The Forgotten Prisoners of McNeil Island
Thirteen men held in limbo for years, caught between a nation that didn't want them and a border that refused their return.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The release of the city's prisoners from the county jail on Thursday night affords the easiest solution to the problem which their imprisonment to the local authorities has presented, and it may therefore be regarded as a fortunate event. It is to be regretted that their six conscientious companions, who preferred to remain behind and endure imprisonment at McNeil Island for an indefinite period, did not follow the example of the more adventurous thirteen and travel to liberty under the Mill street sidewalk. The case of the Chinamen is a peculiar one. They were arrested about two years ago for being unlawfully within the United States, and after trial were ordered to be returned to British Columbia, it being alleged that they sailed for the United States from the port of Victoria. It was not the fault of the United States marshal that this order was not executed. He took the Chinamen to Victoria promptly enough, but the Canadian authorities refused to permit them to land without the payment of a head tax of $50 each. As there was no fund from which this could be paid, and as the marshal did not feel inclined to pay it himself, he took the Chinamen back to the United States and awaited further orders. The point in the procedure is a difficult one, and it has not yet been solved. To let the Chinamen go would be to annul the restriction act. Yet they could not be returned to the country from which they had come unless an appropriation for the head tax was made. Decisions of the courts ordered that they be confined in the United States penitentiary at McNeil Island until something definite could be determined upon in regard to them. They have been confined there ever since. Occasionally they have been taken to Victoria and offered to the Dominion authorities, and the offer has more than once been publicly declined. Though these men had committed no crime they were confined in the penitentiary for more than three years, and there is every hazard that their term of imprisonment would be continued indefinitely. There is no particular reason why they should be held, but there is no legal way of releasing them.
“Though these men had committed no crime they were confined in the penitentiary for more than three years, and there is every hazard that their term of imprisonment would be continued indefinitely.”
This 1890 report illustrates the cruel, bureaucratic inertia of early immigration enforcement in the Pacific Northwest. While the specific legal mechanisms have shifted, the use of island facilities—like the McNeil Island Penitentiary—as sites of indefinite detention echoes contemporary debates surrounding the treatment of asylum seekers and the use of off-shore or remote facilities to manage people caught in jurisdictional limbo.
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