Ellis Island Denies a Soldier’s Wife
In 2020, Time magazine featured the story of Immigrant Ellen Knauff, a German-born employee of the UK Royal Air Force and US Army who married a United States soldier during World War II. Traditionally this would have meant smooth passage into the United State. Curiously, upon her arrival at Ellis Island in 1949, inspection officials detained her – for two years – as a threat to national security. But nobody would tell her why. She argued her case all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court affirmed the decisions to keep her out, citing broad powers of denying immigrant entry. When she was finally granted the hearing, the government revealed they had detained her for being a Communist spy based on witness testimony. But there was no actual evidence to support this claim; it was all hearsay. Knauff finally left Ellis Island in 1951.