Operation Wetback
“The attitude of Mexican Americans toward the institutions responsible for the administration of justice – the police, the courts, and related agencies – is distrustful, fearful, and hostile. Police departments, courts, and the law itself are viewed as Anglo institutions in which Mexican Americans have no stake and from which they do not expect fair treatment. The Commission found that the attitudes of Mexican Americans are based, at least in part, on the actual experience of injustice.” So stated the United States Commission on Civil Rights in its 1970 report, Mexican Americans and the Administration of Justice in the Southwest. Why do many Mexican Americans feel such distrust, fear, and hostility toward institutions of justice? Why do many Mexican Americans expect unfair treatment under the law? What have been the experiences of injustice which have created such attitudes on the part of Mexican Americans? Operation Wetback was a repatriation project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to eradicate illegal Mexican immigrants from the Southwest. What was most alarming about Operation Wetback was the initial deception by the INS. One year before the implementation of Operation Wetback, th
7. See “Walls and Mirrors” by David G. Gutierrez. (University of California Press 1995); 163. It is not easy to approximate the entire number of illegal aliens forced to depart by Operation Wetback. The INS declared as many as 1,300,000, though the number that were officially deported did not come even close to this total. The INS estimate rested on the claim that most aliens, fearing deportation by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during the operation. The San Antonio district, which included all of Texas outside of El Paso and the Trans-Pecos, had officially apprehended slightly more than 80,000 aliens, and local INS officials asserted that an additional 500,000 to 700,000 had fled to Mexico before the campaign began. Many commentators have considered these figures to be exaggerated. Various groups opposed any form of temporary labor in the United States. The American G.I. Forum, for instance, by and large had little or no sympathy for the man who crossed the border illegally. Apparently the Texas State Federation of Labor supported the G.I. Forum's position. Ultimately the two groups co-produced a report named What Price Wetbacks?, which concluded that illegal aliens in United States agriculture damaged the health of the American people, that illegal aliens supplanted American workers, and that the open-border policy of the American government posed a threat to the security of the United States. 2. See “Memories of Chicano History” by Mario T. Garcia. (University of California Press 1994); 183
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Operation Wetback,
Mexican American,
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Rio Grande,
War II,
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ANMA LULAC,
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Approximate Word count = 1557
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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