In the 1930s, amid record economic downturn and hardship, the President of the United States claimed that Mexican laborers were stealing jobs from Americans, using the slogan “American jobs for real Americans.” Relying on racist stereotypes and existing anti-immigrant sentiments, the administration empowered local officials to begin a campaign of mass deportations, which resulted in nearly 1 million people leaving the United States in four years.
President Herbert Hoover’s deportation campaign during the Great Depression required local officials to conduct “repatriation” raids. In these raids, officials would find and harass Mexican Americans, corral them into trains and buses, and drive them across the border to Mexico. Naturally, these raids targeted cities and job sites with high concentrations of Mexican Americans. Yet, despite President Hoover’s claims, these deportations did not alleviate the economic pain of the Great Depression. Rather, they increased unemployment and lowered wages for domestic workers. Nearly one hundred years later, America finds itself in the same position yet again: President Trump’s promises of mass deportations to alleviate economic hardship are not novel in American history. President Hoover’s failed immigration policies in the 1930s show that mass deportations not only scar the millions who face inhumane treatment at the hands of local and federal officials but are also economically ineffective.
Hoover, a businessman like Trump, advocated for a protectionist approach to getting the nation out of the Great Depression. He enacted the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, which increased tariffs to their highest level in over a century. Unfortunately for Hoover—and the United States—the tariffs did not solve the underlying issues of the Great Depression. Instead, they sparked a global trade war, significantly lowering American imports and exports during the height of the depression. Hoover’s protectionist attitude towards the economy, however, extended beyond his tax and tariff policy to Mexican migrants under the “Mexican Repatriation” campaign.
Despite its name, the mass deportations that took place under the Mexican Repatriation campaign were often involuntary and targeted Hispanic Americans regardless of citizenship status. One common mechanism by which these deportations were carried out involved raids by local officials in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. During the La Placita raid in February 1931, police and other local officials stormed into a vibrant Mexican American neighborhood, rounded up bystanders, and forced them into buses and trains en route to Mexico. Often, Hispanic Americans indiscriminately targeted during these raids received no official form of due process. Remarkably, an estimated 60 percent of those “repatriated” during Hoover’s campaign were believed to be American citizens. Though a number of these raids did indeed involve violence, the mere threat of violence alone, alongside xenophobic and anti-Hispanic rhetoric, coerced many Hispanic Americans to leave the country. While Hoover’s Administration supported this campaign of mass deportations through federal deportations, they also empowered local officials and business owners to carry out their own campaigns.
Hoover supported these deportations as part of his economic agenda, including restrictions on immigration, alongside his other solutions to the Great Depression as part of his 1930 State of the Union Address. However, evidence suggests that mass deportations in the 1930s worsened the economic crisis of the Great Depression. Despite the Hoover Administration heralding the campaign under the slogan “American jobs for real Americans,” the loss of approximately 1 million workers in the labor market during Mexican Repatriation resulted in a decrease in both employment and wages for native-born workers. However, the lasting effects of Hoover’s mass deportation campaign spread far beyond its impacts on the labor market and the economy.
Mexican Repatriation inflicted trauma upon hundreds of thousands of people as local officials coercively and forcibly removed them from their homes and deported them to Mexico. A majority of those who “repatriated” during this campaign were US citizens, many of them had neither lived in Mexico nor knew Spanish. Children had their education disrupted as their parents attempted to navigate a worldwide economic depression in a foreign country. José Lopez testified about his experience in Mexico before the California state legislature, stating, “My entire family was forced to relocate from Michigan to Mexico… Living conditions in Mexico were horrible, we lived in utter poverty. My family ate only tortillas and beans for a long time. Sometimes only one meal a day… We returned to Detroit after being absent from the United States for 14 years. We were lucky to come back.” These events scarred thousands of Mexican Americans and planted a seed of distrust toward the American government that, for some, is still growing.
Today, America seems to be on the brink of yet another series of mass deportations, as President Trump looks to enact one of his key 2024 campaign promises. The Trump Administration’s playbook of blaming immigrants for economic hardship and rising costs is not novel. Herbert Hoover’s tenure shows that the United States has attempted to deport its way out of an economic crisis before, and it failed. Not only did mass deportations worsen the economic crisis of the Great Depression, but it also inflicted trauma upon hundreds of thousands of civilians by forcibly relocating them to a foreign country. The exact path ahead for Trump’s immigration policy is uncertain, with some groups expecting the plan to cost a whopping $88 billion annually. However, if Trump is able to execute even part of his plan, and Mexican Repatriation is a lesson from the past, the consequences of this plan are both economically ineffective and morally unjust.