prosecutors been interested in upholding the law, rather than in persecuting the political enemies of Diaz, they would have discharged the defendants and prosecuted Vasquez for perjury.
The general persecution of Mexican political refugees continued unabated up to June, 1910, when the scandal became so great that the matter was presented to Congress, and the facts which I have set down here, but in more complete form, were testified to before the House Rules Committee. Resolutions providing for a general investigation of the persecutions are now pending in both houses.
Up to the initiation of congressional proceedings the government planned to continue the persecutions. Repeatedly it was announced that, when the terms of Magon, Villarreal and Rivera, at the Florence penitentiary, ended, they would be prosecuted on further charges. But on August 3 they were released and were not re-arrested. Since that date there have been no prosecutions, to my knowledge. It is to be hoped that the laws of this country, and the great American principle of protection for political refugees, will not again be abused, for I fear that the conspirators are only waiting for the public to forget their past crimes.
There may be further persecutions and there may not. Even if there are not, Justice will not be satisfied; the friends of decency and of liberty cannot be content. For some of the victims are still enduring unjust punishment which it is in the power of the American people to end. There is Lazaro Puente, for example, the peaceful editor, thirteen years a resident of the United States, who was unjustly and unlawfully deported as an "undesirable immigrant" by our immigration officials. Lazaro Puente is
