Vault #5: Keepers of the Gate
Immigrant Inspectors and Exclusion at the Golden Gate
Commissioner Edward Cahill once referred to immigration inspectors as “keepers” of the gate. This term was meant to describe their custodial role in safeguarding America’s border; however, the reality of their work involved enforcing US immigration policies grounded in racism and xenophobia. This image show Angel Island inspectors waiting outside the Appraiser’s Building in San Francisco. Photo credit: William S. Swasey collection, c. 1918.
In the early 20th century, the Bureau of Immigration and the Public Health Service played an important role in screening steamship passengers arriving in San Francisco Bay. Like Ellis Island in New York, Angel Island was not the first inspection point for immigrants. Instead, inspectors would initially meet them over open waters.
As steamships approached the Golden Gate, inspectors would receive notice of the incoming vessel. The steamship would then drop its anchor in the “quarantine zone,” an area between Alcatraz and San Francisco, in preparation for the first of two boarding parties.
Inspectors would board ships entering San Francisco Bay. Under their critical eye, inspectors would determine which immigrants would be sent to Angel Island. Photo Credit: NARA, Department of the Treasury, Public Health Service, 1924.
Inspections in San Francisco Bay
Quarantine Station Inspectors
Quarantine inspectors from the Public Health Service were the first to arrive by boat, having departed from the Quarantine Station outpost near Fisherman’s Wharf. They flew a yellow flag that signaled to other vessels the steamship was in quarantine until cleared. Doctors would examine passengers for highly-contagious diseases like cholera, typhoid, leprosy, smallpox, yellow fever, and bubonic plague. If these contagions were discovered, the ship and its passengers would go to Angel Island for disinfection or fumigation.
More common illnesses like scarlet fever, measles, and diphtheria were considered treatable by local health authorities. Once the inspection had concluded and no quarantinable diseases were found, the yellow flag was lowered, signaling to immigration inspectors it was safe to approach.
The next boarding party would consist of inspectors from the Bureau of Immigration and Public Health Service and interpreters from the Angel Island Immigration Station. They would begin by collecting the ship’s manifest, also called the “List of Alien Passengers,” to conduct their examinations.
An example of this document can be seen here.
Bureau of Immigration Inspectors
Immigration Station inspectors would verify the manifest’s details with each passenger. If they doubted the admissibility of anyone, the inspector would rigorously question the person aboard the ship or hold them for investigation on Angel Island.
Third-class or “steerage” passengers would be required to show the amount of money in their possession. Inspectors also checked a person’s physical and mental ability to support themselves in the US. This test disproportionately affected women, children, and darker-skinned passengers because they were considered less likely to find employment.
One inspector described to a San Francisco Call reporter how passengers were treated aboard steamships in 1900.
“We never bother cabin passengers much, and we use our discretion in matters of this kind. It stands to reason that those who take first-class passage are not apt to be objectionable as a public charge, and that they will not offer competition with American labor. It is in the steerage that we have to be most watchful. They are more susceptible to disease and more apt to be here in violation of the immigration laws, coming in as contract laborers.”
Public Health Service Inspectors
Public Health Service inspectors, working in coordination with the Bureau of Immigration, would determine the physical eligibility of each passenger.
Cabin passengers were subjected to a general survey of their appearance. Third-class passengers would receive tactile examinations. Inspectors checked their scalps for favus and looked for “physical defects and deformities.”
Inspectors also singled out certain immigrant groups they believed were carriers of internal parasites like hookworm. These passengers would undergo laboratory tests on Angel Island to determine whether or not they were infected.
Click here to see the boarding procedures for the Public Health Service.
The same inspectors who boarded steamships also worked on Angel Island. Their work at the US Immigration Station sometimes involved serving on the Board of Special Inquiry.
Public Health Service inspectors on Angel Island administered tests to immigrants who were suspected of carrying parasites or illnesses that would need to be treated before landing. This photo may have been partially staged, since immigrants would often strip for a physical examination. Photo Credit: NARA, Department of the Treasury, Public Health Service, c. 1923.
Inspections on Angel Island
Board of Special Inquiry Inspectors
The Board of Special Inquiry’s role was to determine an immigrant’s eligibility to enter the United States. Anyone suspected of traveling with false documents or was considered a “likely public charge” (marked as “LPC” on the ship manifest) would be questioned by the board. Inspectors also examined claims involving sons or daughters of someone in the US—which was permitted under the law.
An immigrant’s hearing before the Board of Special Inquiry began with the presentation of evidence. The detainee would face the seated members of the board, be placed under oath, and be subjected to questioning by the chairman. The first phase of the interrogation was routine. The board entered the following information into the record: age, birthplace, port of departure, destination, money in their possession, occupation, the reason for migration, and relevant evidence of US citizenship or prior US residency.
Any witnesses who came to testify on behalf of the detained person were secluded in a separate room. They would be called to testify after the detainee has completed their testimony. Usually, the board made a decision immediately at the end of the hearing. Two of the three board members would need to agree to render a verdict. If the decision was to admit, the person was immediately released from detention. If the decision was to deport, the person was kept in detention until deported or until an appeal was completed.
In the following quote, a former Angel Island employee describes his job as an inspector in 1934.
“Practically all the time was spent conducting Boards of Special Inquiries, and I would estimate well over ninety percent in questioning arriving Chinese. And our job was in effect to go over every minute detail of the history of an arriving child, where he lived, where he went to school, and compare what he said with what his father said. And they testified independently, neither knowing what the other had said. So, it was basically a matter of comparing notes between the father and the arriving child to see if we were convinced that they had actually lived together in China.”
Click here to read a Board of Special Inquiry transcript from Tyrus Wong.
Hospital Inspectors
Public Health Service doctors had an office, waiting room, dispensary/lab, and exam room in the main administration building. Otherwise, healthy-looking immigrants would be tested regardless of their country of origin, ethnicity, and passenger class on the steamship. However, implicit bias adversely affected some immigrant groups over others.
Typical tests included flipping an immigrant’s eyelids to check for trachoma and other ailments that could impair sight or lead to disability. They also collected blood, saliva, urine, or stool samples for laboratory tests. These tests detected intestinal parasites that could cause anemia and fatigue.
French immigrant Jean Gontard published a book describing the humiliation of producing stool samples in 1914.
“And, squatting down behind the protective barrier of the beds, the astonished patients do their business, for the most part with great effort to produce something on the immaculate bottom of the wash basin… The nurses, very serious, are there distributing to the most unfortunate some purgative salts… You won’t be allowed to leave here without having done something! Take another purgative, it is necessary, it is necessary, that’s the law! You won’t be going anywhere until you produce something no matter how little!... Impassive, without even turning their head, the gentle nurses carried the basins at arms’ length to the laboratory of the doctor whom I had noticed downstairs, in the midst of the microscopes and tests, absorbed in his devilish duty.”
The Public Health Service also performed invasive physical examinations for what they called “age determination cases.” These examinations required immigrants to strip naked while a doctor scrutinized their hair, skin, teeth, voice, and genitals. These exams primarily affected immigrants arriving as “paper sons.”
During the Chinese Exclusion Act, dependent children could legally enter the country if their parents already lived in the US. If immigration officials suspected someone was older than 18, they relied on the physician in charge to determine their approximate age.
Click here to view a medical inspector’s document from Angel Island, or visit the AIIM Virtual Exhibit to learn more about the immigrant hospital.
Visitors to the Immigration Station can find a 4 ft. x 8 ft. granite table where inspections were once held. Approximately thirty Certificates of ID from Angel Island immigrants are etched in the top. Click here to find this location on Angel Island. Photo credit: AIISF, 2019.
AIISF. Interview with Zalph B. Jackson, Immigration Inspector from 1934 to 1935. Felicia Lowe Collection.
Gontard, Jean. A Travers la Californie, 1922.
NARA, San Bruno. Commissioner Edward W. Cahill to Mr. George Fitch. Record Group 85, General Correspondence, November 9, 1934.
NARA, San Bruno. Chief Medical Officer E.C. Kading to the District Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Record Group 85, Memorandum, October 28, 1940.
San Francisco Call. "How Uncle Sam Watches the Immigrant and Catches the Smuggler," January 28, 1900.
San Francisco Call. "Immigrants Must Pass Rigid Tests to Enter the Golden Gate," Robert Newton Lynch, April 14, 1912.
Shah, Nayan. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. American Crossroads 7. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.