“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads the engraving on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. But throughout America’s history, poor immigrants have often been exploited for cheap labor and then discarded. Operation Wetback, named for a racist slur, was a massive deportation scheme that embodied this idea.
During the summer of 1954, hundreds of Border Patrol agents descended on cotton and citrus farms, cattle ranches, hotels, and restaurants all throughout the American Southwest. They boasted of nabbing 2,000 undocumented immigrants a day, resulting in the expulsion of more than a million people. Public parks were turned into detention centers. U.S. citizens who couldn’t quickly produce proof of their citizenship were swiftly deported. Many of those deported were sent to southern Mexico, regardless of where they were originally from, stranding them without family, money, or food.
During the 2015 Republican presidential primary debates, candidate Donald Trump praised President Dwight Eisenhower for his implementation of Operation Wetback. He said, “‘I like Ike,’ right? The expression. ‘I like Ike.’ Moved a million and a half illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. They came back. Moved them again beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back.”
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