I have been a student of the U.S.-Mexico border and undocumented immigration for nearly 40 years. The current border dust-up has a major antecedent. Tackling the immigration mess requires a lot more border cops, right? Actually, no. At least that’s not what history tells us. For instance, in 1995 there were 4,400 border patrol agents stationed on the southern border. That year, there were 5.4 undocumented immigrants in this country.
Today, there are 16,878 agents arrayed along the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet, there are a bit more than 11 million undocumented immigrants north of the border. What happened? It’s anyone’s guess. My guess is that smugglers outfoxed the cops.
Reeling back to my 1976 master’s degree thesis, I found a bit of history. In 1954, Attorney General Herbert Brownell decided there was a “wetback” crisis. That derogatory term was for years acceptable.
The storied Los Angeles Times breathlessly told its readers a massive roundup of undocumented immigrants would be launched. It was dubbed “Operation Wetback.”
Here’s an excerpt from my thesis.
It was made clear that the drive was not to be aimed at “legal contract labor, but ”at the increasing flow of line-jumping
Mexicans — a flow that has increased at a fantastic rate during recent months until local border patrolmen have been swamped by the hordes that stream across the international boundary nightly.
Attorney General Brownell is also attributed as saying that he was concerned about ”the possibility of large numbers of subversives who may be entering the country under the guise of farm laborers. ” To leave no doubt about the undesirability of undocumented Mexican workers, Brownell reportedly said that they displaced domestic agricultural and industrial workers, were contributing to “the increasing crime rate and were spreading communicable diseases.
Judging from the pre-“Operation Wetback” coverage, it could
be expected that the actual round-up would receive fairly extensive coverage. It did. The Times announced on June 17, 1954 “The big federal round-up of Mexican nationals illegally in the United States is scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. today with a force of nearly 100 men forming a dragnet here to ferret out wetbacks who are living and working in the Los Angeles area.
The next day, the Times head
lined, ‘500 Nabbed By L.A. Wetback Raiders.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 