Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

In October 1954, Swing declared that the operation had forced more than a million Mexicans deep into México. However, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez clarifies that although the treatment of the detained and deported Mexican workers was brutal and hundreds of thousands were deported, the actual number was likely closer to three hundred thousand. “Operation Wetback” is often cited as the event that led to mass deportations and more rigid border enforcement, but that was not the case. Nor did it reduce the number of undocumented Mexicans in the US, and it did not end unauthorized entry at the border. Rather, after “Operation Wetback” ended, the Border Patrol deescalated, dispatching two-men patrols on foot or horseback. Hernandez writes, “In other words, after General Swing declared ‘conquest’ at the border, he kept apprehensions low at the U.S.-México border by changing patrol tactics.”59 Miserable as it was for the Mexicans who were deported and the communities affected, “Operation Wetback” was a cynical show for the public, because agribusiness and mining giants demanded the workers.