Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. In a couple of weeks, we're going
Speaker 1: to be doing an episode on the Delano grape strike,
Speaker 1: which took place shortly after the end of the Brissero
Speaker 1: program in the United States. We covered the Brissero program
Speaker 1: on the show back on August, and rather than trying
Speaker 1: to go back over all of that same context in
Speaker 1: the Delano Grape Strike episode, we thought we would go
Speaker 1: ahead and just put this classic back into people's feeds.
Speaker 1: This episode also talks about a mass deportation effort that
Speaker 1: overlapped the Briscero program, and that mass deportation effort was
Speaker 1: named after a racist slur. I wrote this episode back
Speaker 1: in If I were writing it today, I probably would
Speaker 1: have approached that differently. So we just wanted to note
Speaker 1: up front that there are multiple references to the program,
Speaker 1: including its full name, over the course of this episode.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tree C. D. Wilson, and I'm Holly fry So. Today,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think concerns about immigration
Speaker 1: are a recent phenomenon. I mean definitely in the United States,
Speaker 1: which is where we live and can talk about from experience.
Speaker 1: But I'm maybe in other nations too, but definitely in
Speaker 1: the US, right, people don't think of this is a
Speaker 1: thing that's been around for a long time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's an availing thought that uh, you know there
Speaker 1: colonists came and that was the big immigration thing, and
Speaker 1: then there was this big gap and now we're all
Speaker 1: arguing and worried about it again. Yeah, it's been like
Speaker 1: the last I don't know, thirty or forty years. So
Speaker 1: in a in a way, in a way, it definitely
Speaker 1: is a new concern for people because for about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years to the nation was founded, there
Speaker 1: weren't really any immigration laws, right. If you could get here,
Speaker 1: you got to live here. That was basically how it
Speaker 1: worked until, um, you know, the nineteenth century. So back
Speaker 1: in the late seventeen hundreds, the country didn't really seem
Speaker 1: to care about about immigration. But to look at another way,
Speaker 1: it is not a new concern at all, because the
Speaker 1: United States started passing immigration laws and a lot of
Speaker 1: them were targeted at immigrants from specific countries in the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties. So this is both a really new idea
Speaker 1: given the whole history of the United States as a nation, uh,
Speaker 1: and a really old one, given that it's been around
Speaker 1: for more than a hundred and fifty years. So that
Speaker 1: whole division between like legal and illegal immigration is simultaneously
Speaker 1: new and old. And today's story or today's story is
Speaker 1: part of that centuries long history. Because for parts of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, the United States and Mexico had agreements
Speaker 1: in place that we're allowing and even encouraging Mexican nationals
Speaker 1: to enter the United States to do agricultural work and
Speaker 1: other labor, mostly in the American Southwest. And one specific
Speaker 1: program called the Brissero program was launched during World War
Speaker 1: Two to address a labor shortage um as American men
Speaker 1: were needed for the war effort. But an unintended side
Speaker 1: effect of this program that was about legally coming to
Speaker 1: the United States to work, was this huge increase in
Speaker 1: the number of people who were crossing the border from
Speaker 1: Mexico illegally. And these illegal entries reached a point that
Speaker 1: the government implemented another program which I'm gonna make it
Speaker 1: clear this is not an acceptable word to use today,
Speaker 1: but it is literally what the program was named. It
Speaker 1: was called Operation Wetback to deport Mexican nationals and huge groups.
Speaker 1: So the intertwined stories of these two government programs is
Speaker 1: what we are going to talk about today. And before
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, there was simply not a lot of regulation
Speaker 1: of the United State It's border with Mexico. People pretty
Speaker 1: much crossed back and forth as they pleased. And as
Speaker 1: agricultural industry started to really grow in the Southwest, these
Speaker 1: industries started to really rely on this readily available and
Speaker 1: seasonal workforce that was coming in from Mexico in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. This also became true of other industries in
Speaker 1: the American West and Southwest as well, including railroads and mining.
Speaker 1: But today we're talking mostly about agriculture, so using Mexican
Speaker 1: nationals as a source of labor basically came with some benefits.
Speaker 1: Agricultural work in a lot of places is highly seasonal,
Speaker 1: and for the most part, migrant workers who were US
Speaker 1: citizens were traveling as families. They would spend the year
Speaker 1: moving from place to place as a family, for the
Speaker 1: most part, spending a lot more time looking for work
Speaker 1: than actually working. And when there was work, it was
Speaker 1: usually work that the whole family did, including the children,
Speaker 1: and an effort to try to make enough money to
Speaker 1: last them for the rest of the year, so that
Speaker 1: it's not an ideal situations been a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Mexican workers, on the other hand, tended to be young
Speaker 1: men traveling in groups with other young men. A group
Speaker 1: of young men was overall a lot more efficient than
Speaker 1: a family with children, and on the more exploitive side
Speaker 1: of things, many were willing to accept lower wages than
Speaker 1: what was considered standard among Americans. Because of a limited
Speaker 1: proficiency with the English language, Mexican nationals were often unaware
Speaker 1: of laws or standards that could protect them in their work,
Speaker 1: and as a result, there were a lot of growers
Speaker 1: and farmers in the American West and Southwest who were
Speaker 1: willing to overlook the issue of whether a person had
Speaker 1: come into the United States legally or not in order
Speaker 1: to get cheap, easy to exploit labor. By the early
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, though, an increasing number of people were starting
Speaker 1: to think of this basically open border in the way
Speaker 1: it affected the labor pool is a big problem. Large
Speaker 1: farms were driving down their own costs by employing large
Speaker 1: numbers of Mexican migrant workers at a really low rate
Speaker 1: of pay, and small farms considered themselves to be at
Speaker 1: a big financial disadvantage. As a result, labor organizations started
Speaker 1: tacitly excluding Mexican workers when they formed unions, and also
Speaker 1: started using their political clout to lobby the government for
Speaker 1: more enforcement along the border and to put a stop
Speaker 1: to immigration from Mexico. In nineteen twenty four, the United
Speaker 1: States formally established the Border Patrol as part of the
Speaker 1: Labor Appropriation Act. As the US government started taking steps
Speaker 1: to secure the Mexican border and curtail illegal immigration in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, local communities and states began taking steps
Speaker 1: to regulate their own Mexican population as well, as we've
Speaker 1: discussed in our podcasts on Mendoes Versus Westminster and Macario Garcia.
Speaker 1: Much of the Southwest and West approached its Hispanic and
Speaker 1: Latino population in much the same way most of the
Speaker 1: rest of the nation did. Its lack population through segregation,
Speaker 1: which was reinforced either through laws or through social customs.
Speaker 1: In places with large Mexican and Mexican American populations, discrimination
Speaker 1: was widespread and socially accepted by much of the Anglo
Speaker 1: community during the Great Depression, which lasted roughly a decade
Speaker 1: beginning in nine nine, and the Dust Bowl, which was
Speaker 1: a devastating period of drought and dust storms that struck
Speaker 1: much of the Southwest and Great Plains. During the same time,
Speaker 1: life was pretty hard for pretty much everybody in the region,
Speaker 1: but it was especially hard for people of Mexican descent.
Speaker 1: The Anglo community was increasingly hostile towards Mexican migrants, viewing
Speaker 1: them as unnecessary competition for incredibly scarce jobs. The industries
Speaker 1: that had been relying so heavily on Mexican labor for
Speaker 1: so long increasingly tried to exclude Mexicans from their workforce
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression. Prior to the Great Depression, the
Speaker 1: United States in Mexico had been working together to find
Speaker 1: ways to send Mexican nationals who were in the US
Speaker 1: illegally back to Mexico. During the Great Depression, those efforts increased.
Speaker 1: President Herbert Hoover ordered the Department of Labor to work
Speaker 1: out a deportation program. The Mexican government tried to identify
Speaker 1: its citizens who were in the United States and in
Speaker 1: many cases paid for their return to Mexico. Also, due
Speaker 1: to the Great Depression, Mexico was facing its own labor shortage,
Speaker 1: so part of the reason it paid to repatriot its
Speaker 1: citizens was to try to fill that labor shortage. Between
Speaker 1: nineteen and nine thirty five, about eighty five thousand Mexicans
Speaker 1: voluntarily returned to Mexico and another four hundred thousand word
Speaker 1: deported or repatriated, depending on how you want to look
Speaker 1: at it. Most of the ones who tried to return
Speaker 1: to the United States during the right Depression were turned
Speaker 1: away at the border, which at this point was a
Speaker 1: lot more secure than it had been earlier than the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. However, things shifted dramatically once again during World
Speaker 1: War Two. The draft applied to all men residing in
Speaker 1: the United States, whether they were citizens or not. Roughly
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand Hispanic men saw some sort
Speaker 1: of active service in the war, and with so many
Speaker 1: men serving in the war, the job market changed dramatically
Speaker 1: in the United States. Many men who had held agricultural
Speaker 1: jobs went to serve in the war, and then other
Speaker 1: men and women moved out of agriculture and into higher
Speaker 1: paying manufacturing jobs that were either opened up as part
Speaker 1: of the war effort or because the people who had
Speaker 1: been doing those jobs joined the armed forces that were
Speaker 1: also disrupted trade with Europe, which cut off the United
Speaker 1: States sources of many goods and meant that basically America
Speaker 1: had to make them for ourselves. The overall effect of
Speaker 1: all this on the labor pool for agricultural work was,
Speaker 1: as you might suspect, enormous, and it led the US
Speaker 1: to work out a program specifically to recruit Mexican workers.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk more about that after we
Speaker 1: pause and think one of the sponsors that keeps our
Speaker 1: show going to return to the Bricero program. This huge
Speaker 1: shift in the workforce during World War Two had immediate
Speaker 1: and detrimental effects on agriculture. Soon after the war began,
Speaker 1: the Southwest's cotton and vegetable growers were petitioning Congress to
Speaker 1: hire temporary workers to help them build a labor shortfall
Speaker 1: that basically meant they couldn't harvest what they needed to harvest.
Speaker 1: The key here was that this workforce would be temporary.
Speaker 1: In the words of a report from President Harry S.
Speaker 1: Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor later on in nine quote,
Speaker 1: the demand for migratory labor is thus essentially twofold to
Speaker 1: be ready to go to work when needed, to be
Speaker 1: gone when not needed. So the United States, leaning on
Speaker 1: Frank Lynda Roosevelt's good neighbor policy, started trying to work
Speaker 1: out a bilateral agreement with Mexico that would allow Mexican
Speaker 1: nationals to enter the United States to work and then
Speaker 1: return home when they were done. At first, Mexico was
Speaker 1: reluctant to do this for a number of reasons. Mexican
Speaker 1: citizens who had previously immigrated to do exactly these types
Speaker 1: of work had faced discrimination and exploitive treatment in the
Speaker 1: United States. Many had been forced out of their jobs
Speaker 1: and stranded during the Great Depression. So basically, Mexico remembered
Speaker 1: all of that and just didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: confidence that its citizens would be treated fairly if they
Speaker 1: went back to the United States to work. So Mexico
Speaker 1: insisted that any agreement spell out protections for its citizens,
Speaker 1: one that would protect Mexican laborers while in the United
Speaker 1: States and would protect Mexico's own industries from suffering due
Speaker 1: to a lack of workers. Mexico did, however, see some
Speaker 1: potential benefits to allowing its citizens to work in the
Speaker 1: United States. It was hoped that anyone who entered the
Speaker 1: program would return home with money that would be injected
Speaker 1: into the Mexican economy. Running parallel with that was the
Speaker 1: idea that Mexico's workers would learn new techniques relating to
Speaker 1: agriculture and then bring those new techniques back to Mexico.
Speaker 1: The result of this negotiation between Mexico and the United
Speaker 1: States was the Brissero program, which was launched in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two by executive order and then formalized by a
Speaker 1: bilateral agreement on April nine. It would later be amended
Speaker 1: by Public Law seventy eight and nineteen fifty one. The
Speaker 1: basic terms of the Brossero program would be that this
Speaker 1: would be non military work. It was not acceptable to
Speaker 1: recruit Mexican nationals to work in agriculture and then put
Speaker 1: them into the military service. Mexican nationals would be protected
Speaker 1: from discrimination. Employers would pay transportation and living expenses, as
Speaker 1: well as a fair wage. Workers would get medical and
Speaker 1: sanitary services at no cost to them. People enrolling in
Speaker 1: the Broscero program would sign a Spanish language contract and
Speaker 1: be paid a fair wage that would not be less
Speaker 1: than what was standard for Anglo workers in the area,
Speaker 1: and workers under the age of fourteen were not allowed.
Speaker 1: There were also protections if there was a shortage of work,
Speaker 1: guaranteeing a subsistence level pay. If someone contracted with a
Speaker 1: Mexican national but turned out not to have work for
Speaker 1: them to do, a percentage of the broscero's pay was
Speaker 1: also to be saved and returned to them once they
Speaker 1: returned to Mexico. The criteria for the workers themselves were
Speaker 1: that they had to be young, healthy men who had
Speaker 1: agricultural experience but did not own land of their own.
Speaker 1: They also needed to have a letter from local authorities
Speaker 1: saying that their labor wasn't needed where they actually lived,
Speaker 1: and that was to try to diminish the impact on Mexicans.
Speaker 1: Mexico's own labor force. Applicants would go to collection points
Speaker 1: in Mexico, be fingerprinted, be sprayed down with DDT, and
Speaker 1: then be taken to the United States. In spite of
Speaker 1: concerns that Mexican nationals would take jobs away from Americans.
Speaker 1: At first, this seemed like a mutually beneficial agreement. The
Speaker 1: United States would get the farm labor it needed and
Speaker 1: Mexico would get new, modernized farming techniques, an injection of
Speaker 1: cash into its economy and jobs for citizens who needed them. However,
Speaker 1: things took a turn for the worst pretty much immediately.
Speaker 1: Most of the work to be done was known as
Speaker 1: stoop labor. This was cultivation work that was done using
Speaker 1: a short handled hoe stooped over rose into the in
Speaker 1: the fields. This was grueling and like it could have
Speaker 1: been done with a long handled hoe instead of a
Speaker 1: short handled hoe that required you to literally stoop over,
Speaker 1: But for some reason people thought a long handled who
Speaker 1: was damaging to the crops. Today, the short handled hoe
Speaker 1: is regarded as an occupational hazard and in many states
Speaker 1: it is banned as unsafe. There were also way more
Speaker 1: interested Mexican nationals than there were jobs, and soon officials
Speaker 1: processing applications were accepting bribes to move people ahead of
Speaker 1: the line. Recruitment efforts became prone to corruption. People who
Speaker 1: didn't meet these qualifications for one reason or another also
Speaker 1: started using the constant traffic back and forth across the
Speaker 1: border to make the crossing themselves illegally, and as was
Speaker 1: the case before, there were still plenty of growers who
Speaker 1: were willing to hire these people for almost no money.
Speaker 1: Unscrupulous growers also figured out that a lot of the
Speaker 1: Mexican nationals who were actually part of the Broscero program
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of proficiency in English and weren't
Speaker 1: aware of the pay and protections they were legally entitled
Speaker 1: to under the terms of this program. This definitely was
Speaker 1: not universal. In various parts of the United States, broscero's
Speaker 1: organized themselves and went on strike to protest low wages
Speaker 1: and poor treatment that we're specifically outlawed in the Briscero
Speaker 1: programs terms. Many growers flouted the rules of the program
Speaker 1: and hired people who had crossed illegally to get around
Speaker 1: having to worry about all of this. Mexico eventually refused
Speaker 1: to send workers to the entire state of Texas because
Speaker 1: of flagrant hiring of unauthorized workers as well as other abuses.
Speaker 1: So soon illegal border crossings were rampant and the employment
Speaker 1: of people who had entered illegally was widespread. Wages started
Speaker 1: to drop for basically everyone because there were so many
Speaker 1: low wage workers who had become part of the economy
Speaker 1: in the Southwest that minimum standard housing and medical care
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be part of this program also
Speaker 1: didn't materialize, and a lot of people who actually were
Speaker 1: part of it wound up tightly packed together in barracks
Speaker 1: on canvas cots, where respiratory diseases and other illnesses spread
Speaker 1: like wildfire. Over the twenty two year life of this program,
Speaker 1: four point five million Mexican nationals legally came to the
Speaker 1: United States to work, some of them returning to the
Speaker 1: US repeatedly under new contracts, but far more entered illegally
Speaker 1: outside the bounds of the program. There was actually a
Speaker 1: six thousand percent increase in illegal immigration between nineteen forty
Speaker 1: four and nineteen fifty four. Support for the program, which
Speaker 1: had never been universal, started to wane after World War
Speaker 1: Two was over and Americans who had survived the war
Speaker 1: started to return home and to try to reclaim their
Speaker 1: old jobs. The official wartime program ended on December thirty
Speaker 1: one of nineteen forty seven, although the program continued to
Speaker 1: be extended for peacetime purposes for quite a while after that,
Speaker 1: and eventually Mexico, fed up with what it saw as
Speaker 1: the United States refusal to enforce the terms of their
Speaker 1: bilateral agreement, stopped participating by just declining to send any
Speaker 1: more workers through official channels. According to the Texas State
Speaker 1: Historical Association's handbook, of Texas. The US retaliated against Mexico's
Speaker 1: non participation in nineteen fifty one by allowing thousands of
Speaker 1: people to enter the US illegally, arresting them and then,
Speaker 1: rather than deporting them, turning them over to the Texas
Speaker 1: Employment Commission to be put to work. By the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the Broscero program was officially on the way out. Labor
Speaker 1: organizations had become a lot more influential in policy and
Speaker 1: had started advocating very vocally for jobs in the United
Speaker 1: States to be filled by Americans and not by Mexicans.
Speaker 1: At the same time, increasing mechanization in the agriculture industry
Speaker 1: meant that a lot of the physical labor that had
Speaker 1: required this huge labor pool was disappearing. The need for
Speaker 1: physical labor became a lot smaller. The Brassero program needed
Speaker 1: to be reauthorized periodically, and there were increasingly contentious debates
Speaker 1: whenever it came up for renewal. Its re authorizations in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty three in particular, were
Speaker 1: extremely hotly debated. It There was a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: to end the program after a bus accident killed thirty
Speaker 1: two migrant workers in nineteen sixty three. The Burcero program
Speaker 1: eventually expired the following year in nineteen sixty four. With
Speaker 1: the abolition of the program. One of the things that
Speaker 1: proponents had often said about it turned out apparently to
Speaker 1: be true. A lot of people who were in favor
Speaker 1: of the program insisted that American workers did not want
Speaker 1: to do this work, which is why it needed to
Speaker 1: be open to Mexican nationals. After the abolition of the program,
Speaker 1: there were about five hundred and nineteen thousand unemployed people
Speaker 1: in California, which should have been plenty to cover the
Speaker 1: seventy thousand people who were needed to do stoop labor
Speaker 1: in the agricultural industry. But the nature, the nature of
Speaker 1: the work and the wages that were that were offered
Speaker 1: meant that a lot of these jobs went unfilled and
Speaker 1: tons of fruits and vegetables rotted in the fields. So
Speaker 1: there was a lot of argument that this should have
Speaker 1: been like a gradual phase out rather than just an
Speaker 1: abrupt abolition. As we said at the top of the show.
Speaker 1: Running parallel to all of this was a mass deportation
Speaker 1: program focused on Mexican nationals called the horrible name Operation
Speaker 1: Went Back and We're going to talk about that after
Speaker 1: we pause once again and take a break in here
Speaker 1: from one of our fantastic sponsors, to get back to
Speaker 1: Operation Went Back as an example of how the United
Speaker 1: States thinking on immigration shifted. In the nineteen thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: President Franklin D. Roosevelt combined two other government agencies to
Speaker 1: form the Immigration and Naturalization Service in three This agency
Speaker 1: was originally part of the Department of Labor. In ninety
Speaker 1: that changed, the I n S and the Border Patrol
Speaker 1: that fell under it moved from the Department of Labor
Speaker 1: to the Department of Justice. With that the I n
Speaker 1: S and the Border Patrol were no longer about work.
Speaker 1: They were about lawing for sman And as we said,
Speaker 1: Operation Went Back was a mass deportation effort that came
Speaker 1: along after the I and S moved to the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice. It's often portrayed as a swift, decisive effort
Speaker 1: to deport people who had entered the US illegally, but
Speaker 1: it was really part of a decades long effort that ran,
Speaker 1: as we said, parallel to most of the Burscero program.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen forties, for example, special Mexican deportation parties
Speaker 1: were established to try to apprehend and deport Mexican migrant
Speaker 1: workers in there was an attempt to reinforce targeted portions
Speaker 1: of the border with chain link fencing. In the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties and nineteen fifties, some border patrol agents ran an
Speaker 1: unsanctioned quote little barber shop, basically clippers that they carried
Speaker 1: with them to cut the hair of repeat immigration offenders,
Speaker 1: sometimes in intentionally humiliating ways. In terms of the more
Speaker 1: above board efforts to control immigration, a lot of them
Speaker 1: really were across national The United States why it to
Speaker 1: keep illegal immigration from driving down wages and causing housing
Speaker 1: and social issues within its own borders, and Mexico wanted
Speaker 1: to have enough workers to meet its own labor needs
Speaker 1: and also protected citizens from exploitation and discrimination while they
Speaker 1: were in the United States. In nineteen fifty one, a
Speaker 1: report on Mexican migrant workers in the US pinned all
Speaker 1: sorts of social and economic ills on illegal immigration and
Speaker 1: characterized the situation as an invasion. Soon, the US was
Speaker 1: diverting more and more of the border patrol and i
Speaker 1: n s to the Mexican border, more than doubling the
Speaker 1: number of agents that were stationed there. In between nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three and nineteen fifty three, there were a lot
Speaker 1: more people apprehended in illegal border crossings. The number rose
Speaker 1: from eleven thousand, seven hundred and fifteen in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: three to eight hundred and eighty five thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: eighty seven in nineteen fifty three, with Mexicans making up
Speaker 1: more and more of those apprehended. At the same time, though,
Speaker 1: the United States didn't actually increase the immigration and Naturalization
Speaker 1: services budgets, so even though there were more agents on
Speaker 1: the Mexican border, there were fewer agents overall, with the
Speaker 1: forces numbers dropping a third between nineteen two and nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. When Dwight D. Eisenhower took office as president
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three, it's estimated that three million Mexican
Speaker 1: nationals in the US had entered the country illegally, but
Speaker 1: previous efforts to deport them had increasingly stalled out because
Speaker 1: so many farms and ranches were dependent on this illicit
Speaker 1: labor pool. In the words of Walt Edwards, who served
Speaker 1: in the Border Patrol from nineteen fifty one to nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, quote, when we caught illegal aliens on farms
Speaker 1: and ranches. The farmer or rancher would often call and complain,
Speaker 1: and depending on how politically connected they were, there would
Speaker 1: be political intervention. Yeah that political intervention was basically getting
Speaker 1: their workers out of jail and turning away from the
Speaker 1: fact that they were not supposed to be in the
Speaker 1: United States. In nineteen fifty four, Eisenhower appointed General Joseph Swing,
Speaker 1: also known as Jumping Joe, as the Commissioner of the
Speaker 1: Immigration and Naturalization Service. Swing started transferring immigration officials who
Speaker 1: had spent a long time in the Southwest to other
Speaker 1: parts of the country with the hope of breaking all
Speaker 1: those social and political ties to all the local farmers, ranchers,
Speaker 1: and political big wigs that was leading the Service to
Speaker 1: not actually enforce immigration. Then, on June nine, four, Swing
Speaker 1: announced the commencement of Operation Wetback. One arm of the
Speaker 1: operation was meant to physically apprehend and remove people who
Speaker 1: had illegally immigrated into the United States. The other was
Speaker 1: meant to publicize this effort to make sure people who
Speaker 1: weren't in the country legally knew about it and see
Speaker 1: the deportation force as a threat. A lot of this
Speaker 1: publicity deliberately exaggerated the size and aggressiveness of the deportation
Speaker 1: force in the hope of scaring people into leaving the
Speaker 1: country voluntarily. On June seventy four, immigration officials started the
Speaker 1: actual sweeps to apprehend and deport people who had illegally immigrated.
Speaker 1: About seven hundred and fifty immigration agents moved north through
Speaker 1: California and Arizona. They started in those two states because
Speaker 1: the entrenched resistance to deportation was lower there, so they're
Speaker 1: hoping to kind of get a good foothold before moving
Speaker 1: on to places where it was more contentious. They had
Speaker 1: a goal of apprehending a thousand people who had entered
Speaker 1: the country illegally every day. By the end of July,
Speaker 1: fifty thousand people had been arrested in California and Arizona,
Speaker 1: and an estimated four d eighty eight thousand had fled
Speaker 1: the United States on their own. And as Tracy had said,
Speaker 1: it started in California and Arizona, but from there it
Speaker 1: moved into Utah, Nevada, Texas, and Idaho, and immigration officials
Speaker 1: put the people that were apprehended in these sweeps onto
Speaker 1: trains and buses bound for Mexico, far enough south that
Speaker 1: they simply couldn't turn around and re enter the United States.
Speaker 1: Two ships were also you for this purpose, The Emancipation
Speaker 1: and the Mercurio, carried people from Port Isabel in Texas
Speaker 1: about five hundred miles to Vera Cruz in Mexico. At
Speaker 1: the time, the i n S claimed that it deported
Speaker 1: one point three million people during Operation Went Back, but
Speaker 1: those numbers have not really held up to historical scrutiny.
Speaker 1: It was definitely lower than that, and it might have
Speaker 1: been as low as three hundred thousand. These efforts actually
Speaker 1: disrupted some of the agriculture industry in the states that
Speaker 1: were targeted by deporting their workforces. Like we said, a
Speaker 1: lot of the agriculture industry in the Southwest and West
Speaker 1: had become highly dependent on this illegal labor. The government
Speaker 1: tried to reassure people that they could get new labor
Speaker 1: through the Buscero program, which was still in effect at
Speaker 1: this point. In addition to the immediate impact that it
Speaker 1: had on the agriculture industry, there were other problems with
Speaker 1: Project White Back as well. Aside from its name, which
Speaker 1: I'm going to say again is a racial slur. We
Speaker 1: would not normally say on this show. Everyone of Mexican
Speaker 1: descent was suspect, whether they had entered the country illegally
Speaker 1: or not, and a lot of the lawful residents, some
Speaker 1: of them American citizens, were deported in error. Families were
Speaker 1: broken up when some members were caught up in a
Speaker 1: sweep and others weren't. Children were left with anyone, without
Speaker 1: anyone to look after them when their parents were arrested
Speaker 1: and deported. Mexican American communities were disrupted when their populations
Speaker 1: were basically decimated, and then that would basically leave whoever
Speaker 1: was left without the basic life amenities that they needed,
Speaker 1: and the problems did not end north of the border.
Speaker 1: People who were dropped off in Mexico were often left
Speaker 1: in completely unfamiliar territory where they had no friends or family,
Speaker 1: without any food, without water, and with no money. Eighty
Speaker 1: eight people from just one roundup died of heat stroke
Speaker 1: after being left in remote territory without food or water.
Speaker 1: Conditions on the Emancipation and the Mercurio were also appalling,
Speaker 1: incredibly overcrowded and dismal. On one voyage, a riot broke
Speaker 1: out and the use of ships was eventually stopped after
Speaker 1: seven people drowned during one voyage Apart from all of that,
Speaker 1: that ten percent of their pay that was supposed to
Speaker 1: be withheld for legitimate participants of the Burscero program and
Speaker 1: then returned to them when they returned to Mexico. A
Speaker 1: lot of people never saw it. A settlement was in
Speaker 1: the works in two thousand and eight to restore this
Speaker 1: pay to the former workers and their descendants, but as
Speaker 1: of there were still marches and protests going on to
Speaker 1: have this money restored because it had never actually happened.
Speaker 1: So that is the basics of like this long kind
Speaker 1: of convoluted, intertwined effort to both recruit and deport Mexican
Speaker 1: nationals in the United States. Uh. I know for sure
Speaker 1: that there are folks in the world whose mindset is, well,
Speaker 1: they're illegally in here, it serves them, right. I personally
Speaker 1: think that if you are traveling hundreds of miles away
Speaker 1: from your family to do physically grueling, stoop labor for
Speaker 1: little money, like, imagine what your life is like to
Speaker 1: lead you to that decision, right, Like, what other option
Speaker 1: might you have? Have? Empathy? That's what I'm saying. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
Speaker 1: episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
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