‘Operation Wetback’: What Happened Last Time US Conducted Mass Deportations

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to carry out the largest deportation project in American history, using the military and local law enforcement to do it, in a move that could echo the last major effort to remove migrants en masse in the 1950s.
Dubbed “Operation Wetback”, hundreds of thousands of mostly Mexican undocumented immigrants were forcibly removed or self-deported during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s term.
The program’s name was derogatory even at the time, referring to migrants who crossed illegally into the United States by crossing rivers along the southwest border. Historians say racial profiling and large-scale roundups were common, and some U.S. citizens were caught up in the sweeps.
“It’s often referenced as this moment when aggressive immigration law enforcement ‘solved’ the immigration problem or crisis. The problem is that understanding is not correct,” Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez, who teaches immigration and mass incarceration at UCLA, told Newsweek.
Operation Wetback’s roots can be traced to a project in the 1940s, known as the Bracero Program, that brought Mexican farm workers into the U.S. legally to help fill labor shortages brought on during WWII. Bracero was managed by agencies from both governments, with a requirement for minimum wages and humane treatment including shelter, food and sanitation.
Texan farmers excluded themselves for the first five years, viewing the agreement as too restrictive, and brought in their own direct hires from Mexico instead, illegally.
An estimated 300,000 migrants were brought in through the Bracero program each year, and while many complied with the temporary status offered, many others did not and remained in the U.S. without documentation.
That spurred President Eisenhower to authorize Operation Wetback, with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) — the precursor to ICE — sending its officers out in July 1954 to find unauthorized migrants and deport them. On the first day alone, over 4,800 people were apprehended.
“The border patrol actually did not apprehend all that many people. They lied and they twister their numbers to make it seem as though they had deported a million people,” Hernandez said. “They had targeted Mexicans in particular, it was a highly-racialized campaign.”
The professor explained that INS didn’t just target farm workers. Officers also raided kitchens and restaurants in urban areas, while detention camps were set up in cities like Los Angeles for those awaiting deportation.
Those who were arrested by the border patrol were sent back across the border, often deep into Mexico to discourage reentry, in collaboration with the Mexican government.
Around 700 officers were tasked with fanning out across Texas and then further afield to reach illegal immigrants, but the government messaging and media coverage made the operation sound much bigger, pushing some to “self-deport” out of fear.
The numbers put out by INS, which showed a spike in arrests and then a drop off, did not herald the success many claimed the operation to be. Hernandez explained that at the end of summer 1954, immigration forces were simply demobilized.
“They just stopped arresting people, they couldn’t apprehend as many people when they didn’t have the trucks and the planes and the boats they were using to deport people,” she said, adding that how the operation played out should serve as a warning to the Trump administration as it games out its own mass deportation strategy.
“We’re being sold a story that mass arrests are what’s going to resolve our immigration issues, when in fact it’s comprehensive immigration reforms.”
Hernandez noted how the U.S. has changed how it polices its borders since Eisenhower’s term, both externally through newer technology and diplomatically with agreements with other countries. Under the next Trump administration, Hernandez expects to see echoes of Operation Wetback play out in a modern context.
“I would expect to see roadblocks and a stop-and-frisk operation around immigration control, especially in the 100-mile zone” near the southern border, she said.
“I expect racial profiling to be rampant. Back in ’54 it targeted Mexican immigrants, at this point I think it’s pretty clear that Black and Muslim migrants, in addition to Latinx migrants will be targeted.”
Mexico has been getting tougher on tackling immigration, both when it comes to those wanting to stay in the country and who are passing through to get to the U.S. The Biden administration has also struck agreements with Panama to manage the flow of people through the Darien Gap.
The President-elect has said tackling the flow of illegal immigration will be a day one priority, meaning he will likely sign executive orders to push through actions on the border, including mass deportations and the revocation of legal pathways used by the Biden administration, such as Temporary Protected Status and Humanitarian Parole, known as CHNV.
Both allowed migrants from select countries to enter the U.S. or remain in the country without fear of deportation, while allowing them a period of time to work while more formal visas were processed.
While it remains unknown as to who may be targeted first, CHNV has allowed upwards of 530,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S., while 863,000 people from around 16 countries were covered by TPS.
All of those are present legally, but if the programs are ended by the next administration, then those migrants could be included in initial deportations as part of what Trump branded “Operation Aurora”, after the Colorado city which has seen issues with Venezuelan gang members.
“I would expect to see a lot of publicity stunts and lies about what they’re actually accomplishing,” Hernandez said.
Former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chief, Tom Homan, who will be Trump’s new Border czar, has promised to first target those who present a threat to national security and those in the U.S. illegally.
“If you’re in the country illegally, you shouldn’t feel comfortable, absolutely not. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I were in another country illegally; you shouldn’t be comfortable either,” Homan told Fox News on Monday. “When you enter this country illegally, you have committed a crime. You’re a criminal, and you’re not off the table.”