Operation Wetback, the 1950s immigration policy Donald Trump loves, explained
*An excellent primer on “Operation Wetback.” Writer Dara Lind explains who was deported, how, how many and why. Contrary to what Trump says, it wasn’t “humane,” and it wasn’t successful. Forty-nine percent of GOP voters polled say this is what they want to see happen. VL
By Dara Lind, Vox
The inspiration for Donald Trump’s immigration policy, as Donald Trump himself has proudly told plenty of interviewers (and the moderators of last night’s Fox Business presidential debate), is “Operation Wetback.”
[pullquote]Operation Wetback probably couldn’t have happened without the cooperation of the Mexican government.[/pullquote]Trump didn’t use the term in last night’s debate. But that’s what he was referring to:
Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him. I like Ike, right? The expression. I like Ike. Moved a million 1/2 illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. They came back. Moved them again, beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back. Dwight Eisenhower. You don’t get nicer, you don’t get friendlier. They moved a million 1/2 people out. We have no choice.
Trump’s love for Operation Wetback makes sense — not just because the name, like a lot of other things Trump says, offends immigrants and Latinos in the year 2015. Operation Wetback, which took place during the Eisenhower administration, was the closest to mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants the US has ever actually come. [tweet_dis]Over the summer of 1954 and into 1955, hundreds of immigration agents swept through the southwestern United States, rounding up immigrants[/tweet_dis] who were in the US without legal authorization and packing them into trucks, trains, planes, and ships to be sent back to Mexico. It was macho and militarized. It was very Trump-y.
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[Photo courtesy of Democratic Underground]
