Port of No Return

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While most people are aware of the removal of some 127, 000 Japanese citizens or residents of the United States from their homes to 'relocation' camps during World War II, few know that under the 'Alien Enemy Act, ' thousands of Germans, Austrians, and Italians were also apprehended and interned in such camps, both on U.S. soil and in several countries south of the border that cooperated with U.S. government directives. 'Port of No Return' tells the story of New Orleans's key role in this complex secret operation. Even before Pearl Harbor, New Orleans was declared one of two principal ports, together with Baltimore, through which enemy aliens would enter the United States. Thousands of Latin American deportees arrived on ships that passed through New Orleans' port, and they were processed there by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (I.N.S.) before traveling on to other detention facilities. Hundreds also did 'hard time' at Camp Algiers, an I.N.S. Quarantine Station located across the Mississippi River just three miles from downtown New Orleans in historic Algiers. In 1943, a contingent of more than fifty Jewish refugees apprehended as enemy aliens-some of them already survivors of concentration camps in Europe-was transferred to Camp Algiers after tensions arose between avowed Nazis and refugees of the Third Reich in other internment sites in Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, thereby earning Algiers the moniker 'Camp of the Innocents.' While the deportees had been assured in Panama and other points of embarkation in Latin America that their stay in the United States would likely be short, such was rarely the case. Despite the sinister overtones of the 'enemy alien' classification, most of those detained were civilians with no criminal record, who had escaped difficult economic or political situations in their countries of origin by finding a refuge in Latin America. Although enemy alien detention within national boundaries was finally phased out after World War II, few of those deported to the U.S. were able to return to their countries of residence, as their businesses and properties had been confiscated, or their home governments rejected their requests for re-entry. Some were repatriated to their countries of origin-a possibility that horrified Jews and others who had suffered under the Nazis-while others were released under 'internment at large' status in the United States, ultimately becoming U.S. citizens. 'Port of No Return' tells the complex and fascinating stories of these internees and their lives in Camp Algiers