Trump's Cruel and Racist Attack on All Immigrants: Operation Wetback II

No campaign promise will impose more mass oppression than the zero due process mass round-ups that Donald Trump touts at every rally. 

Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance continually promise an almost unimaginable assault on American (legally here or otherwise) workers if elected. They want to bring back Operation Wetback from the 1950s but at a much greater magnitude. These promises play a leading role in their campaign for the White House and make an appearance in each and every campaign rally. In fact, at one recent rally Trump promised a "bloody" round-up and removal operation. These round-ups also feature prominently in the GOP platform so the entire party supports mass round-ups.

The original Operation Wetback rounded-up American workers with no due process and summarily dropped them across the border into Mexico. Undocumented as well as legal workers suffered a militarized round-up across the nation. The operation even ensnared unknown numbers of US Citizens and broke-up families consisting of US Citizens and legal workers along with undocumented workers. It amounted to a terror campaign to get immigrants to self-deport. This brazenly racist effort serves as Trump's model.

Trump and Vance promise to round-up as many as 20 million American workers a million at a time. Vance would round-up legal and illegal immigrants alike. Like Eisenhower's approach, legality does not matter, only skin color, which explains the utter cruelty of its implementation.

The mass deportation program the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s pursued is the closest and best historical corollary to such a proposal:

The only historical comparison to a mass deportation programme came in 1954, when as many as 1.3 million people were deported as part of Operation Wetback, named after a derogatory slur then commonly used against Mexican people. . . . The programme, under President Dwight Eisenhower, ran into considerable public opposition-partly because some US citizens were also deported - as well as a lack of funding. It was largely discontinued by 1955. Immigration experts say that the earlier operation's focus on Mexican nationals and lack of due process makes it incomparable to what a modern-day mass deportation programme would look like. 

President Trump, however, proposes a militarized and no due process round-up that likely would leave the 1950s program in the dust. In a Time magazine interview Trump said: "So if you look back into the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower . . . was very big on illegal immigration not coming into our country. And he did a massive deportation of people." The former President assumes he can do the job with the National Guard, but Trump promises to use the military if necessary, claiming that no federal law prohibits the use of the military against non-civilians. Indeed, it appears that Trump will accord those ensnared in this military operation zero due process,, as he makes clear in this video, from his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He states: "We will pick them up and we will throw them out of our country and there will be no questions asked."

Trump will also not rule out the use of detention camps. Trump's top immigration advisor, the notoriously racist Stephen Miller, said: "Because of the logistical challenges…you would need to build an extremely large holding area for illegal immigrants that at any given points in time . . . could hold upwards of 50, 60, 70,000 illegal aliens while you are waiting to send them . . . somewhere that would be willing to accept them.” Presumably, citizens ensnared in these round-ups would hold some means of getting released.

Make no mistake, Trump promises cruel and brutal treatment for those rounded-up, otherwise why would he work so hard to dehumanize and demonize migrants? Alfonso Aguilar, of the American Principles Project's Latino Partnership, states: "The Eisenhower mass deportation policy was tragic, human rights were violated. People were removed to distant locations without food and water. There were many deaths, unnecessary deaths. Sometimes even U.S. citizens of Hispanic origin, of Mexican origin were removed. It was a travesty. It was terrible. Immigrants were humiliated." In her book Impossible Subjects, Mae Ngai writes that many Mexicans were deported by ship. A congressional investigation, according to the book, compared the conditions on the ship to that of an "eighteenth century slave ship."

Trump and his MAGA cult consistently dehumanize migrants and propagate the most heinous lies about them--calling them animals and wrongfully accusing them of eating pets. They do this to pave the way for unspeakable evil. This evil plotting constitutes the core of their campaign and features in every rally and every campaign event. Dehumanization and demonization is the way to get many people to engage in deeply immoral and evil misconduct.

Miller himself admits that much of this will occur pursuant to a "shock and awe blitz of Executive Orders" such that the slow-moving courts will not keep pace with the Trump plan. Miller promises that the next Trump Administration will not include those counseling compliance with law; instead, officials will prepare to move quickly on Day 1.“Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller led the Trump Administration's family separation policy which courts found unlawful but which still inflicted permanent cruelty upon children, many of whom remain separated from their families. As of mid-2024, Trump's policy of family separation still violates the law and about 1100 children still remain separated from their families despite a federal injunction to the contrary, and despite a Biden task force charged with repairing this manifest cruelty. 

Many of the barriers and guardrails that stopped Trump from pursuing unlawful conduct such as these round-ups are now weakened or simply gone. The judiciary includes many more Trump appointees compared to 2016. Trump now prepares for a second term with a greater focus on appointing compliant and obedient underlings. Indeed, he wants to eliminate the civil service. His lawyers already laid out arguments for the use of little used laws like the Alien Enemies Act

Worse yet this fast-moving mass round-up campaign will combine with Trump's promise to abolish birthright citizenship to create a perfect storm of lawless cruelty, which I will focus upon in my next post.