The border state in which he practiced in the 1920s, '30s and '40s was New York. His clients were not Hondurans, Salvadorans or Guatemalans but Slovaks, Poles, Italians, Greeks and Irish. Instead of today's undocumented Hispanics fleeing street violence and cartels and paying ruthless coyotes to smuggle them to Brownsville, Nogales and Tijuana, the European wayfarers were escaping the violence of two world wars, arriving in transatlantic vessels at New York's upper harbor and the 271â?2 acres of the Ellis Island inspection station.