Biography
Leon Mabille was a French worker and member of the Amalgamated Food Workers who worked as a cook in New York. He had participated in the 1919 Black Sea naval revolt against French intervention in Russia. In 1930 he was arrested in Los Angeles during a demonstration against deportations of Mexican workers. After a trip to Canada that September, Canadian authorities returned him to the United States, where the Labor Department confined him in the Franklin County Jail in Malone, New York. Immigration officials later removed him from the jail and deported him to France without notifying his defense attorneys. Writing from France, Mabille thanked the International Labor Defense for its support and pledged to continue his political work.
Page 3 names L. Mabille with Frank Spector among Communist workers arrested at a Los Angeles open-air meeting before the twelfth Russian Revolution anniversary. Each received $50 or ten days. The initial and surname correspond to the existing Los Angeles militant Leon Mabille; the item is preserved as printed, without deriving a served term or combining it with his later anti-deportation demonstration and immigration detention. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-nat/v06-n234-NAT-dec-06-1929-DW-Q.pdf
The Los Angeles report individually names L. Mabille among people arrested during the week preceding the August 1, 1929 antiwar demonstration. This adds an earlier arrest to his already recorded November 1929 meeting case and later anti-deportation proceedings, without inventing a precise day or complete custody term. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n129-NY-aug-06-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
The ILD reports that immigration authorities removed Mabille from Franklin County Jail and deported him to France without notice to his attorneys. Sheriff A. E. Morrison’s quoted letter could not say whether he passed through Ellis Island; the article says the defense could not find him there and that officials put him directly aboard a ship. The removal is reported as completed, but its exact day is absent. An undated final jail letter thanks the ILD for eight months of defense and relief and describes three months in solitary. Those rounded spans are not converted into dates or assigned as the duration of the September Franklin County admission, because the account also describes earlier Los Angeles and Canadian detention history.
Daily Worker, December 6, 1929; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The Behind the Bars directory on printed page 4 lists this prisoner under Franklin County Jail, New York, with deportation proceedings, 1930. This is an attributed historical directory entry: the year and nominal term do not establish an intake day, uninterrupted imprisonment, completed service or physical release. PDF page 19 prints his signed letter from Franklin County Jail in Malone: confinement since June included three months in Canadian custody, followed by handcuffed transfer to U.S. authorities. His predicted transfer to France is not treated as already completed deportation or uninterrupted U.S. imprisonment from June.
In his firsthand page 4 account, Mabille says immigration officers took him from the Malone jail on the night of February 2, put him aboard a New York-bound train in chains, and rushed him aboard the De Grasse around midnight shortly before sailing. He remained locked in a cabin until three miles at sea. At Le Havre he was released after questioning, crediting ILD and Secours Rouge assistance. He describes nearly eight months in jail across his cases; this approximate cumulative statement is not assigned as a precise single uninterrupted September-to-February interval. The midnight crossing and exact final discharge day remain unresolved.
