President Roosevelt conferred at the White House today with Attorney General Frank Murphy and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and was said to have discussed action possibly to be brought immediately against agents of foreign governments in the United States.
The President discussed with Murphy the possibility of bringing charges against Fritz Kuhn, German-American Bund leader who was sentenced in New York this morning to imprisonment from two-and-a-half to five years, Earl Browder, Communist Party secretary under indictment for passport falsification, and others on charges of violating the act requiring registration of foreign agents.
With Secretary Perkins, Roosevelt talked of the possibility of deporting members of the Bund and Communist Party who were not citizens and who were shown to be agents of foreign governments.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department decided that Kuhn does not lose his American citizenship because he was sentenced for a felony. He can not be deported, it was said, unless it is proved that he violated the law by making false statements when entering this country and obtaining naturalization. “Once a citizen always a citizen,” the Department said.
However, Kuhn does lose his franchise under the laws of New York State.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
