When deportation was called repatriation: The US once expelled 1.8 million people to Mexico

My students are always shocked to learn that the US deported an estimated 1.8 million people to Mexico in the 1930s, including some who had never set foot in the country.

But this year marked the first time I failed to offer my usual conclusion: that the mass repatriation during the Hoover administration represented a singular and unprecedented violation of constitutional rights. Instead, I had to acknowledge — grimly — that the nation was once again deporting Latino immigrants, including US citizens.

Since I began teaching Latino LA seven years ago, my primary goal has been to help my freshmen—the majority of whom come into my classroom with little or no experience in Latino history—connect the past to the world they live in now.

My lesson on the deportation campaign of the 1930s—which Los Angeles County officials called “Mexican repatriation” to make the “return home” sound legal, voluntary, and well-intentioned—became particularly relevant in this context.

During the Great Depression, politicians struggling to respond to the economic crisis needed a scapegoat and racial ideas about who belonged in America and who didn’t. They made Mexican communities convenient targets. In Los Angeles, where 7.6% of residents are Latino, political leaders began to suggest that Mexican workers were taking American jobs and straining public resources. Deporting Mexicans will “open up positions for citizens in need,” said LA County Executive H.M. Blaine. The depression will only end if the “aliens go away”.

In lecturing my students about this history, I emphasized how economic insecurity and xenophobic racism intersected to expand public support for mass expulsion. These same forces are re-emerging as the Trump administration deploys widespread financial means uncertainty along with a persistent narrative that immigrants must blame. Now, as before, officials push an idealized vision of the US as fundamentally and normatively white. The mass removal of immigrants of color was never about controlling the so-called immigration crisis, I told my students, but about a desire to define who counted as American.

Like today’s ICE, Depression-era INS agents indiscriminately rounded up Mexicans, assuming they were here illegally. In Los Angeles, they targeted parks, hospitals and workplaces in Mexican communities, demanding proof of citizenship. High-profile raids and media campaigns announcing impending arrests served as tools of intimidation, creating widespread fear that led to “voluntary” deportation via free one-way train tickets to Mexico. Entire families carrying only a few belongings boarded trains at Union Station, some never to return to the U.S. County officials and social workers went door-to-door, threatening welfare cuts and heightening panic among working families who worried they would fall into extreme poverty.

I want my class to see the evils of then and now. But I also want to instill in them a sense of hope and agency. We discussed numerous resistance efforts that opposed the mass deportations of the 1930s. Here in Los Angeles, media, churches and charities have provided critical assistance. The opinion warned of neighborhood cleanups. Liberal Los Angeles Record public display of ruse arrests: “handcuffs instead of warrant(s),” the newspaper reported. Catholic churches collected funds to give to local families. The Los Angeles Bar Association condemned the violations of constitutional rights. The Mexican Consulate helped provide community assistance and legal protection.

The deportations never truly ended, but by 1934 they were quietly declining as the FDR administration shifted political priorities and the New Deal offered economic relief. Community resistance played a crucial role in bringing lawless raids out into the open – abuses that would otherwise have remained hidden.

I hope that my class helps students understand what makes this moment unprecedented and what is a cycle in history that repeats itself. I want them to understand that although the deportations have never stopped, it is not normal to see armed, masked men dragging people away in unmarked vehicles. It is not normal for the government to detain people without arrest or trial.

I also want them to see how everyday acts of survival and organized resistance – 100 years ago and today – are proof that Latin Americans refuse to accept dehumanization. And LA’s Latino community is now more resilient than ever. Around us, mass activists are organizing a neighborhood patrols and nonprofits lead “Know Your rights campaigns,” elected representatives and immigration attorneys provide legal and moral supportand journalists and social media document ICE’s activities.

“A major difference today,” I told my class, “is that Latinos are the majority in Los Angeles. And we’re not going anywhere.”

This commentary is adapted from an essay created for Plinth Public Square.