Biography
Tao Li, also known as Tao Hsuan Li, was a Chinese student and anti-imperialist activist in New York. Labor Department officers arrested him in December 1930 and held him overnight in a police station before searching his room and seizing books by Lenin. He was detained at Ellis Island while the government sought to deport him to China. The International Labor Defense challenged the deportation. After another detention beginning May 16, 1931, he was released on bail. He wrote a firsthand account of overcrowding, food shortages and solitary confinement at Ellis Island.
The June 1931 Labor Defender reports that Tao Hsuan Li was taken to Ellis Island on May 15 during a police attack on a Barge Office protest, and that protest won a stay of departure. Its May 15 date differs from the separately recorded May 16 detention date; the discrepancy is preserved without replacing that date or treating the stay as release or accomplished deportation. The accompanying portrait identifies Li. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1931/v06n06-jun-1931-LD.pdf#page=10
The Behind the Bars directory on printed page 4 lists this prisoner under Ellis Island, 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.
Page 1 prints Tao Husan Li of China among four threatened-deportation defendants due to speak January 23. This is evidence of an asylum-defense campaign and a planned public appearance, not a completed removal or exact physical release.
Pages 1–2 report T. H. Li put in solitary confinement at Ellis Island following a protest against rotten food, overcrowding and sanitation. ILD attorney Isaac Shorr planned an appeal for May 27; Judge Woolsey had temporarily postponed the scheduled May 16 deportation following May 15 protests. Temporary postponement and a request for voluntary departure to the Soviet Union are not a completed departure or physical release.
The December 27, 1930 Daily Worker reports that Tao Hsuan Li had just been released on bail from Ellis Island. This establishes bail release by that issue, without an exact discharge day, and is separate from his May 1931 detention. Primary newspaper source, PDF page 1.
