Today in Labor History July 12, 1917: The Bisbee Deportation began, the illegal kidnapping and deportation of 1,300 mostly immigrant copper miners from Bisbee, Arizona. The miners were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies), on strike against the Phelps Dodge mining company. They were held in the town’s baseball park, before being sent by train, without food or water, to the New Mexican desert 200 miles away. Some of the railcars were covered in manure three inches deep. The temperature for the 16-hour ride was in the mid-90s. The authorities threatened to lynch any of them that returned. They were then taken to Columbus, NM, which was still under U.S. military occupation, in hopes that the soldiers there would attack the Wobblies. The U.S. soldiers were there to secure the town, after having battled Pancho Villa and 500 Mexican rebels the previous year.
The IWW had called for a strike to begin on June 26. More than 3,000 miners participated, including workers from all the local mines (not just Phelps Dodge), or about 85% of all mine workers in Bisbee. Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler asked the Governor to request federal troops: "The whole thing appears to be pro-German and anti-American." On July 10, Phelps Dodge President Walter Stuart Douglas formed “Citizens Committee” made up of local business leaders. They rounded up over 100 Wobblies in Jerome, Arizona and deported 67 of them from to Needles, California. They told them to never return. When the IWW protested to the Governor, he claimed that they had "threatened" him.
On July 11, authorities in Bisbee sealed off the county and seized the local Western Union telegraph office and cut off outside communication, while the sheriff and mine owners organized a posse of 2,000 well-armed vigilantes began. They arrested Wobblies, as well as sympathetic towns people and several shop owners. Over 2,000 men, in total, were arrested. Jim Brew, IWW member and a veteran of the violent West Virginia Cripple Creek strike of 1903-04, fought back and killed Deputy Sheriff Orson McRae. Three other deputies promptly shot him dead.
25% of the deportees were Mexican and many of them were members of the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), an anarchist organization created by Ricardo Flores Magon. The IWW and PLM had longstanding ties. Numerous Anglo IWW members joined the Magonistas when they invaded and occupied Baja California, early in the Mexican Revolution. Many workers in Arizona held dual membership in the two organizations, including Rosendo Dorame, who appears in the film Bisbee 17.
Another of the Bisbee deportees was Kurt Wilckens, an anarchist immigrant from Germany, and an IWW member. In 1920, the authorities deported him back to Germany under the Espionage Act for making antiwar statements. However, he immediately left for Argentina, where he participated in the Patagonian Uprising (1920-22). During that revolt, the military, led by Lieutenant Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela, slaughtered 1,500 workers. To avenge the workers killed, Wilckens bombed and shot Varela. His jailers assassinated him in jail. The workers responded with a General Strike.
You can read my full article on the Bisbee Deportation here:
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2026/06/01/the-bisbee-deportation/
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