My college students are always shocked when they learn that the U.S. deported an estimated 1.8 million people to Mexico in the 1930s, including some who had never stepped foot in the country. “Sixty percent of the deported were U.S. citizens! Most were the children of Mexican immigrants,” I tell them.
But this year marked the first time I couldn’t offer my usual conclusion: that the mass repatriation during the Hoover Administration represented a singular and unprecedented violation of constitutional rights in U.S. history. Instead, I had to acknowledge — somberly — that the nation is once again deporting Latino immigrants, including U.S. citizens.
Since I started teaching “Latino L.A.” seven years ago, my central objective has been to help my first-year students — the majority of whom come to my classroom with little to no background in Latino history — connect the past to the world they’re living in right now. This fall, that meant stepping away from my standard lecture to incorporate real-time examples of ongoing ICE raids, and the community’s mobilization in response.
My lesson about the 1930s deportation campaign — L.A. County officials referred to it as a “Mexican Repatriation” to make the “return home” sound legal, voluntary and benevolent—became especially pertinent in this context.
During the Great Depression, politicians struggling to respond to the economic crisis needed a scapegoat, and racialized ideas of who belonged in America and who did not made Mexican communities convenient targets. In Los Angeles, where 7.6% of residents were Latino, political leaders began suggesting that Mexican laborers were taking American jobs and burdening public resources. Deporting Mexicans would “open positions for needy citizens,” L.A. county supervisor H. M. Blaine declared. The Depression would end if only the “aliens would go away.”
Lecturing to my students about this history from 100 years ago, I underscored how economic precarity and xenophobic racism intersected to broaden public support for the mass expulsion. Those same forces are re-emerging today as the Trump administration harnesses widespread financial insecurity — driven by rising costs of living, stagnant wages, and an eroding social safety net — alongside a persistent narrative that immigrants are to blame.
Now as before, officials are advancing an idealized vision of the United States as fundamentally and normatively white. I reminded my students that mass removal of immigrants of color has never been about controlling any so-called immigration crisis, but about a desire to shape who gets to count as an American.
Like today’s ICE, Depression-era INS agents indiscriminately rounded up Mexicans, presuming they were here illegally. In Los Angeles, they targeted parks, hospitals, and work sites in Mexican communities, demanding proof of citizenship. High-profile raids and media campaigns announcing impending roundups 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 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 cuts to welfare aid, heightening panic among working families who worried they would fall into extreme poverty.
I want my students to see the evils of then and now. But I also want to instill in them a sense of hope and agency. We discussed multiple resistance efforts that pushed back against mass deportation during the 1930s. Nationally, the Wickersham Commission, a federal oversight committee, brought attention to the abuses of immigration officials, denouncing deportations as lacking due process and using “unconstitutional, tyrannic and oppressive” methods.
Here in Los Angeles, the Mexican American community had little organized political power (suffering from economic setbacks and repatriation itself), but media, churches and charitable organizations provided critical help. La Opinion warned about neighborhood sweeps. The liberal Los Angeles Record publicly exposed dodgy arrests: “handcuffs instead of warrant[s],” the paper reported. Catholic churches raised funds to give to local families. L.A.’s bar association condemned constitutional rights violations. The Mexican Consulate helped provide community aid and legal defense.
Deportations never truly ended, but by 1934 they quietly tapered off as FDR’s administration shifted political priorities and the New Deal offered economic relief. Community resistance played a crucial role by bringing the lawless raids out into the open — abuses that might otherwise have remined hidden.
Most of my students are middle and upper-middle class Americans. They are Latino and Asian, White and Black. The majority come from California; a handful are international students navigating American society for the first time. They all came of age with Trump, and they are just beginning to learn the intricacies of our immigration and legal systems.
I want them to be able to discern what makes this moment unprecedented, and what is a cycle in history, repeating itself. I want to remind them that while deportations have never stopped, it is not normal to see armed, masked men dragging people into unmarked vehicles. It is not normal for the government to detain people in unknown locations, without arrests or trials.
Teaching to the moment can feel overwhelming. History underlines the tragic story of family separations, migrant deaths, and loss of jobs and wealth. We know from past experience that community fear and trauma will persist long after the raids are over. We already see its chilling effects on civic life and public safety. Calls to LAPD fall, as people avoid authorities due to fear of exposure. Communities are less likely to seek public assistance or engage with institutions. Workers and business owners suffer lost income. School attendance plummets.
Still, I want my students to know that the Latino community in L.A. is more resilient than ever before.“ A major difference today,” I said, “is that Latinos are the majority in Los Angeles. And we’re not going anywhere.”
Around us, grassroots activists organize neighborhood patrols and non-profit organizations lead “Know Your Rights campaigns,” elected representatives and immigration attorneys provide legal and moral support, and journalists and social media document ICE activity. Daily acts of survival and organized resistance — 100 years ago and today — are proof that Latinos refuse to accept dehumanization.
I end the lecture by reminding my students what’s at stake: our sense of belonging and our humanity. Mass removal of immigrants of color has never been about controlling any so-called immigration crisis, I tell them, but about a desire to shape who gets to count as an American. “We determine what kind of nation we want to be,” I said.
Sylvia Zamora was born and raised in South Gate, in southeast Los Angeles. She is a sociologist at Loyola Marymount University and the author of Racial Baggage: Mexican Immigrants and Race Across the Border. This was written for Zócalo Public Square, an ASU Media Enterprise publication.
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