Randa Abdel-Fattah

This market wasn't just the 50 cents a day that sheriffs got for each detainee.

There was money going into the local economy for food, jobs, witnesses coming through, staying at hotels who would testify in the hearings.

One newspaper estimated that Malone would lose around $50,000 a year if, quote, Chinese business moved east.

And it did.

During this period in the early 1900s, four New York counties were benefiting from these deals with the federal government.

But in 1904, things would start to change.

The U.S.

government brought a case against 32 Chinese people detained in Malone challenging their habeas corpus claims.

The case made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the government, giving the Department of Commerce and Labor the power to deport them.

The department had taken over administration of U.S.

immigration the year before since most immigration laws were meant to protect American workers.

Chinese men detained in the jail wrote a letter pleading for help that said, quote, A total of 17 Chinese men would die in Franklin County facilities before the Supreme Court ruling.

Coming up, things get tense when the federal government opens its own sites in rural America.

Hello, this is Kendra from Hampton, Georgia.

And you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

I love your show so much because I always feel like when I listen to the show, I'm getting a more complex understanding of the history, not just one side.

Part two, the prison business.

In August of 1948, a woman named Ellen Knopf was detained at Ellis Island.

At first, no one knew why immigration officials considered her a security risk, and she wasn't given a hearing.

It was the start of the Cold War, and the United States was worried about who was coming into the country.