Mexican Repatriation
[1][2][3] Estimates of how many were repatriated, deported, or expelled range from 300,000 to 2 million (of which 40–60% were citizens of the United States, overwhelmingly children).
[5] The vast majority of formal deportations happened between 1930 and 1933, as part of a Hoover policy first mentioned in his 1930 State of the Union Address.
[5] After Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, his administration implemented softer immigration policies, and both formal and voluntary deportations reduced.
[15][16][17][18] 80,000-100,000 Mexican citizens lived in this territory, and were promised U.S. citizenship under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War.
[21][22] Mexican emigration to the United States was not significant until the construction of the railroad network between Mexico and the Southwest, which provided employment and eased transit.
[8]: 6–7 Increasing demands for agricultural labor, and the violence and economic disruption of the Mexican Revolution, also caused many to flee Mexico during the years of 1910–1920[8]: 8–9 [23] and again during the Cristero War in the late 1920s.
At the same time, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a group of Mexican and African immigrants facing racial discrimination and persecution by the city officials [36][37][38] was expelled from the town.
[61][62] Additional immigrants went to Oregon, Idaho and Washington as farm laborers and to Colorado to work in the sugar beet industry.
[63][64][42][65] and the steel industry in Pueblo, Colorado[66] These large inflows of immigrants raised concerns quickly among legislatures and committees.
[61][67] Representatives of Texas' agricultural industry shared with a committee that some immigrants were bringing their families with them during their journey to the United States.
[10] Similarly, in the depression of 1920–21, the US government was advised to deport Mexicans to "relieve ... benevolence agencies of the burden of helping braceros and their families.
This followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, and resulting growth in poverty and nativist sentiment, exemplified by President Herbert Hoover's call for deportation[6]: 4, 74–75 and a series on the racial inferiority of Mexicans run by the Saturday Evening Post.
[81][82] Even before the Wall Street crash, a variety of "small farmers, progressives, labor unions, eugenicists, and racists" had called for restrictions on Mexican immigration.
"[6]: 99 Similarly, Congressman Martin Dies (D-TX) wrote in the Chicago Herald-Examiner that the "large alien population is the basic cause of unemployment.
[6]: 68 Secretary of Labor William Doak (who at that time oversaw the Border Patrol) "asserted that deportation ... was essential for reducing unemployment".
[44]: 380–381 By 1932, involuntary repatriation became more common, as local governments and aid agencies in Gary began to use "repressive measures ... to force the return of reluctant voyagers".
[44]: 384 Similarly, in Detroit, by 1932 one Mexican national reported to the local consul that police had "dragged" him to the train station against his will, after he had proven his residency the previous year.
[6]: 79 [87] As the effects of the Great Depression worsened and affected larger numbers of people, feelings of hostility toward immigrants increased rapidly, and the Mexican community as a whole suffered as a result.
States began passing laws that required all public employees to be American citizens, and employers were subject to harsh penalties such as a five hundred dollar fine or six months in jail if they hired immigrants.
[6]: 89–91 President Hoover publicly endorsed Secretary of Labor Doak and his campaign to add "245 more agents to assist in the deportation of 500,000 foreigners.
[5] During the Hoover administration in the late 1920s and early 1930s, particularly the winter of 1930–1931, William Dill (D-NJ), the attorney general who had presidential ambitions, instituted a program of deportations.
[6]: 71 [93]: 5 Jose David Orozco described on his local radio station the "women crying in the streets when not finding their husbands" after deportation sweeps had occurred.
[12]: 18 Nonetheless, because of the large number of repatriations in the early 1930s, the government was forced to act and provided a variety of services.
[12]: 185–186 The federal government responded to the increased levels of immigration that began during World War II (partly due to increased demand for agricultural labor) with the official 1954 INS program called Operation Wetback, in which an estimated one million persons, the majority of whom were Mexican nationals and immigrants without papers, were repatriated to Mexico.
[95][96] In 2006, Congressional representatives Hilda Solis and Luis Gutiérrez introduced a bill calling for a commission to study the issue.
[98][99] Los Angeles County also issued an apology in 2012, and installed a memorial at the site of one of the city's first immigration raids.
