Biography
Walter Baer was a Seattle engineer and Depression-era activist for the unemployed, ordered deported to Germany under the McCarran-Walter Act on the pretext of two trivial 1919 bad-check charges — proceedings the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born tied to his old battles with private power interests. After 23 years' jeopardy, deportation was halted in 1957 when the governor of Oregon granted him an unconditional pardon.
The Daily Worker of February 19, 1936 reports that writers visiting Ellis Island on Lincoln's Birthday met Baer and four other political detainees; it identifies him as a civil engineer from Portland, Oregon.
Daily Worker, May 12, 1936, page 4: In his interview with Abner Green, Baer says he was brought east in October 1935 and held six months in Ellis Island’s Room 210 with other political detainees. The article reports his release the preceding week on $2,000 bail pending a Circuit Court of Appeals challenge. He said he was born near Calexico but had no official birth record and tied his deportation to opposition to a Portland sewage-disposal plan; that retaliation claim is attributed to him. The 1919 offense is background to the immigration case, not a fresh criminal conviction. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n114-NY-May-12-1936-DW-Q.pdf
An anti-deportation appeal included Baer among anti-Nazi immigrants facing removal to Germany. Its collective description of detention at Ellis Island or in detention pens before transfer does not establish an individual facility or completed deportation. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n071-NAT-mar-23-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=5
The report individually names this labor deportee among those then held while Mannisto was removed. Threatened deportation and predicted fascist persecution are not recorded as completed removal or death; earlier and later bail evidence remains separate. Daily Worker, December 30, 1935, original PDF page 3. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n314-NY-dec-30-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
The January 19 report lists him with a deportation sailing scheduled January 22 on the President Roosevelt. A sailing order is not proof that he left the United States, and independently documented later appeals and bail release remain unchanged. Daily Worker, January 20, 1936, original PDF page 3. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n017-NY-jan-20-1936-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
Labor Defender, February 1936, PDF page 5: His signed open letter, continued on PDF 25, says he remained on Ellis Island after habeas corpus stopped deportation. He describes Portland residence for 28 years, wife and three children, his claimed Calexico birth versus the disputed German record, public-works engineering advocacy, and an earlier four-year imposed sentence with two years ten months actually served, ending in 1924. Those old criminal proceedings are background; this does not date a new political arrest. His wife names children George, Lois and Marlene on PDF 22. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1936/v12-%5B10%5Dn02-feb-1936-orig-LD.pdf#page=5
Abner Green's October 1936 Labor Defender account dates the Portland home arrest to April 1934. This retrospective year differs from the 1935 chronology in other accounts. The disagreement remains unresolved; it does not establish another imprisonment or justify changing the existing custody dates. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1936/v12-%5B10%5Dn10-oct-1936-orig-LD.pdf#page=17
Abner Green’s account explicitly places a warrantless home arrest in Portland one April morning in 1934, when five men led by Department of Labor official Roy J. Norene broke down the back door. This adds a month to the initial arrest in the existing Nazi-Germany deportation proceeding. It does not establish continuous confinement from April 1934 through later Ellis Island detention or supply a new admission or release day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1936/v12-%5B10%5Dn10-oct-1936-orig-LD.pdf#page=17
Earlier 1935 detention and prevented deportation, distinct from the later proceedings
The December 28, 1935 Daily Worker, page 7, describes Baer being taken from his Portland home to the City Police Station on April 9; that passage does not print the year beside the day. It explicitly reports his arrival at Ellis Island on Monday, November 25, 1935, on a deportation special from the West Coast. His planned November 27 sailing aboard S.S. Hamburg did not occur: the defense obtained a thirty-day stay. That stay is not proof of release, nor is its expiry a deportation date. These are earlier proceedings and cannot have arisen under the later McCarran-Walter Act. The defense also disputed the government’s claimed German birthplace and asserted birth in Calexico, California; this source does not settle that dispute or give a date of birth. No precise initial admission, actual release or counter is inferred.
A December 1935 report placed Baer in immigration detention on Ellis Island, facing deportation to Nazi Germany. Angelo Herndon visited him there on December 17. The Congregational Church’s Council for Social Action protested his deportation. This is a separate historical episode from the later McCarran-Walter proceeding.
Page3’s anti-fascist deportation report identifies Walter Baer as already detained at EllisIsland; the article calls him a Portland engineer active in unemployment struggles, with removal to Germany threatened. It attributes political grounds and danger of persecution to the AmericanCommitteeForProtectionOfForeignBorn. No new detention episode is created merely from this interim status.
A Portland worker-correspondent reports Baer surrendered to immigration authorities Thursday, February 21, 1935, for deportation on a moral-turpitude allegation concerning old convictions. The correspondent disputes his German nationality and attributes the action to unemployment organizing. His wife and three Oregon-born children were offered passage; his disabled father would remain. Surrender is established, completed deportation is not. The relationship to his later eastward transfer and 1936 bail release remains source-qualified.
The anti-Nazi refugee defense call names this worker among people threatened with deportation to Germany. It specifically describes Alfred Miller as a Montana farm-paper editor and Becker’s two brothers as concentration-camp prisoners; Richter was ordered to surrender May 15 and leave his American-born wife. Inclusion in the appeal alone is not proof that every listed person was then jailed or deported; independently recorded bail and later outcomes are retained.
The review of Charles Recht’s The Right of Asylum names Sallitto and Ferrero as California residents held for deportation to Italy over renting restaurant office space to anarchists. It separately lists Eric Becker, Carl Ohm, Otto Richter, Stella Petrosky and Walter Baer among radical or labor activists held for deportation. These are current detention and threatened removal references, not proof of actual deportation, a new admission or individually measured custody.
