Lee Puey You was detained on Angel Island for 20 months before being deported in 1940 under the Chinese Exclusion Act; 20 years after her first landing in America, she succeeded in becoming a U.S. citizen. Rock Fee was placed aboard a ship and deported to China after immigration officials suspected he was a "paper son" of the U.S. citizen claiming to be his father. Dubas Wasyl of Austria was deported after serving a prison sentence for a crime of moral turpitude-"stealing peas and being an accomplice to thieves." Michael Pupa fled Poland after his parents were killed by the Nazis; he eventually came to the United States and was raised by a family in Cleveland, Ohio.

Entering, leaving, or staying in America-their stories were captured in documents and photographs that were attached to government forms. Attachments: Faces and Stories from America's Gates draws from the millions of immigration case files at the National Archives to explore the attachment of immigrants to family and community, and the attachment of some Americans to their beliefs about immigration and citizenship.