The Crimes and Consequences of Illegal Immigration: A Cross-Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943 to 1954

Abstract

Operation Wetback of 1954 is typically understood as a U.S. immigration law enforcement campaign that resulted in the deportation of over one mil lion persons, mostly Mexican nationals. This article, however, uses research conducted in the United States and Mexico to trace the decade-long buildup and binational history of Operation Wetback. JLn May of 1954, U. S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell issued an announcement. In the coming months, the U. S. Border Patrol would implement what he called Operation Wetback. As he explained it, Operation Wetback would be an intensive and innovative law enforcement campaign designed to confront the rapidly increasing number of illegal border crossings by Mexican nationals. As promised, during the summer of 1954, eight hundred Border Patrol of ficers swept through the southwestern United States performing a series of raids, road blocks, and mass deportations. By the end of the year, Brownell was able to announce that the summer campaign had been a success by contributing to the apprehension and deportation of over one million persons, mostly Mexican nationals, during 1954. Five decades later, Brownell's public chronicling of Operation Wetback 1954 con tinues to draw the basic framework for understanding the campaign as an intensive U. S. law enforcement campaign targeting undocumented Mexican nationals during the summer of 1954.1 Yet, BrownelPs account of Operation Wetback was a decade late Kelly Lytle Hern?ndez, assistant professor of history, UCLA, thanks the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation,

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