Bring Back Operation “Wetback”

The Bush administration is making a big deal out of the fact that they have authorized $1.8 billion to build 700 miles of fence on the border with Mexico incorporating all sorts of “black magic” security bells and whistles (the Secure Fence Act), instead of enacting meaningful reform on illegal immigration. And whom did they authorize to build the fence? -- The fat cat defense contractors and not a company knowledgeable in this type of construction.

The bill does nothing to fix the basic problem: that this country sorely lacks sufficient legal channels to satisfy the U.S. economy's demand for immigrant labor. Meanwhile, the fence law has alienated Mexico -- the country whose cooperation we need most to control the southern border.

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t seem to have much of a problem. He initiated, with the blessing of Congress, “Operation Wetback,” to remove about 80,000 illegal aliens from the southwest, granted a drop in the bucket to the 11-12 million illegal aliens estimated to live in the country, but a step in the right direction.

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.

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 (my goodness, how politically incorrect) 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, INS estimates that 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left Texas voluntarily were not based on any evidence and were publicized as a scare tactic. 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.

In total, Operation Wetback deported approximately 80,000 Mexican nationals in the space of almost a year, not including at least 500,000 illegals who left voluntarily.