Operation Wetback

After the war’s finish, people began to focus their concern more on domestic affairs instead of international ones. At the end of the 1940s and early 1950’s, many people began to spend more time on the debate of illegal immigration. 280,000 illegal immigrants were captured by Border patrol in 1949, but that number increased to 865,000 by 1953. Because of this steep increase, government was under lots of pressure to acknowledge and make changes to the immigration policies. In 1954, this change came around under Joseph Swing, the commissioner of the Immigration and Nationalization Service, with Operation Wetback.

Joseph Swing was in charge of border patrol as well as organized officials with the police. Under the intensity of his program Operation Wetback, Swing heavily enforced the fact that “illegal aliens” could not cross the border. However, in doing this, he made life very uncomfortable for all Mexican citizens on the US border states. Police would go through the Mexican American barrios all along the southeastern states. Many Mexican citizens would flee back to Mexico due to the threat of potential violence due to the militarization. By the end of 1954, these aggressive agents discovered about one million illegal immigrants.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding Operation Wetback because of the legality of the brutality as well as the deportation of American-born Mexican children back with their immigrant parents. As the children were born in the states, they would technically be considered US citizens by law, but this was all gray area since their parents were typically illegal immigrants. Agents would also take to interrogating anybody they believed looked like a potential immigrant. They would stop people on the streets and ask for their identification. Many Mexican Americans were outraged by this policy, and many complained in both the US and Mexico because of these “police-state methods.” Due to this, Operation Wetback was abandoned. However, even through this, these problems with government policy in immigration policy are still issues that affect us today.

More Information:
http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/20.html


Pictures:
ospace.otis.edu
1950immigration.wordpress.com