A little background: after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the US entered World War II on the side of Allies. We all know this. Men are needed to fight wars and they volunteers (or were drafted) in droves. This left the agriculture sector of the American Southwest badly in need of workers to till the soil, pick the fruit, and plant the cotton. To that end, the United States, as part of our Good Neighbor Policy, initiated the Bracero Program. Mexican workers would be given work permits to work legally in the United States. This was all in fine and good while the boys were away…but then they came back. I should point out that many Mexican nationals did come here illegally to work. Many came by swimming across the Rio Grande, hence the derogatory name ‘wetback.’ American business owners were more than happy to hire them at low LOW wages.
A report commissioned by President Truman, indicated that there was a massive illegal immigrant problem in the United States. The report stated, “the magnitude … has reached entirely new levels in the past seven years. … In its newly achieved proportions, it is virtually an invasion.” Obviously something had to be done about these invaders (because we all know that in between picking strawberries they were planning the reconquista). When President Eisenhower lost patience with Congress’ inaction (see, it’s nothing new) he exercised his executive power and ordered Immigration and Naturalization to round up the illegals and kick them out. Dubbed Operation Wetback, the military-like operation deported people en masse using sting operations, home invasions, and daily roadblocks. Included among the deportees were actual American citizens.
Estimates vary but give or take about 1 million people were deported back to Mexico. They weren’t deported to the border towns. They were put on trains (mainly in Presidio and El Paso) destined for the interior of Mexico, lest they simply tried to cross again once they were unloaded at the border. The operation was a success: the public was happy and the government could say it actually did something.
If only it were a success…the problem then, as now, is that American businesses continued to need cheap labor. NBC News summed it up best, “The core demand of Mexican labor was never addressed. As a result, Operation Wetback was a setback in a larger migratory flow that essentially leads us to our current immigration context.”
