Scared Out of the Community
Our featured weekly excerpts usually spotlight new history titles, but sometimes the news of the day makes returning to past scholarship, responding to different times and looking at the past from different contexts, a useful endeavor. This is the first entry in a series we hope to revisit from time to time, excerpting books from previous decades in order to bring the history they document to new audiences. Below is an excerpt adapted from Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929–1939, by Abraham Hoffman, published in 1974 by the University of Arizona Press. You can read the entire book online here.
The old man entered the circular park, looked around, and sat down on one of the many benches placed there for the use of the town’s citizens. Several hundred people, mostly men, were also in the park, enjoying the afternoon sun. Sitting in the park enabled the old man to forget the reason that had brought him there. The deepening economic depression had cost him his job, and work was hard to find.
A sudden commotion startled the old man out of his reverie. Without warning, uniformed policemen surrounded the park, blocking all exits. A voice filled with authority ordered everyone to remain where he was. While the policemen guarded the exits, government agents methodically quizzed each of the frightened people, demanding identification papers, documents, or passports. With shaking hands the old man produced a dog-eared, yellowed visa. Only the other day, he had considered throwing it away. After all, he had entered the country so long ago…
The agent inspected the papers and barked several questions at the old man. Haltingly, he answered as best he could, for despite his years of residence in the country he had learned the language only imperfectly. With a nod of approval, the officer returned the papers. The old man sat down again; a sense of relief washed over him.
The agents continued their interrogation, and after about an hour everyone in the park had been checked and cleared. Or almost everyone. Seventeen men were placed in cars and taken away. The inspection over, the policemen left the park to the people. Few cared to remain, however, and in a few moments the place was deserted.
The time was 1931; the place, Los Angeles, California, in the city’s downtown plaza. The government agents were officers in the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Immigration, assisted by local policemen. Their goal was the apprehension of aliens who had entered the United States illegally.
Unlike many post-World War II aliens who knowingly entered in violation of immigration laws, immigrants prior to the Great Depression entered the United States at a time when the government’s views on immigration were in flux, moving from unrestricted entry to severe restriction. Many aliens found themselves confused by the tightening noose of regulations; one immigrant might enter with one law in effect, but his younger brother, coming to the country a few years later, might find new rules — or new interpretations of old rules — impeding his entrance.
With the onset of the depression, pressure mounted to remove aliens from the relief rolls and, almost paradoxically, from the jobs they were said to hold at the expense of American citizens. In the Southwest, immigration service officers searched for Mexican immigrants, while local welfare agencies sought to lighten their relief load by urging Mexican indigents to volunteer for repatriation. The most ambitious of these repatriation programs was organized in Los Angeles County, an area with the largest concentration of Mexicans outside of Mexico City.
Not all of the repatriates, however, departed solely under pressure from the Anglos. Many Mexicans who had achieved varying degrees of financial success decided on their own to return to Mexico, taking with them the automobiles, clothing, radios, and other material possessions they had accumulated. The Mexican government, vacillating between the desire to lure these people home and the fear that their arrival would add to an already existing labor surplus, sporadically launched land reform programs designed for repatriados. Between 1929 and 1939 approximately half a million Mexicans left the United States. Many of the departing families included American-born children to whom Mexico, not the United States, was the foreign land.
The peak month in which Mexicans recrossed the border was November 1931, and in all subsequent months the figures generally declined. Yet it was after this date that the number of cities shipping out Mexican families increased. Even after the massive federal relief programs of the New Deal were begun in 1933, cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit still attempted to persuade indigent Mexicans to leave.
With the start of World War II, Mexican immigration was renewed, when the United States and Mexico concluded an agreement to permit braceros to enter the United States. A system of permits and visas for varying periods testifies to the evolution of border regulations; their abuse and misuse bear witness to the difficulties of making such a system coherent.
No other locality matched the county of Los Angeles in its ambitious efforts to rid itself of the Mexican immigrant during the depression years. By defining people along cultural instead of national lines, county officials deprived American children of Mexican descent of rights guaranteed them by the Constitution. On the federal level, no other region in the country received as much attention from immigration officials as Southern California. Because of the tremendous growth of this region after World War II, Southern California’s service as a locus for deportation and repatriation of Mexican immigrants is little remembered. To the Mexican-American community, however, repatriation is a painful memory.
In 1931, various elements in Los Angeles had indicated support for the idea of restricting jobs on public works projects to American citizens. Motions were presented and passed by the Los Angeles city council and the county board of supervisors, while the Independent Order of Veterans of Los Angeles called for the deportation of illegal aliens as a means of aiding jobless relief.
The board of supervisors went so far as to endorse legislation pending in Congress and in the state legislature, which would bar aliens who had entered the country illegally from “establishing a residence, holding a position, or engaging in any form of business.” Supervisor John R. Quinn believed that such legislation would provide a sort of cure-all for all problems generated by illegal aliens, whom he believed numbered “between 200,000 and 400,000 in California alone.” Said Quinn in two remarkably all-inclusive sentences:
If we were rid of the aliens who have entered this country illegally since 1931 ... our present unemployment problem would shrink to the proportions of a relatively unimportant flat spot in business. In ridding ourselves of the criminally undesirable alien we will put an end to a large part of our crime and law enforcement problem, probably saving many good American lives and certainly millions of dollars for law enforcement against people who have no business in this country.
Quinn also believed the “Red problem” would disappear with the deportation of these aliens.
It was in this atmosphere that Charles P. Visel, head of the Los Angeles Citizen’s Committee on Coordination of Unemployment Relief, published a press release in city newspapers. The statement announced a deportation campaign and stressed that help from adjoining districts would be given the local office of the Bureau of Immigration. Each newspaper printed the text as it saw fit, so that while one newspaper printed sections of it verbatim, another summarized and paraphrased. Certain embellishments were added. “Aliens who are deportable will save themselves trouble and expense,” suggested the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News on January 26, 1931, “by arranging their departure at once.” On that same day, the Examiner, a Hearst paper, announced, without going into any qualifying details, that “Deportable aliens include Mexicans, Japanese, Chinese, and others.”
As the days passed, follow-up stories and editorials kept the public aware of the project. The Express two days later editorially endorsed restrictionist legislation and called for compulsory alien registration. On January 29, the Times quoted Visel, who urged “all nondeportable aliens who are without credentials or who have not registered to register at once, as those having papers will save themselves a great deal of annoyance and trouble in the very near future. This is a constructive suggestion.” The impending arrival of the special agents from Washington, DC, and other immigration districts was made known, the word being given by Visel to the newspapers.
La Opinión, the leading Spanish-language newspaper in Los Angeles, published an extensive article on January 29. With a major headline spread across page one, the newspaper quoted from Visel’s release and from the versions of it given by the Times and the Illustrated Daily News. La Opinión’s article pointedly stressed that the deportation campaign was being aimed primarily at those of Mexican nationality.
Commencing February 3, Supervisor William F. Watkins of the Bureau of Immigration and his men, with the assistance of police and deputies, began ferreting out aliens in Los Angeles. By Saturday 35 deportable aliens had been apprehended. Of this number, eight were immediately returned to Mexico by the “voluntary departure” method, while an additional number chose to take the same procedure in preference to undergoing a formal hearing. Several aliens were held for formal deportation on charges of violating the criminal, immoral, or undesirable class provisions of the immigration laws. Five additional immigration inspectors arrived to provide assistance, and five more were shortly expected.
On Friday the 13th, with the assistance of 13 sheriff’s deputies led by Captain William J. Bright of the sheriff’s homicide detail, the immigration agents staged a raid in the El Monte area. This action was given prominence in the Sunday editions of the Times and the Examiner. Watkins wrote to Robe Carl White, assistant labor secretary, that such coverage was “unfortunate from our standpoint,” because the impression was given by the articles that every district in Los Angeles County known to have aliens living there would be investigated. “Our attitude in regard to publicity was made known to the authorities working with us in this matter,” Watkins complained, “but somehow the information found its way into the papers.”
Considering the announcements from Walter E. Carr, the Los Angeles district director of immigration, that no ethnic group was being singled out and that only aliens with criminal records were the primary interest of the Bureau of Immigration, the aliens captured in the Friday the 13th raid could only have made the Mexican community wary of official statements. Three hundred people were stopped and questioned: from this number, the immigration agents jailed 13, and 12 of them were Mexicans. The Examiner conveniently supplied the public with the names, ages, occupations, birth places, years in the United States, and years or months in Los Angeles County, while the Times was content just to supply the names.
While generalizations are impossible about the people stopped, questioned, and occasionally detained, the assertions that all the aliens either were people holding jobs (that only could be held by citizens) or were criminals in the county did not apply to these arrested suspects. Of the twelve Mexicans arrested, the most recent arrival in the United States had come eight months earlier, while three had been in the United States at least seven years, one for thirteen years, and another was classified as an “American-born Mexican,” a term which carried no clear meaning, inasmuch as the charge against the suspects was illegal entry. Eleven of the twelve gave their occupation as laborer; the twelfth said he was a waiter.
As Watkins pursued the search for deportable aliens, he observed that the job became progressively difficult:
After the first few roundups of aliens ... there was noticeable falling off in the number of contrabands apprehended. The newspaper publicity which attended our efforts and the word which passed between the alien groups undoubtedly caused great numbers of them to seek concealment.
After several forays into East Los Angeles, the agents found the streets deserted, with local merchants complaining that the investigations were bad for business. In the rural sections of the county surveyed by Watkins’ men, whole families disappeared from sight. Watkins also began to appreciate the extent of Southern California’s residential sprawl. He observed that the Belvedere section, according to the 1930 census, might hold as many as 60,000 Mexicans.
The Mexican and other ethnic communities were not about to take the investigations passively. La Opinión railed at officials for the raids, while ethnic brotherhood associations gave advice and assistance. A meeting of over one hundred Mexican and Mexican American businessmen on the evening of February 16 resulted in the organization of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, and a pledge to carry their complaints about the treatment of Mexican nationals to both Mexico City and Washington, DC. Mexican merchants in Los Angeles, who catered to the trade of their ethnic group, felt that their business had been adversely affected, since Mexicans living in outlying areas now hesitated to present themselves in Los Angeles for possible harassment. Sheriff William Traeger’s deputies in particular were criticized for rounding up Mexicans in large groups and taking them to jail without checking whether anyone in the group had a passport or proof of entry.
Ambassador Rafael de la Colina had been working tirelessly on behalf of destitute Mexicans in need of aid or desiring repatriation. Much of his time was occupied with meeting immigration officials who kept assuring him that the Mexicans were not being singled out for deportation. He also warned against unscrupulous individuals who were taking advantage of Mexican nationals by soliciting funds for charity and issuing bogus affidavits to Mexicans who had lost their papers.
The Japanese community also expressed its hostility to the immigration officials. When several agents stopped to investigate some suspected Japanese aliens, the owner of the ranch employing the aliens threatened to shoot the inspector “if he had a gun.” Japanese people obstinately refused to answer any questions, and Watkins believed that an attorney had been retained by the Japanese for the purpose of circumventing the immigration laws.
Despite the adverse reaction to and public knowledge of the drive on aliens, Watkins persisted. “I am fully convinced that there is an extensive field here for deportation work and as we can gradually absorb same it is expected [sic] to ask for additional help,” he stated. Responding to the charges of dragnet methods, he notified his superiors in Washington:
I have tried to be extremely careful to avoid the holding of aliens by or for this Service who are not deportable and to this end it is our endeavor to immediately release at the local point of investigation any alien who is not found to be deportable as soon as his examination is completed.
On February 21, 1931, Watkins wrote to White, and the following month to Visel, that 230 aliens had been deported in formal proceedings, of whom 110 were Mexican nationals, and that 159 additional Mexican aliens had chosen the voluntary departure option to return to Mexico.
These figures revealed that seven out of ten persons deported in the Southern California antialien drive were Mexicans. By the supervisor’s own admission, in order to capture the 389 aliens successfully prosecuted during this period, Watkins and his men had to round up and question somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 people — truly a monumental task.
The effect of the drive on the Mexican community was traumatic. Many of the aliens apprehended had never regularized an illegal entry that might have been made years before. Other than that, to call them criminals is to misapply the term. The pressure on the Mexican community from the deportation campaign contributed significantly to the huge repatriation from Los Angeles that followed the antialien drive. But this seemed of little concern to the head of the Citizens Committee on Coordination of Unemployment Relief. By the third week in March, an exuberant Visel could write to Labor Secretary William N. Doak:
Six weeks have elapsed since we have received ... Mr. Watkins, in reply to our request for deportable alien relief in this district. We wish to compliment your department for his efficiency, aggressiveness, resourcefulness, and the altogether sane way in which he is endeavoring and is getting concrete results.
The exodus of aliens deportable and otherwise who have been scared out of the community has undoubtedly left many jobs which have been taken up by other persons (not deportable) and citizens of the United States and our municipality. The exodus still continues.
We are very much impressed by the methods used and the constructive results steadily being accomplished.
Our compliments to you, Sir, and to this branch of your service.
However much Visel’s interpretation of the benefits derived from the campaign squared with reality, the Department of Labor was no longer as eager to endorse the Los Angeles coordinator, or even to imply the existence of an endorsement. Perhaps the department feared any such reply might be converted into another publicity release. At any rate, with Nation and New Republic lambasting the department, Doak shied away from making a personal reply. Visel’s letter was answered by Assistant Secretary W.W. Husband, who acknowledged Visel’s message and then circumspectly stated:
It is the purpose of this Department that the deportation provisions of our immigration laws shall be carried out to the fullest possible extent but the Department is equally desirous that such activities shall be carried out strictly in accordance with law.
Excerpt adapted from Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929–1939 by Abraham Hoffman. Copyright © 1974 by The Arizona Board of Regents. Used with permission of the publisher, the University of Arizona Press. All rights reserved.
