San Antonio couple faced deportation as communists in 1949

This headline on the front page of the Express on Dec. 13, 1949, was definitely eye-catching:


According to the story, immigration officers said John and Ada Crewe were former members of the Communist Party. Therefore, they were “charged with having been members of an organization that advocates overthrow of the United States government by force and violence….”

Their deportation hearing was “the first…hearing of this nature ever open to the public in San Antonio….”

It was not the first deportation hearing, however. Fritz Kuhn, notorious leader of the German-American Bund, faced the same immigration officials here at a hearing on March 7, 1944. He was deported to Germany on Sept. 15, 1945, but had been held at the Alien Detention Camp in Kenedy until then.

The Crewes had immigrated from Canada in 1920. If found “deportable,” the Crewes would be sent back there. Mr. Crewe, 57, was a native of Newfoundland, but owned the Jack Crewe Trailer Repair Shop here. His wife, 53, was originally from England. They married here in April 1943, but “officials had no record of how long he ha[d] resided in San Antonio.”

In 1942, they were sentenced to six months in federal prison and “fined $500 each for false registration under the Alien Registration Act of 1940. Communist Party membership books bearing their names were introduced into evidence at the trial.”

In their hearing on Dec. 20, they “admitted they belonged to the Communist Party in San Antonio for four years — from 1936 to July, 1940.” They left “because at the time aliens were not encouraged in the American Communist Party.” They contested the charges against them stating that the party did not advocate the overthrowing of the U.S. government.

The Light reported on April 14, 1950 that their deportation order was ruled invalid by the U.S. Immigration Service because the examiner in the hearing was also an investigator. The hearing was ordered to be held again, and was reopened on Sept. 12.

A Feb. 3, 1951, story in the Express headlined “Von Ormy Ex-Reds Ordered Deported” stated that the previous case related to their 1949 hearing “was never finally decided.”

However, the Crewes had been newly charged “under provisions of the Security Act of 1950, which provide[d] for deportation of any alien found to have been a member of the Communist party.”

The Crewes “informally objected to the presence of two newspaper reporters in the hearing room, saying that the previous publicity had ‘hurt their business.'” Mrs. Crewe said, “They’ve been hounding us for 10 years for something that wasn’t a crime when we did it.”

She also said they left the Communist party “because we didn’t want to be in it, and we weren’t kicked out, either, as some people say.”

I did not find a story officially addressing their deportation, but I assume they returned to Canada.

–Julie Domel

Julie Domel