Summary
Mexican migration increased during the 1910s and 1920s, pulled by U.S. needs for workers, particularly with the departures of Chinese and Japanese agricultural laborers, and pushed by the Mexican revolution and other upheavals. Demand for their labor dropped sharply with the onset of the Great Depression. The Border Patrol launched several campaigns to detain Mexicans, including many U.S.-born citizens, and expel them across the border. These deportations swept up approximately 2 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans. World War II reignited efforts to recruit Mexicans as the United States mobilized wartime production.
Source
CALIFORNIA STATE APOLOGY (2006)
“Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program.”
(Added by Stats. 2005, Ch. 663, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2006.)
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) Beginning in 1929, government authorities and certain private sector entities in California and throughout the United States undertook an aggressive program to forcibly remove persons of Mexican ancestry from the United States.
(b) In California alone, approximately 400,000 American citizens and legal residents of Mexican ancestry were forced to go to Mexico.
(c) In total, it is estimated that two million people of Mexican ancestry were forcibly relocated to Mexico, approximately 1.2 million of whom had been born in the United States, including the State of California.
(d) Throughout California, massive raids were conducted on Mexican-American communities, resulting in the clandestine removal of thousands of people, many of whom were never able to return to the United States, their country of birth.
(e) These raids also had the effect of coercing thousands of people to leave the country in the face of threats and acts of violence.
(f) These raids targeted persons of Mexican ancestry, with authorities and others indiscriminately characterizing these persons as “illegal aliens” even when they were United States citizens or permanent legal residents.
(g) Authorities in California and other states instituted programs to wrongfully remove persons of Mexican ancestry and secure transportation arrangements with railroads, automobiles, ships, and airlines to effectuate the wholesale removal of persons out of the United States to Mexico.
(h) As a result of these illegal activities, families were forced to abandon, or were defrauded of, personal and real property, which often was sold by local authorities as “payment” for the transportation expenses incurred in their removal from the United States to Mexico.
(i) As a further result of these illegal activities, United States citizens and legal residents were separated from their families and country and were deprived of their livelihood and United States constitutional rights.
(j) As a further result of these illegal activities, United States citizens were deprived of the right to participate in the political process guaranteed to all citizens, thereby resulting in the tragic denial of due process and equal protection of the laws.
The State of California apologizes to those individuals described in Section 8721 for the fundamental violations of their basic civil liberties and constitutional rights committed during the period of illegal deportation and coerced emigration. The State of California regrets the suffering and hardship those individuals and their families endured as a direct result of the government sponsored Repatriation Program of the 1930s.
A plaque commemorating the individuals described in Section 8721 shall be installed and maintained by the Department of Parks and Recreation at an appropriate public place in Los Angeles. If the plaque is not located on state property, the department shall consult with the appropriate local jurisdiction to determine a site owned by the City or County of Los Angeles for location of the plaque.
(Added by Stats. 2005, Ch. 663, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2006.)
Analysis
“Back in Hoover’s era, as America hung on the precipice of economic calamity—the Great Depression—the president was under enormous pressure to offer a solution for increasing unemployment, and to devise an emergency plan for the strained social safety net. Though he understood the pressing need to aid a crashing economy, Hoover resisted federal intervention, instead preferring a patchwork of piecemeal solutions, including the targeting of outsiders.
According to former California State Senator Joseph Dunn, who in 2004 began an investigation into the Hoover-era deportations, “the Republicans decided the way they were going to create jobs was by getting rid of anyone with a Mexican-sounding name.”
From: Alex Wagner, “America’s Forgotten History of Illegal Deportations,” The Atlantic, March 6, 2017.
