As the Trump administration cracks down on unauthorized immigration, some U.S. citizens have reportedly been stopped and detained, too. When that happens, proving citizenship can be a grueling process. But this is not the first time citizens have gotten caught up in deportation campaigns.
Between 1921 and 1944, the U.S. government sent some 1 million ethnic Mexicans living in the United States to Mexico. Women and children, many of whom were U.S. citizens, were removed alongside their migrant husbands and fathers.
In her new book, “Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation,” Marla A. Ramírez traces the consequences generations later. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Why We Wrote This
In “Banished Citizens,” Marla A. Ramírez examines the reverberations of a push to deport ethnic Mexicans, many of whom were U.S. citizens, during the Great Depression.
What led you to write this book?
It began as a Ph.D. dissertation. For my masters thesis, I was conducting oral history interviews with immigrant youth, and one of the opening questions was, “How do you identify yourself?” One of the participants said, “I’m a U.S. citizen, but I’m not legally recognized as one.” I asked what he meant. He said, “Well, my paternal grandmother was born in the United States, but she was kicked out. Now I’m here, undocumented.” I was mind-blown. How could a direct descendant of a U.S. citizen be undocumented? That question marked a shift in my research. I decided to investigate the prolonged effects of banishment to understand what happened when thousands of U.S. citizens were removed from the United States.
What happened during that period?
During World War I, Mexicans were recruited en masse to the United States to fill labor shortages. During the postwar recession, employers were unable to cover transportation expenses for workers to return to Mexico. In 1921, Mexican consulates paid one-way train tickets for repatriation assistance. U.S. employers, social workers, and local governments soon replicated that model to remove unwanted Mexicans and their U.S. citizen families – masked as benevolence, but in fact removing immigrants and citizens alike without due process.
During the Great Depression, when Mexicans were laid off and asked for food assistance, they were told, “You’re not eligible, but we have this repatriation program.” Local officials repackaged the 1920s program as a mass removal tactic, introduced as an economic recovery plan under the Hoover administration. Between 1921 and 1944, 1 million ethnic Mexicans were removed without due process, 60% of them U.S. citizens.
How was that legal?
The “likely to become a public charge” clause of the 1917 Immigration Act was used to justify these mass removals. If an immigrant who had lived in the United States for three years or less became destitute, then that was grounds for deportation. To remove U.S. citizen children and wives of destitute Mexican heads of households, an outdated law was brought back to life – the doctrine of coverture. Under coverture, the legal identity of women ceased to exist under marriage. Women were understood to belong with their husbands, and children belonged with their mothers. As such, from 1921 to 1944, mixed-status ethnic Mexican families were understood as not belonging to the United States, regardless of their legal status. Many had resided in the country for over a decade.
What most stood out to you in your research?
I did not expect that the mass removals of the interwar period would still have such prolonged consequences 100 years later. Descendants are finding themselves without access to U.S. citizenship, even though they’re entitled to it. Others were robbed of transgenerational wealth, educational and labor opportunities, and political power. When we think about why Mexicans are being deported today, it’s not always what we hear in the news, that people don’t respect the law. In some instances, the law didn’t respect them.
How do you think about what we see on the news?
We have a divided nation, across politics and the economy, and one way to unite a divided nation is often to create a scapegoat. Now, we’re scapegoating not only Mexicans, but all Latino communities. For the simple fact of looking “Latino,” people are again being targeted through mass deportations and raids at worksites and public spaces where they congregate.
It’s the right of the United States to have immigration and deportation laws. If an immigrant has gone through a due process and is deportable, then there’s no reason to raise red flags against the process. The problem arises when due process is ignored. If we allow violations of the law or questionable methods to take place in immigration and deportation processes, then all protections granted to citizens and immigrants under the Constitution can become muddy across the board.
What gives you hope?
In the 1920s and 1930s, people did not react immediately. As a society, we think we have a system of law and order, and violations of such a high degree would not be allowed by the system itself. When that didn’t happen, it was up to banished people to find ways to reclaim their citizenship and eventually come back to the United States, a process that often took decades. Many were never able to return. What gives me hope now is that people are being more proactive in questioning possible violations of civil and human rights in the process of mass deportation. People are more informed.
