Concerning the steps taken at Marseille, Antwerp, and Chiasso to deflect the diseased emigrants from the United States ports to Canada and Mexico, I beg to state the following: At Chiasso this practice has been largely discontinued since the strict enforcement of the immigration laws of the United States and the strict observance of the medical examinations at Canadian ports. At Antwerp the practice is still prevailing, though in a lesser degree, the information given to such emigrant being that he sail to England, preferably to London, whence his departure and opportunity of landing in the United States will be much easier than from any other port. The “hotbed” for the deflection of such diseased emigrants, a majority of whom come from Syria, Armenia, and Greece, is Marseille. There are in Marseille about a half-dozen duly licensed and properly appointed steamship agencies, each of whom employs its “runners,” the most unscrupulous of whom is one Anton Fares, the publisher of the Syrian weekly _Al Mircad_. These runners are at a landing whenever a steamer having such emigrants aboard arrives from Syria, Turkey, or Greece. These emigrants are then taken charge of by the runners and escorted to the various emigrants’ headquarters to be there examined and classified. Such of these emigrants who are not afflicted with some disease receive the ordinary instructions and are shipped via regular ports of embarkation, mostly Havre and Boulogne. Those found suffering from trachoma or favus are then thoroughly instructed and are told that the only way for them to effect an entrance to the United States is to embark at St. Nazaire, France, and sail on the ships of the French line (Compagnie Générale Transatlantique) for Vera Cruz, Mexico, and, according to the personal statement made to me by Fares, those emigrants are then escorted across the Mexican border to the United States by friends or people with whom he is connected in a business way. Heretofore entry into the United States from Mexico was effected by way of Laredo, El Paso, or Eagle Pass, but since the detention and deportation of some of these emigrants who thus effected an entry to the United States this method was abandoned and the above method resorted to. I verified this statement by personal investigation at St. Nazaire and from interviews had with the Mexican and Cuban consuls and the manager of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, each of whom informed me that no fewer than 250 emigrants leave that port on the 21st day of each and every month for Mexico. I briefly referred to this condition of things in my report to the Department, dated, respectively, Marseille, June 28, 1903, and Paris, July 10, 1903. So alarming did I find these conditions at St. Nazaire that I was prompted thereby to address my cablegram to the Department on July 13, 1903, suggesting a close watch on the Mexican border outside of regular railroad passes, and I also briefly referred to these matters in