PUBLIC HEALTH AND RACIAL SANITATION: MEDICALLY MOTIVATED IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION AT MAJOR UNITED STATES PORTS OF ENTRY, 1892-1924

United States immigration restriction during the early twentieth century is a complex and broad subject. Among the relevant historiographies is the common thread of disease mitigation that, when followed, leads to a number of interesting conclusions about the development of immigration policy. Medically motivated immigration restriction at the ports of entry is an intriguing subject that can be analyzed using a number of historical lenses. By taking a deeper look at typhus mitigation at three United States ports of entry from 1892-1924, this work argues that these spaces need to be treated differently than other borderlands spaces. Ports of entry, when treated as borderlands space, are not the same as other negotiated spaces between different demographics. They were not places of negotiation; rather, these ports of entry were places of unilateral racialization, and the growing medicalization of the country. These spaces were in a liminal bubble where the cultural makeup of the surrounding area mattered little to the enforcement of medical examinations and forced medical procedures. With this concept in mind, these liminal spaces will be treated in this work as a single space that just happens to be separated geographically. This thesis demonstrates that ports of entry are unique borderlands spaces by isolating three different locations during the same global outbreak of typhus. Ellis Island in New York, Angel Island in San Francisco, and the Santa Fe Bridge in El Paso all had dedicated procedures to the mitigation and “curing” of diseases on the bodies of immigrants.