon to use in the protection of American interests. Under the blanket exclusion ruling of the immigration service, however, Americans and their interests in the district will suffer severely.
- See telegram No. 217 of the same date to the Ambassador in Mexico, p. 373. In repeating No. 217 to the Consul at Nogales the paragraphs of No. 217 were rearranged so that paragraph three of telegram No. 217 (beginning: “In case any de facto authority in your district” etc.) became the penultimate paragraph of telegram to the Consul at Nogales. (812.00 Sonora/463)↩