Operation Wetback Mass Deportation Uses Military Tactics, Human Rights Violations

U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell launches Operation Wetback, a mass deportation initiative using military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants. Created by Joseph May Swing, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general heading the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the operation targets undocumented immigrants but routinely violates the rights of legal residents and U.S. citizens. Border agents descend on Mexican-American neighborhoods demanding identification from “Mexican-looking” citizens, invade private homes without warrants in the middle of the night, and raid Mexican businesses. Without hearings or oversight, agents seize and deport people who are lawfully in the country, including some American citizens of Hispanic origin.

The INS claims 1,100,000 deportations, though historians estimate the actual figure closer to 300,000. Deportation methods involve shocking brutality—tens of thousands of immigrants are shoved into buses, boats, and planes and sent to unfamiliar parts of Mexico without food or water. In Chicago, three planes weekly are filled with deportees and flown to Mexico. In Texas, 25% of all deportees are crammed onto cargo ships later compared to slave ships. A congressional investigation describes conditions on one vessel as a “penal hell ship,” stating it was no better than an African slave ship. Many deaths occur during the deportations, which one historian characterizes as “unnecessary deaths” resulting from removal without food, water, or medical care.

The operation lasts approximately one year before becoming too expensive to maintain and facing opposition as American agriculture growers begin complying with the Bracero Program to hire Mexican workers legally, reducing their use of undocumented labor. The mass deportation policy coincides with Cold War security concerns, as the Korean War and Red Scare prompt demands for tighter border security to prevent presumed communist infiltration. Operation Wetback establishes precedents for immigration enforcement that prioritizes spectacular shows of force over due process, accepts collateral deportation of legal residents and citizens, and uses racial profiling as the basis for stops and searches. These tactics recur in subsequent mass deportation proposals and operations, with the Eisenhower program repeatedly cited as a model despite its documented human rights violations and the “tragic” and “travesty” designation given to the operation by later officials and historians who acknowledge it violated fundamental rights and caused preventable deaths.