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Operation Wetback, U.S. immigration law enforcement campaign during the summer of 1954 that resulted in the mass deportation of Mexican nationals (1.1 million persons according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS], though most estimates put the figure closer to 300,000). Drafted by U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., and vetted by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Operation Wetback arose at least partly in response to a portion of the American public that had become angry at the widespread corruption among employers of sharecroppers and growers along the Mexican border and at the Border Patrol’s inability to stem the influx of illegal workers.

The role of the Bracero Program

In 1942, the U.S. government, with the cooperation of the Mexican government, enacted the Bracero Program, which allowed short-term contract labourers from Mexico, known as braceros, to work legally in the United States. The program was originally conceived in the early 1940s, during World War II, to combat a wartime dearth of agricultural labourers due to military service and a shift by native agricultural workers to better-paying manufacturing jobs. Financed through taxpayer labour subsidies, the plan lasted until 1964.

Even though most contract employers did not pay enough for many of the documented Mexican workers to make a decent living, other undocumented Mexican labourers were still drawn by the promise of employment. As a result of the ease with which illegal immigrants could be hired without the burden of the immigration bureaucracy, only a small portion were issued valid worker certificates from 1947 to 1960. The problems with the administration of the Bracero Program almost immediately led to a growing influx of undocumented workers in the United States and to a widespread public outcry over the depressive effect on wages for U.S. workers, supposedly created by the proliferation of illegal immigrants.

The emergence and implementation of Operation Wetback

In 1954, Attorney General Brownell forwarded the initiative that would eventually become known as Operation Wetback. Its name was derived from wetback, the offensive term for the multitude of Mexican immigrants who traversed the Rio Grande to illegally cross the border between Mexico and the United States. (In 1953 alone, some 886,000 persons were seized by the U.S. federal government for illegally entering the United States from Mexico.) The initiative focused on two primary objectives: (1) stemming the flow of illegal and undocumented Mexican workers into the United States and (2) discouraging the employers who harboured such workers. The plan met with resistance from some legislators as well as from agricultural and farming groups that lobbied Congress. Many legislators objected to one of the initiative’s central tenets—that employers of illegal workers should be punished— because proving the employers’ awareness of the workers’ illegal status would be difficult. Moreover, some lawmakers were hesitant about Brownell’s militaristic approach, which involved carrying out the plan like an invasion. Ultimately, Congress failed to pass legislation authorizing punishment for those who hired illegal workers, but it did allocate increased funding for the Border Patrol.

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The appointment of Gen. Joseph Swing, along with other top military commanders, to oversee the implementation of Operation Wetback did indeed lead to a campaign that was executed with the aggressiveness and precision characteristic of a large-scale military offensive. Over the summer tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of illegal immigrants were arrested and deported and, according to some accounts, sometimes inhumanely transported. Meanwhile, there was a concomitant mass exodus of illegal immigrants attempting to return to Mexico. Intimidated by the military and local law enforcement, many employers supported the return of their undocumented workers to Mexico.

Conclusion

The INS reported that some 1.1 million undocumented workers had left the country either voluntarily or through prosecution as a result of the operation; however, the number of illegal immigrants who left has long been debated, largely because measurements of “voluntary” departures from the country were difficult to determine. Although Operation Wetback temporarily mollified an angry citizenry, the Bracero Program remained in place for another decade, allowing for the continued influx of legal Mexican immigrants. Moreover, Operation Wetback may have deterred illegal immigration for a time, but it did not relieve the demand for labour (especially cheap labour) in the United States. Therefore, many employers in the agricultural industries still needed the work of immigrants in order to adequately meet demands and compete in the marketplace. The influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico would remain a touchstone of U.S. political debate throughout the remainder of the 20th century and into the 21st.

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