Friday, February 14, 2025

Almost a century before Trump, the US deported its Mexicans

Since his 2016 campaign for U.S. president, Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants has gotten harsher and uglier. Having deported 1.5 million people during his first administration, the American president-elect campaigned on the promise to initiate mass deportations. Many people think this is far-fetched, insisting that it would be impossible to round up and deport millions of people — but it has happened before, as Herbert Hoover decided to launch the deportations of every Mexican in the United States.

In 1931, the United States was in the throes of the Great Depression. Millions were out of work and families were suffering. President Herbert Hoover searched for solutions to turn the economy around, but his approach was piecemeal. He decided on what he felt would be a popular program by white Americans: the mass deportation of Mexican Americans, freeing up their jobs.

As the Great Depression bit, lawmakers searched for a way to reduce the pressure. (U.S. National Archives/Wikimedia Commons)

“American jobs for real Americans”

“Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s,” the first major work of research on Hoover’s mass deportations, was published by Californian historians Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez in 1995. “Decade of Betrayal,” as well as research conducted by Balderrama and Rodriguez in collaboration with California State Senator Joseph Dunn and his staff in the early 2000s, remains an important source of knowledge as to what happened during this campaign of deportation. Dunn’s research has found that 1.8 million people were deported during the Depression.

Hoover’s administration called it a National Program of “American jobs for real Americans” — the implication being that only whites were real Americans. The Republican’s government worked to convince the public that deportation was for the best, a humanitarian act of helping Mexicans rejoin their families in Mexico. The truth is that it was brutal and inhumane. The repatriation program was carried out by Hoover’s Secretary of Labor, William Doak.

Close to two million Mexicans and Mexican Americans — thousands at a time — were rounded up without due process, loaded onto cramped trains, transported to central Mexico and dropped off in rural areas with only the clothes on their backs. Photographic evidence shows the crowds dropped off at railroad stations awaiting their deportation. They included women, children and many who had been born in the United States, were U.S. citizens and didn’t speak Spanish. Many Mexican nationals deported were also U.S. permanent residents. No one was safe if they ‘looked Mexican.’

As part of the program, Doak also appealed to local officials to pass laws preventing Mexicans from holding government jobs, even if they were U.S. citizens. Many major U.S. corporations — among them U.S. Steel, Ford and Southern Pacific Railroad — supported the government’s actions, firing anyone of Mexican descent. The fired workers, Francisco Balderrama told NPR in 2015, were told they “would be better off in Mexico with their own people.”

With the mantra “a Mexican is a Mexican,” work records and government rolls were scoured to search for names that sounded Mexican.

The round-up begins

Nationwide — in the South, North and as far away as Alaska — Mexicans and Mexican Americans were rounded up wherever they congregated: markets, hospitals, social clubs, plazas and public parks. Mexican Americans were being blamed for the bad economy and were filled with fear, not knowing when they or their families might be deported.

California was a primary target due to the number of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who lived in the state. According to historian Francisco Balderrama, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors member H. M. Blaine proclaimed that “the majority of the Mexicans in the Los Angeles Colonia were either on relief or were public charges.” Political support for the repatriation program was not only found in California. Congressman Martin Dies, a Texas Democrat, wrote in the Chicago Herald-Examiner that the “large alien population is the basic cause of unemployment”.

The most famous round-up happened in downtown Los Angeles’ Placita Olvera in 1931. On a Sunday afternoon on Feb. 26, a time when many Mexicans enjoy a day with family at the local park, a large group of armed plainclothes officers entered La Placita Park and began rounding up everyone who looked Mexican. Dozens of flatbed trucks and police vehicles circled the park, and officers were posted to prevent anyone from fleeing.

Mexican deportation
Mexicans are rounded up and put into camps awaiting deportation. (Inspired Pencil)

More than 400 people were lined up and asked to show proof of their legal entry to the United States. The crowd panicked. Very few people carried documentation with them to spend a day in the park with their families. The children had no idea what they were supposed to produce. Those without proper documentation were loaded onto the flatbed trucks and taken to the city’s main railroad station where they were ordered onto chartered trains and taken to rural parts of Mexico.

There were however some political leaders who fought back. In 2024, Joseph Dunn told the Washington Post that The Los Angeles City Council told the County Board of Supervisors numerous times in memos to stop their illegal deportations. “This isn’t about constitutional validity,” the supervisors responded. “It’s about the color of their skin.”

The raids were vicious, targeting people using public resources. Francisco Balderrama found cases of Los Angeles hospitals having orderlies gather up Mexicans, put them on stretchers, load them on trucks and transport them to the border, where they were left to die.

Officials justified their actions by saying deportation would free up jobs for non-Mexican Americans and accused Mexicans of overwhelming welfare rolls, draining them of money needed for others. Hoover gained public support by doubling down on his message that deporting Mexicans would free up money for “real Americans” in their time of economic need. The U.S. president continued to describe the deportations as merely repatriating Mexicans to their birthplace, but documentation shows that 60 percent of the deportees were U.S. citizens. Hoover told the public that this would “keep families together” when in reality that was never the intention and deportations in fact tore families apart.

Mexicans in the United States board trains bound for Mexico. (University of Arizona)

The tragedy continues

Many families left in central Mexico had young children who were traumatized by the experience. They were ostracized in school because they didn’t speak Spanish. The United States was the only country they knew. They had always had indoor plumbing and schools, and suffered from a lack of medical care where they found themselves.

Mexicans still in the United States who had not yet been deported found there was no one to help them. With so many deportations, anyone working on public assistance was gone. Trade unions favored mass deportation because they felt it would free up jobs for their white members.

The racist deportations did not stop with Hoover. After Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in January 1933, he never officially revoked the “American jobs for real Americans” program, which was primarily being carried out by local governments. By the beginning of World War II, Mexican labor was back in demand — especially for low-paying agricultural work — and jobs left behind by the men sent to war needed to be filled. The program eventually just faded away and was forgotten. 

1954 saw another wave of deportations by the government of Dwight Eisenhower in the form of the so-called “Operation Wetback,” the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, which added military-style tactics to Hoover’s old strategy of leaving people deep in central Mexico. Eisenhower’s government claimed that over a million people were deported or self-deported.

California apologizes, the United States doesn’t

Pressured by State Senator Joseph Dunn, California finally passed the Apology Act in 2005, apologizing for the Mexican Repatriation Program. In front of La Plaza de Culturas y Artes, a memorial was dedicated in 2012, inscribed with an apology to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens who were illegally deported from California during the Great Depression. 

Many Mexicans don’t want to talk about the deportations because there of the shame attached to it. But generations were destroyed by the brutality and cruelty of “repatriation.” To this day, Dunn told The Atlantic in 2017, the U.S. Congress refuses to issue a formal apology because the immigration issue is “too volatile.” Everyone wants to sweep the shameful deportations and xenophobia of the 1930s under the rug in the hope that the American people will not take the time to learn more about it. Unfortunately, eliminating that piece of history may mean we have to relive it again in 2025.

Sheryl Losser is a former public relations executive, researcher, writer and editor. She has been writing professionally for 35 years. She moved to Mazatlán in 2021 and works part-time doing freelance writing. She can be reached at AuthorSherylLosser@gmail.com and at Mexico: a Rich Tapestry of History and Culture.

17 COMMENTS

  1. Obama deported tens of thousands. Biden’s administration organized mass illegal immigration.
    Consider the cause of northward migration.

  2. Loser is a migrant. She used the legal methods to abandon the U.S., fair enough. TDS is still strong amongst the vote blue no matter who crowd that believed Joe Biden was cognizant.

  3. Mass deportation is just again Trumpy and his big mouth! Unlike the old days, trying to deport millions as he claims he can do is BS. Even his hard headed choice, Tom Homan, to carry out any deportation says it is impossible. Way too many laws, too many politicians who differ, not enough personnel, not enough facilities and where is the $$$ coming from to do it!?!! On top of that think of how many industries are going to be affected many controlled by Trumpy buddies. On top of that, there are not enough people to do many jobs with such low unemployment. Think about it.

  4. I’m having a bad day, today, learning about the plans for mass round ups in Chicago beginning Tuesday and the I read this about the 1930’s and 1954. I’m just having a hard time really understanding why then and why now. We all know the consequences. Facts , reason, and logic argue against this along with history. My heart is breaking. So glad I moved to Mexico. So grateful I’m here with a country and culture that has better values like kindness and helpfulness and peace and tranquility, and above all fairness

  5. People always look for easy answers to complex issues. Let’s agree that Mexican communities were in a good part of what is now the United States of America long before the European settlers came, and long before the Texan slave owners pushed for independence because they wanted Texas to be a slave state. (Mexico first banned slavery in 1829 but exempted Texas to placate Anglo slavers, but in 1837, Mexico abolished slavery again without exceptions.) The U.S. invaded Mexico after Mexico was still in disarray from it’s own Revolution against the Dictator Porfirio Diaz. When President Polk agreed to annex Texas as a state, he cared less about the slavery desires of Texas than he did by the possibility of taking over the Great Southwest and West Coast from Mexico as part of the Manifest Destiny vision that he sold to Congress.
    Without a doubt, it was a much stronger country invading a much weaker country.
    So, let’s not pretend that European folks were here “before” the Mexicans. That’s just ignorance talking.
    Sidebar: All the “American” cowboys were tenderfoots who learned all they knew about being a cowboy from the Mexican “Vaqueros”(literally, cowboys) who taught them to ride, rope, herd, and take care of horses and cows. The John Waynes of American cowboy mythology, were taught by Juan, Jose, and Jesus.
    The waves of anti-immigrant deportations in the U.S. is also more complex than I have time today to discuss.
    God bless us one and all.

  6. This is not a complex problem. Commit a crime, Go to Jail. You are not a citizen, you get deported. How do you stop a deported person from returning again and again and again? That is the complex problem.

  7. I am not going to defend Hoover’s program. However, anyone who says Hoover himself as a man was racist is completely ignorant of the man’s life. He was one of the most effective world humanitarians of the 20th century and responsible for saving the lives of tens of millions of people around the world of all nationalities during both world wars. After WWII, Truman sent him on a mission to 35 countries to assess the famine needs of other nations. Hoover went on this mission and met with heads of states and came back and convinced America to help the nations who were in the greatest need. Before the wars, he was living in China as a mining engineer and his wife became fluent in Mandarin Chinese. So to understand Hoover’s support for the program mentioned in this article, you will need to look further than the surface, because the man was not “racist”.

  8. I for one won’t be visiting the good o’l boys in the US of A for at least the next four years thankfully. We have recently heard from Mexican friends who were visiting Houston with valid visas being harassed in a shopping mall.

  9. Sorry I missed this piece several weeks ago. Thank you Ms Losser for your bringing it to light.
    Compared what we have today, this is apples and oranges. Night and Day. Then was a situation based on the Depression which targeted Mexican immigrants and their children. Today it is a deportation of illegal criminals who came from many more countries than Mexico. To date I have not heard of anything else. No raids are being made at schools, churches, parks and no children.

    Allow me to add to the history. While this story tells of deportations in California and Texas, it also extended to cities and communities inhabited by Mexicans throughout the Midwest in cities like St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown and Lorain, Ohio, my hometown.

    My maternal grandparents Guadalupe Zaldívar Alvarez and Estefania Morales immigrated legally from Mexico in 1916. My mom was born in 1921 in Galva, Illinois. In 1923 they moved to Lorain as grandpa came to work for the Lake Terminal Railroad which serviced National Tube and Steel Company where many immigrants from Europe worked. In 1921 Congress passed legislation barring immigrants from Europe. Accordingly, many US companies went to Mexico to recruit Mexican workers. Once here, many of them sent for their families to join them. The 20s was a prosperous period for all Americans and Lorain’s Mexican community grew to 2,000 by 1930. My uncle Mauro Arredondo Orozco came from Salamanca,GTO in 1924 and returned in 1927 to marry his fiancé. On their return, my Dad Apolinar Arredondo Orozco joined them. My Papa and Tio worked in the Coke Plant in National Tubes Coke Plant and held good jobs. Throughout 1930 many workers were laid off. The workforce consisted of Blacks, European immigrants, and Mexican immigrants, all legally admitted. The Mexicans who were targeted for removal beginning in 1931 were those who were laid off and unemployed. No other immigrants were targeted for removal. My Papa, Tío and Abuelo maintained their jobs and remained here along with their families. Sadly, many of their fellow Mexicans were deported. I’ve often wondered if Papa and Tio would have been dark skinned with a name like Garcia, Rodriguez or Torres. To this day some think Arredondo is an Italian name. George Zaldívar as my grandfather called himself might not have been identified as a Mexican and laid off even though he was a dark skinned Tarascan. The Depression of the 1930s was a difficult time for all, Americans and immigrants alike.
    David Guadalupe Arredondo Zaldivar

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