News Editor Kayla Rahaman recounts the little-known history of the mass deportation and repatriation of as many as 1.8 million Mexican migrants and Mexican-American citizens during the Great Depression. She reflects on the political consequences of neglecting history, as Donald Trump is set to take office.
An era of American economic confidence was eclipsed by an anxious decade ahead. Declining faith in globalism and democracy challenged the Western political world, giving way to fascist elements. The US fell victim to such elements; while the fortunes of a neoliberal economy would not trickle down to the average person, their racist rhetoric did. To no avail, experts warned that tariffs would worsen, not revitalise, the domestic economy. There is not much reach between policy-enshrined commercial anti-foreignism and widespread repulsion of foreigners both real and perceived. The former President helped set the mood as he restricted migration and oversaw mass deportations, resolving to increase jobs for ‘real’ Americans. Such a national mood vilified, above all, towards the Mexican-American community.
The events illustrated above were not a portrayal of today. The President was Herbert Hoover, and the era was the eve and aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash.
In response to the Great Depression, incessant cries to ‘get rid of the Mexicans’ scapegoated both migrants and native-born citizens for taking jobs and exploiting public welfare benefits. On the basis of ‘Mexican-ness’, discriminatory laws barred these individuals from employment and access to government support at the height of the Depression.
Most disturbing were the mass ‘repatriation’ campaigns carried out by local and state officials. From 1929 through the 1930s, somewhere between 400,000 to potentially over a million people of Mexican descent may have been driven out of the country. In some cases, these were not voluntary or even pressured repatriations, but rather expulsion and unconstitutional deportation: as many as 60% of victims were US-born children of immigrants.
Echoes of the Mexican Repatriation haunt US migration politics today. Its history already warns us where Trump’s demonisation of Mexican-American communities could lead.
Mexican Repatriation and ‘Repatriation’
As expelled children came of age, their American Dream was not immigrating to the US: It was returning home.
We are still uncertain about the exact scale of impact this had on Mexican-American life, because repatriation was not a formal act. It is better understood as a (mostly undocumented) sweep of sub-federal policies, prevailing social attitudes and dubious actions taken by law enforcement to drive Mexicans out of the US. They were carried out in border states, like California and Texas, and other states with significant Latino populations like Michigan, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio and New York.
Throughout the Great Depression, local and state actors tore at the Mexican-American community. In this atmosphere, officials, unions and even charities began considering the cost benefits of reducing the ‘strain’ deemed to divert resources from ‘real Americans’ and launched repatriation campaigns.
Removal processes included informal raids to round up Mexicans and ship them over the border. One of the first and most notorious incidents was the La Placita raids in Los Angeles: at the popular cultural space, 400 individuals were targeted in broad daylight by public officials.
During the Hoover period, deportations also rose significantly. Between 1929 and 1935, around 82,000 Mexicans were formally removed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. These heightened efforts were based on local relief agencies’ desire to relieve themselves of providing aid to foreign-born applicants, leading the federal government to cooperate with local officials to demand legal proof of residence with subsequent deportation of Mexicans.
Removal activities were largely carried out without due process. Moreover, in many cases they were unconstitutional deportations. The leading historian on the repatriation drives suggest as many as 60% of the victims were US citizens, and mostly American children.
The American children of Mexico-born parents were ‘sent back’ to a country they never knew. As the expelled youth came of age, their American Dream was not immigrating to the US: it was returning home.
Research conducted by former California State Senator, Joseph Dunn, put the number of repatriated, deported and expelled individuals across the US at 1.8 million. Others place the statistic under a million, others as high as 2 million.
Some scholars have suggested that the extent of coercion is exaggerated, because most repatriates left the country of their own volition. However, in such a fiercely unwelcoming environment, others stress that the genuine agency of ‘voluntary repatriates’ should seriously be questioned.
Deportations and coerced departures decreased as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal brought the US out of the Great Depression. Over the next few decades, Mexican immigration increased: today, America is simply unimaginable without the contributions and liveliness of its Mexican community.
Caught between xenophobia and political violence
Mexicans comprised a significant part of the US population since the cessation of large Mexican territories in the 1840s. In the early 20th century, there was a greater influx of Mexican migrants seeking to flee violence and persecution following the Mexican Revolution.
Sofía Isabella Flores, a hometown friend, told me that her family would have migrated to escape political violence in the 1920s or 30s if it weren’t for the repatriation programs. The encroachment of the drug cartel made their lives in Mexico increasingly dangerous, but ‘a growing anti-Latino and overall anti-immigration sentiment in the U.S. kept them from migrating until there was genuinely no other option’:
My maternal grandfather was a young child at the time of the [Mexican Repatriation], and throughout his life made few yet rather significant comments about how odd and anxiety-inducing the U.S. government and overall political climate appeared to his family at the time.
Why do we know so little about the Mexican Repatriation?
You have likely not heard of the so-called ‘Mexican Repatriation’. Even in California, where the highest concentration of expulsions occurred, you could go your whole life without learning about it.
Historical references for this chapter of the Great Depression remain relatively sparse: Decade of Betrayal, written by historian Francisco E. Balderrama and late historian Raymond Rodriguez—first published in 1995—remains the leading narrative on this disturbing history,
Why has such a serious history been neglected?
Balderrama and Rodriguez pointed out that, later in life, victims were often unwilling to talk about what they experienced in their youths. Being expelled or coerced to leave their country of birth, they were made to be aliens by both the US and Mexico and seldom if ever spoke of their displacement. Upon return as adults, many simply focused on rebuilding their lives. In some cases, their descendants only discovered these stories existed in their families through chance conversations with other relatives when they became older.
These anecdotes show how an entire demographic, both of US native and foreign-born backgrounds, were genuinely scarred by the threat and reality of repatriation programs. Throughout their entire lives.
Coming up to nearly a century since the Great Depression, their stories risk eternal burial.
Recovering and Honouring a Dark History
For today’s not-so-distant descendants, healing their family’s relationship with their nation(s) drives them to write this urgently-deserving chapter of Mexican-American history.
Decade of Betrayal recounts the story of former University of Michigan undergraduate Elena Herrada, whose grandfather was one of over 15,000 repatriated Mexicans living in Detroit during the Depression. Learning about the repatriation inspired her to learn more, and she organised the Fronteras Norteñas research group at UMich to tell the story of the Mexican Repatriation. This includes a play, documentary and website for the public to learn more about the Michigan Repatriation.
Surprised to learn about the Mexican Repatriation, Senator Dunn authored a successful bill, the ‘Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program’ in 2005.
Last year, then-high school junior Tamara Gisiger’s research project on the Mexican Repatriation became the impetus for SB 537, which supports creating historical memorials to the victims of the repatriation raids in Los Angeles.
Unless families and communities come forward to share these stories, experiences of the Mexican Repatriation risk becoming unrecoverable history.
And if state education programs had included the Mexican Repatriation as part of required teaching, maybe historical wisdom would have slowed current political entropy. Maybe US migration politics would have never charged down this bitter xenophobic course again.
Another Trump Term
Donald Trump descended down his golden escalators in June 2015. On 20 January, he will be sworn in as President of the United States, again; the second act in his orchestra of division, violence and absurdity. A decade-and-counting-long cacophony that has bled so many ears to the point of desired political deafness.
He persists in exploiting economic anxiety to demonise Mexicans especially. Raising alarms that illegal migrants pouring over the southern border in droves ‘like this country has never seen’ are stealing American jobs, he promises a mass deportation of illegal immigrants, by military force if necessary.
Tales from the Mexican Repatriation tell us that anti-migrant scapegoating is unfortunately tied to times of economic downturn. Human decency aside, that underwritten chapter of the Great Depression also exposes how unproductive mass deportations would be. One study revealed that the voluntary, coerced and forced mass removals during the era did not increase jobs: they had either no effect or were even correlated with a small decrease in native employment and wages. Likewise, research on the effects of Trump’s first-term executive actions have shown little impact on actually reducing immigration levels.
We used to say “It’s 2016!” in response to obviously racist politics. But since then, Trump has so intensely normalised xenophobia that our innate tendencies for cooperation have been ripped apart. His 2024 election victory was a bitter affirmation of this trend.
“It’s 2025,” and even in the most convoluted of political climates, we should try to get our grip back on one simple, uncomplicated truth:
Policies designed to displace a demographic won’t resolve the current economic crisis. But – long after this administration expires – they will continue to bleed through family histories.
To read a former Roar staff writer’s view on contemporary US immigration issues, click here.
