Operation
Wetback
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Farm
workers in
California
Operation
Wetback
was a 1954 project of the United
States Immigration
and Naturalization Service to remove all illegal aliens
from the southwestern
United States, with a focus on Mexican
nationals. Mexican citizens residing in the
U.S.
were called wetbacks;
this term is now used as a derogatory term for any Mexican
or Central American immigrant.
[edit]
History
Burgeoning
numbers of illegal immigrants prompted President Dwight
D. Eisenhower to appoint his longtime friend General Joseph
Swing as INS Commissioner. According to
Attorney General Herbert
Brownell Jr., Eisenhower had a sense of urgency about
illegal immigration immediately when he took office. In a
letter to Sen. William
Fulbright, Eisenhower quoted a report in The New
York Times that said: "The rise in illegal
border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of
more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a
curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the
way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to
the highest levels of the Federal Government."
Eisenhower
became increasingly concerned that profits from illegal
labor led to corruption. An on-and-off guest-worker program
for Mexicans was operating at the time, farmers and ranchers
in the Southwest were becoming dependent on an additional
low-cost labor. The operation was modeled after the
deportation program which invited American citizens of
Mexican ancestry to go back to
Mexico
during the Great
Depression because of the bad economy north of the
border. However, once World
War II started, the
United States
invited Mexican laborers to the
US
.
[edit]
The
Operation
The
operation began in California and Arizona and coordinated
1,075 Border
Patrol agents along with state and local police agencies
to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police
sweeps of Mexican-American
neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of
"Mexican-looking" people in a region with many
Native Americans and native Hispanics. Some 750 agents
targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000
apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens
were caught in the two states. 488,000 people fled the
country for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000
had been taken into custody in
Texas
, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left
Texas
voluntarily. To discourage reentry, buses and trains took
many illegals deep within
Mexico
before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put
aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio.
The ships ferried the aliens from Port
Isabel
,
Texas
, to
Veracruz
,
Mexico
, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) south.
[edit]
Result
Operation
Wetback deported approximately one million Mexican nationals
in the space of almost a year, although perceived
heavy-handed methods led to accusation of police-state
tactics. Some argue that this public reaction helped force
the operation to end. The alternate theory is that as the
economy to the north expanded the demand to deport
decreased.
