812.00Sonora/660
The Secretary of State to the Secretary of Labor (Davis)
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Department’s letter of April 8, 1929, file No. 55639/550, in which you informed me that the Commissioner General of Immigration has telegraphically instructed the District Director at El Paso to handle rebel officers, soldiers and civilian officials seeking in good faith to come to American side to make purchases or transact other lawful business as other applicants of the kind are handled.
In this connection I take the liberty of informing you that it is my understanding that the President’s directions as conveyed at the Cabinet meeting of March 15, 1929 are as follows:
- (1)
- The Attorney General, operating through his agencies, would arrest all rebels coming singly or in small groups to the United States, pursuant to the provisions and procedure of the so-called neutrality statutes.
- (2)
- If the rebels were to come to the United States in such large numbers that the agents of the Attorney General could not reasonably handle them, the arrest and detention of such larger numbers were to be taken over by the army.
- (3)
- Individual Federal soldiers—officers or privates—were to be permitted to come and go in the United States freely as heretofore.
- (4)
- Should any large detachment of Federal soldiers come into the United States to be moved across the territory of the United States it would be necessary to secure the consent of the States through which they pass for such movement.
I venture to suggest, therefore, that the instructions issued to representatives of your Department at the Border be amended so that they may be consistent with the instructions issued to the representatives of other Executive Departments of this Government, and that your representatives inform the representatives of the Department of Justice of any admissions of Mexican rebels into the United States in order that appropriate action may be taken by the officials of the Department of Justice in accordance with the President’s directions, as indicated above. You may desire to point out to your representatives [Page 393] that as this Government does not recognize the belligerency of the Mexican insurrectionists, the question of neutrality as between warring factions in Mexico does not arise.
I am [etc.]