LOS ANGELES TIMES: In the 1930s an estimated 1 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans unjustly deported or scared into leaving their homes in the United States by federal and local officials seeking remedies for the Great Depression. “Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a convenient scapegoat. They found it in the Mexican community,” Rodriguez and co-author Francisco Balderrama wrote in the 1995 book, which sparked legislative hearings and formal apologies from the state of California and Los Angeles County officials.
The deportations began a decade before the World War II internment of 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Federal and local authorities rounded up Mexican immigrants and their families at dance halls, markets, hospitals, theaters and parks, loading them onto vans and trains that dumped them on Mexican soil. One of the most notorious raids occurred in 1931 at La Placita, a popular gathering spot for immigrants outside Olvera Street in Los Angeles. A team of Immigration and Naturalization Service agents armed with guns and batons sealed off the small public park and herded 400 terrified men and women into waiting vans. The success of the raid galvanized authorities in other localities across the country.
By 1940, Rodriguez and Balderrama found, more than 1 million people of Mexican descent had been deported. Government officials used the term “repatriation” to describe their actions, but the researchers found that 60% of the expelled were U.S. citizens. “They might as well have sent us to Mars,” Rodriguez once said, recalling the words of one “repatriate.” Most of the deportees were not welcomed in Mexico. They were criticized for their American ways, for not fighting to remain in the U.S., and for being a burden on Mexico’s economy. MORE
RELATED: Operation Wetback in 1954 forcefully removed 1.4 million Mexican@s. DHS Reports reveal that over 2 million Mexicans have been deported between 1996-2009. President Obama has deported 1.4 Million Mexicans since taking office in 2008. MORE
RELATED: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless/tempest-tost to me/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” — Inscription on the Statue Of Liberty
RELATED: The cession of this territory from Mexico was a major goal of the war. Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico were captured soon after the start of the war and the last resistance there was subdued in January 1847, but Mexico would not accept the loss of territory. Therefore during 1847 United States troops invaded central Mexico and occupied the Mexican capital of Mexico City, but still no Mexican government was willing to ratify transfer of the northern territories to the U.S. It was uncertain whether any treaty could be reached. There was even an All of Mexico Movement proposing complete annexation of Mexico among Eastern Democrats, opposed by Southerners like John C. Calhoun who wanted additional territory for white Southerners and their black slaves but not the large population of central Mexico.
Eventually Nicholas Trist negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, explicitly redefining the border between Mexico and the United States, in early 1848 after President Polk had already attempted to recall him from Mexico as a failure. Although Mexico did not overtly cede any land under the treaty, the redefined border had the effect of transferring Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico to the control of the United States. Equally important, the new border also acknowledged Mexico’s loss of Texas, both the core eastern portion and the western claims, neither of which had been formally recognized by Mexico until that time.
The U.S. Senate approved the treaty, rejecting amendments from Jefferson Davis to also annex most of northeastern Mexico and by Daniel Webster not to take even Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico.[1] The United States also paid $15,000,000 ($298,310,309 in 2005 dollars) for the land, and agreed to assume $3.25 million in debts to US citizens.[2] While technically the territory was purchased by the United States, the $15 million payment was simply credited against Mexico’s enormous debt towards the U.S. at that time. MORE