How can you return to a home you’ve never set foot in?

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A Million Mexicans

Between 1929 and 1936 more than 35,000 people were “repatriated” from Los Angeles to Mexico as part of a campaign to remove workers who were competing with white Americans for jobs. The majority of those coerced into Mexican repatriation were American-born U.S. citizens who had never even visited the home they were now “returning” to. Across the U.S., more than one million people of Mexican descent were returned to Mexico during the 1930s.

Jobs for ‘Real Americans’

Aliens who are deportable will save themselves trouble and expense, by arranging their departure at once.
– Los Angeles Illustrated Daily, January 26, 1931

On October 24, 1929, the United States crashed into the Great Depression. Unemployment skyrocketed and the Hoover Administration quickly targeted immigrants as the scapegoats for a tanked economy. Hoover endorsed policies to restrict immigration, and backed efforts to expel migrant families living in the U.S. Mexicans were the focus of these efforts, in part because they were the easiest to remove.

La Placita Raid

On the afternoon of February 26, 1931, the Los Angeles Police Department carried out one of the first public mass immigration raids in U.S. history. Cordoning off a busy area in downtown Los Angeles known as La Placita, immigration agents detained all 400 people in the square, demanding to see their identity papers. Families on the other side of the barricades ran to hide themselves in basements. While only a dozen people were eventually deported as a result of the raid, the Mexican American community was terrorized. Many started making their own plans to leave.

Voluntary Repatriation?

Many Angelenos were outraged at reports of public immigration raids. A government-appointed commission was equally scathing about the Hoover deportations. The result was a tactical shift away from highly visible raids towards coercing Mexican migrants to “voluntarily” return to Mexico. Los Angeles quickly became the epicenter of the repatriation movement.

The apprehension and examination of supposed aliens are often characterized by methods that are unconstitutional, tyrannic, and oppressive. Many persons are permanently separated from their American families with results that violate the plainest dictates of humanity.
- Wickersham Report, 1931

Or Coerced Return?

The L.A. County Welfare Office recruited a special group of employees to encourage acceptance of repatriation. They knocked on the doors of Mexican families receiving aid, informing them that their access to public assistance would be cut off. Instead of welfare, they offered train tickets back to Mexico, insisting this was the only help available, even if the children were American citizens.
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A Lasting Trauma

More than a million people of Mexican descent were “repatriated” in the 1930s. The majority of those coerced into leaving the U.S. were American citizens—the children of Mexican migrants. Most felt no connection to Mexico as home, and many did not speak fluent Spanish. Though some people were later able to return to the U.S., others were permanently denied re-entry.