Despite the vast number of cases sent his way, Post charged, he had run across only a handful of men and women who posed any danger to society. “As a rule the hearings show the aliens arrested to be working men of good character,” he declared. Post’s words reflected the human sympathy missing from Hoover’s late nights checking lists, reading manifestos, and assembling affidavits. “It is pitiful to consider the hardship to which they and their families have been subjected,” Post mourned, all “for nothing more dangerous than affiliating with friends of their own race, country and language.”
