How the Historically Brutal Treatment of Mexicans in the United States Led to ICE Raids
A rough timeline of the violent history of Mexican deportation in this country
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Donation link to provide free legal services to undocumented people through Community Action Board of Santa Cruz: https://cabinc.org/home-donate-section/
In May of 1917, the labor union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Local 800 presented the largest mining company in Bisbee Arizona, the Phelps Dodge Corporation, with a list of demands to better the conditions of their largely Mexican immigrant workforce. The demands included a steady $6.00 per day rate, the end of physical examination at the start of every shift under the guise as an anti-theft deterrent, safer working conditions, and the end to the discrimination towards immigrants and union members by the largely white and European company supervisors. Phelps Dodge refused them all. A month later on June 26th, IWW Local 800 amassed more than 80% of the company’s labor force, 3,000 miners, and walked out, beginning the strike. In response, Walter Douglass, the president of Phelps Dodge, began to form a racist and nationalist 2,200 member posse composed of individuals from anti-union organizations like the American Protective League (APL). What followed was the arrest of over 2,000 workers and union supporters by this mob with the collaboration of the Cochise county police department led by sheriff Harry Wheeler.
Out of those 2,200 workers detained, 1,286 were made to march 3 miles and enter manure filled cattle cars, the same method implemented by the German Nazis 16 years later to transport Jews to death camps. They were then transferred 200 miles with no food or water to Tres Hermanas, New Mexico, exiled and threatened with lynching if they were to return to Bisbee. After finding out of the mass kidnapping and forced deportation of the workers, President Woodrow Wilson and Governor of Arizona Thomas Campbell set up temporary housing in Columbus, New Mexico and the victims were transferred by the U.S. Army. The displaced, however, were only allowed to use the tents for two months and all had been deported without the chance to gather any personal belongings or clothing. Despite the kidnapping and forced deportation, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the United States v. Wheeler case that the Constitution of the United States does not give the federal government permission to stop kidnappings. Not a single individual of the Phelps Dodge Corporation, the APL, or the Cochise police department was prosecuted.
This prejudice ultimately set a precedent for treatment of undocumented people directly leading to the apathy of the American public today towards black and brown children being separated intentionally from their families, women being assaulted in I.C.E. detention centers, and migrants being kept in cages. The fact is that Hispanic and Latino people in the United States of America are not and never have been viewed as human beings by the government. This attitude white Americans had towards Mexican workers in the early 1900’s, where terms like “dirty Mexican” picked up in popularity, is the foundation of ever-worsening prejudices spread by the alt-right in society today. Although the United States Federal Government wasn’t directly aiding in the 1917 Bisbee deportations, the lack of criminal charges for these acts sends a clear message. Starting from here and ending with the condemning of the current Trump administration’s mass deportation project, the amount of inhumane and genocidal cases against Mexicans outlined should repulse. It should instill not only the fighting spirit of the likes of Rodolfo Gonzales. It should reaffirm the belief that no matter which administration, the United States of America, in all its imperialism, relies on cyclically using undocumented workers as an expendable resource
Amidst the Bisbee deportations, America was beginning to build the foundation of its agricultural economy on the backs of Mexican immigrants. Throughout the early 1900’s Mexican emigration rose greatly for a variety of reasons. Poor farmers were often displaced from their homes due to the violence of the Mexican Revolution and inconsistent leadership that came after that. Before the 1920’s, the southern border was mostly deregulated, allowing Mexicans to cross for work in the U.S. for the day and then return home with more compensation to provide for their families than their local government. The unrestricted access, however, also allowed for agricultural employers to easily exploit these workers for lower wages and with poor working conditions. The treatment of migrants in this country allowed the white supremacist structure to regard undocumented people as less than, making them easy scapegoats for the government for the foreseeable future.
It wouldn’t be long before America succumbed to the Great Depression during the 1920’s, leading to record unemployment. Here we see the beginnings of the rhetoric employed by the conservative party today in the United States: “These Mexicans are taking your jobs!”. Of course, even before the Great Depression there were many Americans calling for more regulations when it came to the southern border, ultimately leading to the creation of the Border Patrol in 1924 and a more hostile sentiment towards migrants. Even before then, Texas was a hotspot for hate crimes towards Mexicans, where a series of lynchings became knows as La Matanza.
The first of those to be fired after the 1929 crash were the undocumented workers. Shortly after, President Herbert Hoover delivered his State of the Union address in 1930 where he stated,
“I urge the strengthening of our deportation laws so as to more fully rid ourselves of criminal aliens…The very method of their entry indicates their objectionable character, and our law-abiding foreign-born residents suffer in consequence.”
Hoover’s administration became a bloody stain on border politics that was never able to be washed out. This declaration by the President started a wave of states passing laws requiring workers to be American citizens and enacting harsh fines and jail time to any employer that hired immigrants. All in all, 400,000 Mexicans repatriated on their own and 82,000 were formally deported by the United States Government between 1929-1933 without a hearing or being read their rights, a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. By 1934, a third of the Mexican population in the U.S. was gone. Those who were expelled from this country were largely American citizens with no criminal record. A majority were children.
Predictably, with a large portion of its agricultural workforce now repatriated or deported and the beginning of American participation in WW2, the United States was now in the midst of a labor shortage. Despite the harsher penalties for crossing into the U.S., this did not deter the large number of Mexicans from crossing ‘illegally’ into the U.S., as the economic opportunities the country provided was enough incentive. This continuous emigration from Mexico resulted in a similar hole that had begun to open up in its workforce as well, incentivizing the government to stop migrants leaving the country. As a solution to these issues, the Mexican and American governments created the Bracero Program in 1942, a project where Mexico would send laborers on a temporary contract to work in the U.S. and America would tighten border security tenfold in exchange. Despite the program promising the braceros to be fed, clothed, and adequately taken care of, it was largely mismanaged and rarely implemented what it needed to. By 1954, the large number of Mexicans taking this opportunity to enter the country triggered a move by the United States that reminded us that we are not people in the eyes of the state, but instead workhorses that are meant to be put down after tilling their fields.
President Eisenhower created Operation Wetback, a plan that involved the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, regardless of citizenship. The Bracero program had apparently turned the country ‘too brown’. With the help of 750 immigration agents, hundreds of police vehicles, and 7 airplanes, Harlon Carter, the head of the border patrol and leader of the operation deported over 1,000,000 Mexicans in the first year of implementation. Around 200,000 Mexicans were deported every year after that. Just like Hoover’s inhumane practices, America’s ethnic cleansing process involved starving and dehydrating Mexicans while they were deported to unfamiliar and dangerously hot parts of Mexico. Hundreds of innocent people died from the deportation process alone. The forced displacement and murder of millions of people was all to preserve a predominantly white state.
Once America understood that it could get away with Operation Wetback, the perception of Mexican people in this country was forever solidified. Regardless of ‘legal’ status, the treatment of Mexican people by the U.S. government only continued to worsen. After Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and and Immigrant Responsibility act in 1996, not only did the amount of deportations skyrocket again but the border system itself became more fundamentally broken than it already was. As is often the case, the President became overzealous with the border security of its ironically already internally rotten country. Passing the bill meant making more Mexicans deportable by adding crimes that qualify for the removal of the person from the country and removing the option for ‘unauthorized’ undocumented people to apply for citizenship directly. This bill laid the foundation for the mass amount of deportations under every President subsequently after Clinton.
After 9/11, George W. Bush reallocated funding from the Department of Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security and used this opportunity to create the Immigration and Customs Enforcement or I.C.E. The organization responsible for the main source of plain cruelty towards Mexicans deported 2,000,000 people during Bush’s presidency, as well as gave the nation justification for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on ‘holding facilities’ where a variety of crimes against humanity would be committed. Chain-link cages inside these facilities were built during Barack Obama’s two terms as President to house Mexicans caught crossing, with groups in each cage separated by sex and age. This resulted in not only the separation of families but also the degradation of my people, not even given the decency to adequate shelter, water, or food. Additionally, the Obama administration deported over 400,000 in 2012 alone and 3 million in total, while the Biden campaign continued the use of these cages and subsequently repatriated around 4 million migrants during his campaign, an astronomically high number of people to displace. It is important to understand that deportation is an inherently violent act, and that regardless of political party association, every President since the early 20’s has engaged in the brutal process of it.
After the 2016 election, the conservative red wave brought on by Donald Trump emboldened violence towards my people in these I.C.E. detention facilities. The conditions of the holding cells in these facilities have always been designed purposefully to be inhumane, with the rooms reportedly being dirty, empty, and life-threateningly cold, earning the name hieleras or coolers. Those held in these facilities have their health and hygiene neglected routinely. According to a whistleblower report on behalf of a nurse who worked at Irwin county’s I.C.E. facility in Georgia, women who did not understand or speak English were given forced hysterectomies, nonconsensually removing the uterus from their bodies surgically. This forced sterilization being done in a place designed to catch and remove people not deemed ‘Americans’ by a governmental power is a genocidal act intended to ethnically cleanse, and it should not be taken in any other way, regardless if the act at Irwin was done by an individual independently. America’s history of eugenics runs deep, and not just in regards to Mexicans, lest we forget that the country passed laws that allowed involuntary sterilization procedures throughout the mid 1900’s and continued to be practiced on black and brown women into the 70’s. I.C.E. agents also have a substantial track record of forcing themselves onto the Mexican women in these facilities. These sexual assaults illustrate a pattern in the guards behavior as the rapes were done systematically to break the spirit of these women, scaring them into never speaking out about it. Several of these women who have had the courage to speak out report that the agents tell them that no one would believe them and are routinely moved from facility to facility to avoid complaints being registered.
A culmination of these injustices is what has led the American Empire to reach the state that it is in now. In his first two months in office, Donald Trump has begun conducting raids in predominantly Mexican and Latino cities across the country. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans everywhere are terrified, especially with Trump’s vocal desire to get rid of birth-right citizenship, a direct violation of the 14th Amendment. An end to the amendment that basically guarantees the right for most immigrant people to be here would be a clear attempt at removing any sort of diversity from the country. I work with kids, and the result of this political climate has influenced my students to the point of tears. The difficulty of sharing the same fear for your family as the small third grader you teach at school is palpable. Handing out pocket-sized red cards that have a list of rights to these children, you understand that this scared 8 year old child will have to advocate for their entire family if these raids happen to touch our city. It's unjustifiable.
Under the guise of deporting dangerous criminals, Trump has also opened up Guantanamo Bay and as of a month ago jailed nearly 180 migrants. Just like every other President, however, he deported those held at the island before their lawyers could get them a hearing, and I.C.E. detention records are also indicating that the majority of undocumented people arrested have no criminal record. This fact should be obvious, however, because it was never about deterring crime, but about the cultivation and continued possession of power. Trump’s cabinet being composed of billionaires and loyalists who continue to undermine the working class is very much purposeful. Elon Musk buying himself a government agency with the purpose of cutting spending is also intentional. This administration is very clearly cutting away the fat that is preventing it from fully gaining the power to do what it truly wants, which is to push the globe further into facism and white supremacy. Why else would my people be persecuted for so long in this country? Why else would every other race and ethnicity besides whites be targeted and scapegoated for the problems caused by the 1%? It’s because they don’t want us here. The irony is that we didn’t want them here either, not now and not back when they first came either.
The United States of America continuously takes advantage of my Mexican people's hardworking and relentless spirit by falsely recognizing our humanity, only to lock up, shoot, rape or kill us after the job is done. This genocidal method of control manifests itself through America dangling a carrot in front of an exploited people, a carrot that was ours to begin with. After ruthlessly and greedily taking land from indigenous people of the entire continent, the U.S. still has the impudence and audacity to use the resources it stole as leverage against my people. The state proudly takes our culture, music, food and enjoyment and sells it back to us at a price we cannot afford. We are priced out of our neighborhoods and then made to feel less than by being called ghetto or dirty. I wish I had the right thing to say, a strategy or solution to stop the violence. A violence that I have found myself at the end of multiple times in my life. When I was 12, my cousin and I’s family would visit my uncle’s ranch in southern California. My uncle owned some quads and we would ride them around marked trails around the property. Couldn’t have been less than an hour into our visit when my cousin and I were stopped by Border Patrol agents. We were detained and verbally berated until our dads showed up, who were subsequently handcuffed and physically restrained in front of us. Our family was interrogated for hours. When I write about the history of my people in this country, I am incredibly saddened. Seeing the relentless pushback against this treatment by Mexicans makes me feel incredibly hopeful. Our endless perseverance can be found in the same history alongside the violence, too. Rallys, protests, and strikes: all fighting for our right to be here. I will continue to do the same.