Remembering Ike’s mass deportations: “Operation Wetback”

Kansas overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump for president.  Voters in these parts liked his proposals, especially removing 11 million undocumented immigrants let into our country during Biden’s Administration. 

Liking the proposal during an election is one thing.  Removing illegals and the undocumented has proven to be more difficult than it was thought. 

Trump’s new border czar, Tom Homan, wants to first deport those who have been committing crimes.  Thousands of undocumented charged with crimes were rounded up in the first weeks.  The first military flight with these criminals left for central America on January 24^th. 

However, the idea that 11 million undocumented immigrants can be rounded up and immediately hauled to and dumped at the Mexican border or flown to other Central American countries, is stretching things.  ICE is doing its best but is running into opposition.  Kansans of all people should know this.  It was a Kansan who tried mass deportation the last time.

Too much speed may run into the same problems as the mass deportation program instituted by Kansas native and President Dwight D. Eisenhower after World War II.  His 1954 program was given the politically incorrect but official government name of Operation Wetback. 

The Beginning

In 1830, we began the ignoble history of mass deportations during the western expansion of the country.  Under the so-called Manifest Destiny, Andrew Jackson, a Tennessee slave holder in civilian life, as President had the army forcibly remove the Cherokee and other tribes from southern states to make room for southern cotton plantations and slavery’s expansion.  The Cherokee called the removal to what is now Oklahoma “The Trail Where They Cried.”  Some 4,000 Cherokee and other tribes died from hunger or disease along the way.

When Quantrill raided Lawrence in 1863 and killed 170 men and boys, General Thomas Ewing Jr., the first chief justice of Kansas and an , Union army general, sent his cavalry to round up 20,000 Missourians in the four counties around Independence, Missouri and herd them from their homes and farms into Arkansas.  Ewing believed these southern sympathizers were sheltering southern guerrillas in Missouri towns, allowing Quantrill’s pillaging.  Ewing’s orders worked.  Removing this population to Arkansas stopped all future guerrilla raids into Kansas.

In 1929, American economists could see the coming of a worldwide economic collapse.  Gripped by fear, our government sought to keep American jobs for Americans.  Immigrants in America were to be “sent back.”   Under the banner of economic security, the Great Mexican Repatriation began.  From 1929 to 1936, between 400,000 and 2 million people were rounded up, torn from homes and communities, and forcibly shipped to Mexico. Among them were thousands who had the legal right to remain here, naturalized U.S. citizens bound to this land by birthright and loyalty. Yet they looked “Mexican,” so they were shipped back.

World War II

The greatest governmental effort ever made by the United States was the ramping up to fight fascism in World War II on a world-wide scale.  Between 1941 and 1945, 12 million Americans went into our armed forces — nine percent of our population.

Caucasian Americans did not win this war against Imperial Japan and Nazis Germany by themselves. A half-million servicemen were Latino.  They were considered white in the segregated army of that time. Nearly 700,000 African Americans mostly filled support roles, but many were part of excellent combat units like the 332nd Fighter Group (Tuskegee Airmen), the 92nd Infantry Division (Buffalo Soldiers) and the 761st Tank Battalion in Patton’s Third Army.  Perhaps the most maligned but the best were the young Japanese Americans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, were among the most decorated of American military units in the Army’s now 250-year history.

The soldiers and sailors for this effort came from all over.  After high school, my father and uncle left a small Jewell County farm to become Navy fighter pilots, part of millions the American draft took off the farm.  Agriculture in 1942-45 being labor intensive, those left on the farm couldn’t do all the farming without help. 

Farm help came from unlikely places. In May 1943, when Germany’s “Afrika Korps” surrendered in Tunisia, 50,000 Germans and Italians came to the U. S. as prisoners of war, many to the four POW camps in Kansas. Some of the captured Germans had been farm kids before the war.  They were given a small form of freedom if they helped in American fields. 

Mexicans were contracted to help as well. In the summer of 1942, after Nazis U-boats sank several Mexican ships, Mexico had no armed forces to lend to the Allies. What Mexico did have were citizens available for temporary and paid agricultural work in the United States: the Bracero Program. This solution certainly helped the war effort.  More than 200,000 Mexicans came over the border annually on short-term contracts.

Post-war

When both WWII and Korea were over, millions of veterans came home to new federal benefits like the G. I. Bill of Rights, low-cost housing loans, and a decent economy with plenty of jobs.  The farm kids, like my father and uncle, didn’t return to the farm.  Like many other servicemen and women, they became the first in their families to go to college.

The work opportunities were amazing.  Eisenhower was in the process of building an interstate highway system, the largest infrastructure project since the transcontinental railroad. The economy in the 1950s grew 37%, with very low unemployment. Two thirds of everything made in the world in the 1950s was made in the United States.

With the nation’s economy humming, there was no further need for the Bracero Program.

Eisenhower named retired Army General Joseph Swing to lead the 1954 repatriation program.  The program relied on coordination with law enforcement and large-scale deportation sweeps.  Like Trump’s ICE programs, the INS in that decade supposedly deported a million people – either leaving voluntarily or as deportees.  Operation Wetback primarily focused on Texas, California, and Arizona.  Aggressive tactics, such as mass roundups, detentions, and the use of military-style enforcement were used.  Latinos were scooped up, some at gunpoint, put on trains and trucks, and dumped at El Paso, Texas, or Calexico, California. 

A few American citizens of Mexican descent whose families had been here since the fighting at the Alamo were abandoned across the border. Presumably they made it back to this country, but this enormous indignity went unrecognized by our country. 

Aftermath

Scholars differ on how efficient Eisenhower’s program was in removing undocumented laborers.

UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez said by 1954 the U.S. Border Patrol claimed “they had solved the entire undocumented immigration population” by removing more than a million people from the country. Hernandez called the operation “lawless; arbitrary; (and) it was based on a lot of xenophobia.”  The mistreatment of Latino farm workers led to the rise of farm labor movements.

Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ shoddy handling of immigration issues since 2021 and especially in the 2024 election helped propel Trump to a second term.   The millions of undocumented that crossed over the border under Biden’s imitation of Mr. Magoo has created enormous drains on our welfare programs, especially in the sanctuary states.  The Democrats simply underestimated how huge undocumented and unvetted immigration swarms would play in domestic politics.  Undocumented immigration was unpopular even in the Latino community.  And there is some indication that in 2024 illegal immigration has allowed 24,000 Chinese into our country, and these are not people expected to take immigrant jobs.

Immigrant issues have national security concerns but have not been well-handled in our country.  Mass deportations are not new, nor is it always fair.  Scooping people up and deporting them without some due process is not virtuous.  Professor Victor David Hanson has suggested,
“Maybe you could say to Donald Trump: ‘Well, wait a minute. If people have been here five years and they have no criminal record or they’re gainfully employed [and] they’re not on any public assistance, can we issue them a green card? Pay a fine?” 

Hanson is not a wild-eyed progressive.  His solution is as good as any.  The prejudicial deportation programs like Operation Wetback need to stay in our past.