Ellis Island, from immigration to deportation

Before World War One, Ellis Island used to process five to ten thousand immigrants every day. In the 1920s, the number dropped to a few hundreds a day. The immigration service asked more questions, investigated, and did raids into established immigrant communities in New York City. This marked the start of the deportation system, making Ellis Island the center for national deportation from the 1920s through the 1950s. The 1929 crisis and the Wall Street crash took away the population’s jobs, and more people were now leaving the United States rather than entering the country.