“I Glanced Up—The Statue of Liberty!”"After World War I, a “red scare” gripped the United States. One reflection of this climate of hysteria was in the “Palmer raids” on radicals. Striking without warning and without warrants, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s men smashed union offices and the headquarters of Communist and Socialist organizations. They concentrated whenever possible on aliens rather than citizens, because aliens had fewer rights. In December 1919, in their most famous act, Palmer’s agents seized 249 resident aliens. Those seized were placed on board a ship, the Buford, bound for the Soviet Union. Deportees included the feminist, anarchist, and writer Emma Goldman, who later recalled the deportation in her autobiography, Living My Life. " GMU History Matters