"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 health inspection 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 under 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
