Biography
Thomas Truss was a Polish immigrant, Baltimore coat presser and local Amalgamated Clothing Workers leader detained during the Palmer raids. Police took him from his home on January 7, 1920, and held him without a warrant before transferring him to federal immigration custody on January 9. He remained imprisoned until January 15, when he posted $1,000 bail. Authorities sought his deportation for alleged membership in prohibited political organizations. Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post canceled the warrant on April 6, finding that Truss was a socialist rather than an anarchist and had withdrawn from a proposed Communist Party branch before learning its constitution. Truss had arrived in the United States in 1907 and lived in Baltimore with his wife and three children.