Biography
Peter Panagopoulos was a Greek worker and bookseller prosecuted in California for criminal syndicalism and threatened with deportation to Greece. Police first arrested him during a January 1932 raid on a Long Beach meeting. After receiving permission to leave the United States voluntarily, he was arrested again on December 15, 1932 and jailed on a criminal-syndicalism charge. Immigration authorities subsequently took him into custody. Represented by attorney Leo Gallagher, he challenged his detention through habeas corpus. On March 25, 1933, Judge George Cosgrave discharged the writ and remanded him to immigration custody.
The March 1933 Labor Defender reports that Panagopoulos was arrested in his bookshop a week before planned voluntary departure and indicted for criminal syndicalism. It describes a subsequent attempt to remove him by train: attorney Leo Gallagher arrived too late at the Los Angeles station, but Panagopoulos was taken off at Colton and returned to Los Angeles jail under $3,000 bail. His relatives in Greece were allegedly threatened after the Greek government was alerted to his politics. The March 13 departure deadline was a proposed condition for dropping proceedings, not proof of actual departure, bail posting or case dismissal. The existing January 1932 raid and December 1932 rearrest are already represented and no duplicate case is proposed. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1933/v09n03-mar-1933-lab-def.pdf#page=17
In a signed letter from the Soviet Union, Peter G. Papagopoulos recalls arrest at a peaceful Long Beach workers meeting in January 1932 on unlawful-assembly charges. He says the trial lasted two months and the ILD obtained release of forty-five workers, while twelve faced deportation. A new Los Angeles Red Squad criminal-syndicalism arrest in December 1932 prevented his departure with eleven others. He recalls four deportation orders and a train stopped in the desert to prevent removal to Greece, followed by permission for voluntary departure through a Pacific port and an actual send-off from San Pedro in May of the prior year. His full name is verified in the native signature; the two-month trial is not asserted as his complete custody. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1934/v10n05-may-1934-orig-LD.pdf#page=17
The signed-letter spelling Peter G. Papagopoulos and the contemporary Peter Panagopoulos record describe the same Long Beach meeting arrest, Los Angeles rearrest, attorney Leo Gallagher and blocked Greek removal. Both spellings and source accounts are preserved in this single profile, with the January and December arrests represented separately.
Contemporary source and custody limits
The March 6, 1933 Western Worker, pages 1 and 3, reports that Leo Gallagher’s habeas intervention removed Peter Panagopoulos from a train at Colton during an attempted deportation. This was not a release from confinement: the continuation explicitly says he remained in county jail with bail fixed at $3,000. It also describes a January 12 agreement allowing departure by March 13 and a February 16 order to prepare for deportation. These agreements, deadlines and orders are not evidence of actual departure or a custody endpoint, and they do not replace the later individually documented March 25 court proceeding.
