Author interview: Eerie parallels in treatment of immigrant communities

Workers following arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Louisiana during the summer. Human Rights Watch say the agency has staged hundreds of violent raids at places where Latino people work, shop, eat, and live.

• Banished Citizens 
• Marla Andrea Ramírez 
• Harvard Press, €29.99 

Last year, on the presidential campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to launch the largest deportation programme in US history. A year into his presidency, Trump has kept his pledge. 

Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials continue to stalk and seize people across the US they suspect lack authorisation to be in the country — terrorising entire communities and ripping families apart in the process.

This nationwide deportation campaign began this summer in Los Angeles. 

“Since late May, Ice, Customs and Border Patrol, and other federal law enforcement agencies have staged hundreds of violent raids around Los Angeles at places where Latino people work, shop, eat, and live,” reported Human Rights Watch in early November.

In mid-July, the Los Angeles Times documented the discrimination Mexican citizens have experienced under these so-called Ice raids. 

One article featured findings from a study carried out by Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, the Mexican consul general in Los Angeles.

He noted that more than half of the Mexican citizens recently detained by US immigration agents had been living in the US for at least a decade, and one third had US-born children.

“Historically, whenever there has been economic instability in the United States, we have seen specific racial groups targeted,” Marla Andrea Ramirez explains from her office in the University of Wisconsin, where she is assistant professor of history.

Sometimes it’s been Mexicans, other times, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, or eastern Europeans.

“Today in the United States we are seeing mass deportations of people, including US citizens.

“This includes Puerto Ricans, who have been interrogated by US immigration officers for speaking Spanish in public,” the Mexican-born academic explains. 

“While many Venezuelans are being described [by the US government] as gang members. Eventually, people buy into these ideas, and it gives the government [free rein] to justify their measures.”

Ramirez claims shifting demographics in the US partially explains why the Republican Party have turned further to the right in recent years. Especially on immigration.

“For generations, white Americans have been in the majority in the United States, but now those numbers are changing,” she says

“There is now an increasing number of Latinos in the United States who are US citizens with voting rights.

“This has seen fear grow among some [white Americans] that Latinos could become the majority.”

People demonstrate against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York last month. US president Donald Trump has made deporting undocumented immigrants a key priority for his second term, after successfully campaigning against an alleged 'invasion' by criminals. Picture: Timothy A Clary/ AFP via Getty 

It’s a far cry from the so-called melting pot theory. This idealistic aspiration originated from a play, The Melting-Pot (1908). 

Written by the British Jewish writer Israel Zangwill, it opened in Washington, DC, at the Columbia Theatre, on October 5, 1908 — and tells the story of a young Russian immigrant fighting to uphold his dream of a new life in a new country.

God, Zangwill claimed, was using America as “a crucible” to melt the “fifty” barbarian tribes of Europe into a metal from which he can cast Americans.

“This term melting pot came about to unify a divided nation. In practice, though, there has always been a distinctive racial hierarchy in the United States that privileges whiteness,” says Ramirez, pointing to some historical examples: 

The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prevented Chinese immigrants from entering the US; the 1891 Immigration Act declared certain classes of individuals as unfit to become American citizens; meanwhile, the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted entry of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.

“The Immigration Act of 1924 did not restrict Mexican immigration and naturalisation based on race, but it implemented a visa requirement, effectively criminalising those who traversed the border without one,” Ramirez writes in Banished Citizens.

Her debut book documents how between 1921 and 1944 more than 1m Mexican Americans were forcibly removed from the US. 

They were transported across the border, via special trains organised by the Southern Pacific Railroad and Mexican National Railroad.

Mass displacement of ethnic Mexicans

“Both the Mexican and American government worked in collaboration to carry out this mass displacement of ethnic Mexicans,” says Ramirez. 

“But the policy was never formalised as law. Instead, the mass removals was an informal process that claimed to give a hand to people of Mexican origin who were destitute.”

The book begins with a reference to the Mexican American War (1846-48). It officially concluded with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 

Mexico’s loss was significant. The country ceded 55% of its territory to the US, whose landmass expanded to include the present-day states of Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California.

This meant between 80,000 to 115,000 Mexican nationals found themselves living in a new country. 

They were given the option to stay behind the new border line and claim US citizenship, or voluntarily repatriate. Many remained.

Eventually, they headed west to California to work on farms and railroads. 

By the end of the 1920s, Los Angeles was home to the largest population of Mexican nationals outside of Mexico City. 

Federal officers block the street to let vehicles leave a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon, earlier this month. Picture: Jenny Kane/ AP

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 dramatically altered their fate.

As the US entered the Great Depression (1929-1939), many Mexican Americans were accused of being an economic burden. 

In December 1930, Charles P Visel, the director for the city committee in Los Angeles, proposed a plan to save on public funding: the mass removal of ethnic Mexicans from Los Angeles. 

Other cities and states across America quickly emulated that model.

This history shares eerie parallels with how immigrant communities are being treated today across the US. 

The forced removals of Mexican Americans between 1921 and 1944 took place in private homes, workplaces, plazas, and dancehalls. Immigration officials often referred to them as “voluntary deportations” or “repatriation”.

“The term repatriation refers to returning someone to their homeland,” Ramirez explains. 

“But many of these people were US citizens of Mexican descent, who were already in their home country.”

A more accurate description is ethnic cleansing.

Today in LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Los Angeles, there is a plaque commemorating Mexican Americans who were forcefully removed from a country they called home. 

It was first unveiled on February 26, 2012 — when several Mexican families gathered to accept a formal apology from the California State Legislature and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

It was there that Ramirez first encountered surviving members from banished families. This book contains numerous interviews with them.

“Many of the families I interviewed recalled leaving the United States, arriving in Mexico and having to look through trash cans for food, some had to beg,” the author explains.

“Others were left homeless and spoke of having to create homes out of dirt and cardboard boxes.”

The forced removals of Mexican Americans concluded in 1944 with the Bracero programme, a series of agreements between the US and Mexican governments to allow temporary labourers from Mexico to work legally in the US.

It mostly benefited employers, giving them easy access to cheap workers, who could be seasonally hired and fired.

Many individuals from families that Ramirez interviewed believe they are owed, at a minimum, an apology from the current Mexican and US governments. 

Some want financial reparations. Others just public acknowledgment about the historical wrongdoing and intergenerational trauma they and their families have endured over many decades.

“If action happens at local and state level, momentum can be created,” says Ramirez.

“California has already acknowledged their role in this mass removals and they have inaugurated a plaque to recognise this history.

“I’m currently in conversation with Governor Tony Evers, who I’m hopeful will promote legislation that will approve a reparation or an apology act here in the state of Wisconsin.”

Presently, getting any co-operation from the White House on this topic seems highly unlikely. 

“The Trump administration has what can only be described as racist policies,” Ramirez concludes.

“It’s almost certain it will not bring in any form of reparations for banished citizens in the near to medium future.”