BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

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"The employment of American troops for this purpose, by the
way, is almost without precedent in recent years, and the law
officers of the War Department, as well as the Attorney-General
himself, have been obliged to give close study to the question
of the extent to which they may exercise the power of preventing
persons from entering the United States across the
Mexican border.
"Under the law no passports are required except in the case
of Chinese and Japanese, and about the only other reasonable
ground for detention of fugitives seeking to cross the line would
be some presumable violation of the immigration or healthinspection
laws.
"So it will be a delicate task for the army officers, who are
charged with the duty of policing this international boundary
line, to avert clashes with the civil courts if they undertake to
make promiscuous arrests of persons fleeing from Mexico into
the United States."
The troops obeyed orders. Fleeing Liberals were
turned back to be pierced by the bullets of Diaz's soldiers.
Was our government justified in causing the
death of those unfortunate men in such a manner? If
not, would it be improper to characterize the action as
executive murder?
During the past five years hundreds of Mexican refugees
have been imprisoned in the border states, and there
have been numerous attempts to carry refugees across
the line, in order that the Diaz government might deal
with them after its own summary methods, and many
of these attempts have been successful. Some of the
schemes employed in this campaign of deportation are,
first, to institute extradition proceedings tinder charges
of "murder and robbery; " second, to deport through the
Immigration Department under charges of being "undesirable
immigrants; " third, to kidnap outright and feloniously
carry across the line.
Some members of the Liberal Party whose extradition
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