 Some 1,881 were taken into custody and detained under wartime restrictions; these were applied most often by the United States Department of Justice to diplomats, businessmen, and Italian nationals who were students in the US, especially to exclude them from sensitive coastal areas.In addition, merchant seamen trapped in US ports by the outbreak of war were detained.Italian labor leaders lobbied for recognition as loyal (and not enemy aliens) those Italian Americans who had initiated naturalization before the war broke out; they objected to blanket classification of Italian nationals as subversives.