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

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The original idea for such an operation came from a dubious figure, Harlon B. Carter, the head of the US Border Patrol. His plan was to use the US military to round up and deport undocumented Mexicans. He titled it Operation Cloudburst and was able to get it to President Eisenhower, who considered it but turned it down due to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits military use to enforce domestic law. Although Eisenhower didn’t accept Carter’s plan, it planted the idea that soon became “Operation Wetback,” which Carter was appointed to lead on the border. Carter was a convicted murderer before he became a border guard. He was born in 1931 in Laredo, Texas, where his father was a border guard. When he was seventeen, Carter shot and killed a Mexican American teenager, Ramón Casiano.