Operation Wetback
- In 1954, the U.S. government responds to growing illegal immigration with “Operation Wetback”
- Close to one million workers deported
- Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reprocesses many of these undocumented Mexicans and returns them to the fields as legal braceros
- “The problem of Mexican illegal immigration is born at the moment that the Bracero program ends. [Mexicans] keep coming, because the demand is still there.” –Jorge Dominguez, Professor for the Study of Mexico at Harvard University
Picture taken from AltoArizona.com
Negative of undocumented Mexican workers boarding buses for deportation in East LA, 1956
