Operation Wetback II, or, There is No Such Thing as a Latino US Citizen

You look Mexican, can I see your papers? Oh, you don't have them, well board this bus. Now. This isn't fantasy. This is known history, and Donald Trump and Republicans are excited to repeat it!

Jul 10, 2024

One of the very first singles I ever bought, at the ripe old age of 9, was Cheech and Chong’s Born in East LA. Cheech Marin’s solo effort reached number 48 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985, riding the wave of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA Tour. It received pretty regular play on The Dr. Demento Show, which explains most of my exposure to it at such a young age. Two years later, the Born in East LA movie was released, directed by Marin.

For those of you who don’t know, the premise of the song and movie are pretty straightforward, the immigration services mistake Cheech’s American-born character for an undocumented immigrant, and without “papers” on him, he is rounded up and deported to Mexico. Laughs ensue as Marin’s character struggles to cross the border and return home.

Of course, it’s not that funny of a premise. It’s actually really scary. And if Donald Trump is re-elected, a mass round-up of brown people will occur, and the arresting officers won’t care where you say you’re from (“Man, I was born in East LA”), or who you think the President is (“That guy that used to be on Death Valley Days, John Wayne”).

The U.S. Border Patrol packed Mexican immigrants into trucks when transporting them to the border for deportation during Operation Wetback.

Hyperbole, Loren? Nope. This will be the convicted felon reality game show host’s own Operation Wetback. Trump said as much in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and he’s saying it again on the campaign trail today, along with Republicans and their awful Project 2025. But, Trump didn’t do the sweeps and raids and deportations his first term, no way he’ll do it this term. You see, that’s a bet I can take and it won’t cost me my life and everything I know. However, if you’re Latino or Asian and you don’t think that you might be rounded up, well, history is not on your side.

So what was Operation Wetback? In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, under pressure from the Mexican government to repatriate much needed workers for its own economy and pressure from an American public newly freaked out by the fact that non-white people could suddenly become naturalized citizens, caved to the xenophobes and helped create and execute the plan to round-up and deport undocumented workers.

It worked so well that first year that over 1 million people were deported. A significant non-zero number of those deported were in fact born-and-bred American citizens of Latino descent.

It’s currently estimated that there are between 11 to 12 million undocumented Americans (see what I did there) living in the US with nearly 80% from Mexico, Central America and Souther America. When ICE comes to raid and sweep, they are not going to know one brown person from another, one “wetback” who crossed the Rio Grande last week from a multi-generational Tejano or Californio. And they won’t care.

And once the brown people are all rounded up, ICE will most certainly turn it’s attention to the 15% of undocumented Americans who are Asian. By the way, over 60% of the undocumented have been in the US for 10 years or more. They are as American as apple pie, chimichangas and General Tso’s chicken.

The problem with History is not that it repeats, it’s that good people don’t learn from it. If you live in a minority immigrant-ancestry community and you are in favor of mass deportations and you don’t think the act will boomerang and catch you and your family, you are going to be very disappointed. There is a segment of white America for whom this is a last ditch effort to turn back a demographic clock that will never return to 1860, as much as they wish it will. To them, there is no good Latino or good Asian or good other of any sort. If Trump wins, you and your family will be targets.

Anyway, there is a sane solution, of course. Amnesty with a path to citizenship for all 11 to 12-million undocumented persons in the country today. Plus, up the number of legal immigrants to 2-million per year, which is what this country needs to simply replace the aging and dying white population. If you love the United States like I do, then you’d also advocate for these two pro-American policies.

Now, no Democrat that I know of is running on this platform today. But, probably better to vote for President Biden, age-addled or not, to avoid the catastrophe that Trump and his White Christian Nationalist Republican minions have planned for all of us. Then we can get to doing the work of actually making this country work everyone.

Before you leave, you should listen to and watch one of the most profoundly American and patriotic songs and videos I know.