By Partha Chakraborty-
In 1999, on my birthday, I was hauled to the Human Resources at my first non-academic employer in this country and was fired – my legal papers were taking too long to arrive in some bureaucratic logjam; I was reminded that I had thirty days to leave the country. [In a sheer stroke of luck, papers arrived the very same day, and I was reinstated the following Monday]. For ten months starting in 2006, I was forced to leave the country, ‘self-deported,’ because of an emerging complication with the legality of my stay; the fault this time was mine. I left my newborn son and wife in New York, and, God as my witness, it was traumatic for all of us. In February 2018, twenty-two and a half long years of first entering the country in August of 1995 – maintaining legal status consistently if I was staying, staying out of trouble, paying taxes and all that jazz – I was naturalized.
As an unabashed champion of immigrants and refugees, I have repeatedly railed against the idiocy, and the intransigence, on all sides of the table on this immigration. Donald Trump’s recent rants about (not hot) dogs of Springfield, Ohio, are not much more than senility at its peak, I offer. What get my attention more are his wish-list items for a possible second term – including Operation Wetback and the Alien Enemies Act.
Operation Wetback was a US program, launched seventy years ago in June 1954, to deport illegal aliens without due process, and in large quantities, under the Eisenhower Administration. US Agents came knocking on people’s doors – farms, schools, motels, movie theaters, anywhere and everywhere – and demanded to be shown paperwork proving legal residency. People who did not have the papers handy were immediately rounded up, in many cases in the face of confusion and desperation of US born children at home. People were not given a chance to obtain proof of residency, thereby rounding up many US citizens in the process. People thus apprehended were deported by buses, by ships and by plane; the long hand of the Feds reached all the way to Chicago and the Midwest starting from farms in California and Texas. Migrants died of dehydration when dropped off at remote locations inside Mexico, US families were devastated, communities torn apart; especially for US citizens caught up in the sweeps, the long road back was a most arduous one mired in bureaucratic apathy as was most common.
The US claimed 1,074,277 “returns” in 1954, though later estimates put the tally at “closer to half that.” It is possible that twice as many migrants voluntarily left the country than be forcibly removed. Not that US dependence on foreign labor decreased much even at the height of Operation Outback. Two separate bills were introduced in the Congress against employers of illegal aliens and smugglers of trafficked migrants. Both failed. Repeat offenders – migrants deported but managed to come back – accounted for almost 20% of deportees in later years. Farms in California and Texas still managed to get the seasonal labor they needed, barely five years after the Operation started migratory seasonal labor figures went up to a million.
It is necessary to consider the backdrop. The US has long depended on cheap labor from Mexico, especially as farmhands in California and Texas. The Bracero Program of 1942 sought to streamline the process of importation of seasonal labor, presumably guaranteeing wages, food, housing, and exemption from military service. Implementation was inconsistent and cumbersome, so it was easier to go the illegal route. As the US entered World War II, Mexican labor became the mainstay at farms, railroads, slaughterhouses, and the like, many of them illegal as the demand skyrocketed. Welcome mat for cheap Mexican labor was removed post-haste following the end of the war as men returned home. A 1951 US Report – “Migratory Labor in the American Agriculture” – fanned the flames with incendiary headlines such as “The Wetback Invasion” [Chapter 4], alleging they stole jobs from Americans, brought in diseases causing death. It was easy for Eisenhower Administration to blame economic woes to the “invasion,” and launch Operation Wetback as a payback.
That brings us to present days. Any objective observer will marvel at the overlap in the use of language in the 1951 report and the rhetoric deployed by Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their ilk. “The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention, talking about the southern border. He has repeatedly referred to Operation Wetback as the gold standard for a sweeping deportation campaign he promised if elected the President, reveling in the “efficiency” in removing migrants. He has promised to deploy National Guard units across the nation, rounding up people and holding them in makeshift camps inside converted military bases till deportation.
2025 is no 1954, but Trump’s fetishization of Operation Wetback goes all the way. Estimated 11 million people are in the country illegally, though Trump alleges, without evidence, that the actual number is more than twice that. During the Eisenhower administration almost all illegal immigrants were from Mexico, and Mexico was more than happy to take them back. During that time migrants lived in mostly segregated neighborhoods near the southern border or near major cities. None of that is true. Majority of illegal aliens are from Central and South American nations torn apart in internal strife, none interested in taking people back. Clusters of migrants are in friendly cities, counties and states that have laws on the books blocking cooperation with US immigration authorities. Unlike in 1954, deportation cannot happen without a court hearing, unless a second Trump administration finds a way to bypass due process.
Trump has a plan to do just that. He floated the idea of using a 1798 law – the Alien Enemies Act – to deport known or suspected immigrant gang members without a court order. The 1798 law was part of a package of four laws – “Alien and Sedition Acts” – that were passed under President John Adams by a Congress dominated by his Federalist Party, to weed out sympathizers of France after a string of events that fueled anti-French sentiments nationwide. Immediately, these Acts drew condemnation from Thomas Jefferson and Democratic-Republicans as being unconstitutional for being in violation of First Amendment rights. A public outcry led to Jefferson winning the election in 1800 and he let three of the four laws expire or be repealed. The Alien Enemies Act remains in the books. The law was used against British nationals in 1812, against Central Powers during World War I, against Germans and Italians in World War II. President Roosevelt used authorities vested by the Act in issuing Executive Order 9066 that interned Japanese Americans. In Ludecke v. Watkins (1948) the US Supreme Court found that the Act allowed for detainment beyond the time hostilities ceased, but only until an actual treaty was signed with the hostile nation.
The fact that we are talking about using an Act clearly designed for wartime use raises serious red flags. In his first term, Trump wanted to use the military to force drug cartels out of their strongholds inside Mexico, without the consent of the Mexican government, even asking privately about shooting missiles into Mexican hinterlands. That idea has recently turned into a rallying cry for Republicans, and may have some merits. It is conceivable that a second Trump regime will use those hostilities to invoke Alien Enemies Act to force out migrants, even in the face of opposition from local law-enforcement. Trump is aware, but totally callous, that deployment of National Guard with express opposition from local law enforcement authorities to force deportation of community members can turn violent. “Getting them out will be a bloody story,” he said at a rally recently.
You never know with Trump when bluster ends, and real negotiation begins. His penchant to go beyond acceptable norms, make it personal, openly talk about things erstwhile unthinkable, lay out outlandish demands and make implausible claims, caught the ooh-so-politely-pathetic world of global diplomacy in a tizzy, especially those in the “Old Europe.” But that has yielded positive results – NATO members came to acknowledge they had been playing us for a fool till then, Iran was subdued, as was North Korea, Russia kept her bear claws hidden, China had her dragon’s tongue sheathed, America had a great friend in India, a new dawn in the Middle East was ushered with the Abraham Accords.
It is possible that Trump’s twin gambit on the Southern border – threat of US military use inside Mexico, and the promise to use the Alien Enemies Act to flush out illegal aliens inside the US – will work. It may force the Mexican government to achieve substantive gains on both fronts – close her own southern borders, and cooperate better with the US to stanch the flow of Fentanyl, and other drugs, into this country. In return, the US corporations can find a more hospitable operating base inside Mexico as they pivot out of China. It does not win us the Good-Neighbor award, but it does offer a win-win for both countries. Most observers will say it is more likely that it will be mired with the fog of disbelief and disgust from the starting block. Trump’s posturing needs to be accompanied by some real preparation inside the country, and he will face legal challenges at every level and at every venue. Invoking the Alien Enemies Act against Mexico without an explicit hostile act against the US is a real tall tale.
Donald Trump’s twin gambits on the Southern border, if and when, are ballsy – to be technical – but not rooted in a real understanding of consequences. I can suffer through bluster, as would most Americans I reckon, only if it gets measurable progress. It is the downside risk that I worry about.
Trump should be careful, if he really is thinking this way. If he miscalculates, if he lets slip the dogs the unrest upon us, if he makes us revisit the inhumanity of Operation Wetback in action, in our neighborhood, in our bodega, in our taqueria, among other possibilities, history will not be kind to him.
