“Operation Wetback & Donald Trump”

“Do you know that Dwight Eisenhower who is a nice general, in the 1950s, do you know that he moved over a million people out and what he did he brought them to the border and they came right back. Brought them to the border and they came right back and then they took them and moved all the way down south and they never came back but Dwight Eisenhower moved over a million, 1.5 million people back in to the south through the border because it was a huge problem. Nobody ever mentions it. It was a major operation, 1.5 million people which is maybe the equivalent in those days, and he moved them out because we had a huge problem in the 1950s. Nobody ever talks about it.”
An Illiterate Donald Trump, the Today Show (NBC), Monday, October 26, 2015
There is a minority of so-called Americans who think the United States is being invaded by brown-skinned savages from the south who come to rape, rob and violate everyone they can. Their candidate for President is Donald Trump.
Alleged deportable people were rounded up en masse from Los Angeles in 1930/1931 and under President Eisenhower in 1954 and deported.
In 2006, The Christian Science Monitor published a gushing article by John Dillin that exalted the Eisenhower effort, which was conceived and run by Army Gen. Joseph “Jumping Joe” Swing, a 11th Airborne Division leader in World War II and West Point classmate of Eisenhower.
Dillin wrote: “President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic [of illegal aliens from Mexico]. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents which is less than one-tenth of today’s force [in 2006].”
In true Army tradition, the effort was named: “Operation Wetback.”
Dillin was totally sold on Operation Wetback and the claims that millions of illegals were deported under it; many think it can be replicated today. Trump said so on “60 Minutes” in September.
The Texas State Historical Association thinks otherwise. In its “Handbook of Texas,” it points out that Texas was not included in the legal U.S farm worker program with Mexico that allowed legal farm workers — the Bracero Program. Mexico had withdrawn the program from Texas because Texas farmers violated the program’s terms of treatment with half-pay and insufficient housing of farm workers.
The Texas State Historical Association also reports in the Handbook that Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officers didn’t deport the thousands of illegals they claimed. The INS actually turned them over to the Texas Employment Commission which, in turn, turned them over to farmers and farm cooperatives as very cheap labor. This according to the Handbook.
The Handbook notes that “perhaps no more than 700 men [agents]” were involved in Texas, “but [numbers of detained/deported] were exaggerated by border officials who hoped to scare illegal workers into flight back to Mexico.” The numbers started at 4,000-a-day and tapered off to nothing in months.
So went Operation Wetback in Texas: An exaggerated program built on lies and corruption that did not deport millions. Officials, starting with Swing, exaggerated what actually happened by declaring that millions of illegals from Mexico were scared off, frightened by the sweeping Texas actions of 700 men. According to the INS and Swing, Mexicans ran back to Mexico like scared little kids.
Operation Wetback is best characterized with one two words: government lies.
As for mass deportations of Mexicans from Los Angeles in 1930/1931, it has been written before – by this writer – that, the effort was ordered by President Herbert Hoover, but that has been challenged by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library staff. They assert there is no proof Hoover ordered any round-ups. The Library staff claims it was the city of Los Angeles that swept the streets with local police officers and some Border Patrol agents, cleansing Los Angeles of Mexican-looking men who were “taking” jobs Americans “deserved.” The City paid for the rail transportation used to take the people to Mexico.
According to reports on NPR and the Associated Press, the unique feature was the use of the railroad to carry the thousands of Mexican-looking men and families the 150 miles to the Mexican border for dumping directly onto the streets of the small, then-10,000 person city of Tijuana, Mexico, without Mexican permission.
The research by the Hoover Library also shows that, according to a Hoover-appointed federal investigative commission, the Wickersham Commission, the Los Angeles effort had many “objectionable features” of “forcibly detaining groups of people many of whom are aliens lawfully in this country, or even United States citizens, without any warrant of arrest or search.”
As far as mass deportations are concerned, we know that the Los Angeles and Operation Wetback efforts were dubiously conducted and corruptly managed by officials who lied about what they did. They covered up illegality, expecting that no one would care. Here entered the Wickersham Commission and its findings.
Before the country embarks on fulfilling Donald Trump’s promise to round up/deport 12 million people, we and he should take notice of what happened when such efforts were undertaken before in the U.S.: The Wickersham Commission stated — “The apprehension and examination of supposed aliens are often characterized by methods unconstitutional, tyrannical, and oppressive.”
So said the Republican-appointed and staffed Wickersham Commission in 1931. Is it deja vu all over again, Mr. Trump?