Congress passed the country's most comprehensive immigration act up to that point in But businesses needed help because many men were fighting in World War I, so the Immigration Act was invoked because it had also established the first sanctioned temporary worker policy, which allowed workers from the Western Hemisphere, including Mexicans, to enter the country legally to work primarily in agriculture, but also on the railways and in other industries.
Some stayed and built lives in the U. Then the stock market crashed in and the Great Depression began. With millions out of work, "The Republicans decided the way they were going to create jobs was by getting rid of anyone with a Mexican-sounding name ," former California state senator Joseph Dunn told The Atlantic.
The government called it "repatriation," or the return of someone to their own country. Marla Andrea Ramirez , assistant professor in the department of sociology at San Francisco State University, is studying the ramifications of the Mexican Repatriation — specifically how it affected the families that were forcibly removed. She notes that while some American-born Latinx people returned to reclaim their citizenship, securing citizenship for their families often took more than a decade.
This caused major family strain, she says. Simon was hired to oversee migrant workers in central California. They had three children here: Simon, Julia, and Evelia — my grandmother, who was born in I always knew that my grandmother was born in the U. I wrote an essay about this discovery in when I was researching mass deportation, which was being promised by then-candidate Trump.
I learned that these deportations cost the U. The rationale was that they'd be saving more in unpaid unemployment relief. But some never made it back to America.
Each state handled the raids differently—sometimes federal agents were involved, sometimes it was social workers and local law enforcement who targeted people for removal. Deportations took place across the country: Los Angeles had the largest concentration of Mexicans and Mexican-born Americans, but communities in Detroit were also targeted in large number. There were deportations in states as far flung as Alaska, Alabama and Mississippi. And yet, confirming the precise number of people who were deported during this era is difficult, said Balderrama.
It was a problem and they wanted to get rid of it. He feels confident in his citation of 1. Beyond the travesty inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of U. Trump is unlikely to willfully deport American citizens, but he appears perilously close to replicating many of the mistakes Hoover did as it concerned the undocumented. And given the number of mixed-status families in the U.
But it means no hearing, no judicial review; it could be ready as a summary deportation. Further, the expedited deportations can now occur beyond one hundred miles of the U. According to the New York Times , ICE agents have already been targeting church shelters, airports and other areas where immigrants are known to convene. I understand why immigrant communities are very frightened about what could happen. In the meantime, only a limited number of Americans seem to even be aware of the gross mistakes their country made in the name of security.
While still a state senator, Dunn successfully sponsored the Apology Act , an official mea culpa from the state of California to its Mexican residents—it passed in He also led efforts to have a memorial erected in La Placita park, the site of the first raids on L. In , a Detroit-born U. The raids tore apart families and communities, leaving lasting trauma for Mexican Americans who remained in the U. Escutia has said that growing up in East Los Angeles, her immigrant grandfather never even walked to the corner grocery store without his passport for fear of being stopped and deported.
Even after he became a naturalized citizen, he continued to carry it with him. Relatives and friends wave goodbye to a train carrying 1, people being expelled from Los Angeles back to Mexico in The deportation of U. Deporters rounded up children and adults however they could, often raiding public places where they thought Mexican Americans hung out.
Although the federal government in the s did prosecute 44, people under Section —the same law that criminalizes unauthorized entry today—these criminal prosecutions were separate from the local raids, which were informal and lacked any due process. His secretary of labor, William Doak, also helped pass local laws and arrange agreements that prevented Mexican Americans from holding jobs.
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