Repatriation

Rather than supervise mass formal arrests and deportations, the Federal government’s plan shifted towards supporting city and state governments’ in coercing Mexican migrants to “voluntarily” return to Mexico. As the city with the largest population of Mexicans outside of Mexico, Los Angeles became the hotbed of the repatriation movement. 

Similar to the media spectacle created by the anticipated raids, rumors and scare tactics were launched against Mexican places of business to drive people out of the country. Barrio grocery stores, for example, were targets of rumors that only US citizens would be allowed to cut or butcher meat. But, the efforts to remove Mexicans from the United States, particularly in Los Angeles, relied not only on scare tactics but on co-opting citizens into immigration policing and enforcement. 

The LA County Welfare Office recruited a special group of employees—based on their Spanish language abilities and knowledge of labor and economic situations in California and Mexico—to encourage acceptance of repatriation. They knocked on door after door of Mexican families receiving aid, informing them that their access to public assistance would be cut off. Instead of welfare, they offered tickets back to Mexico.

Even Mexicans not on relief were pressured into accepting repatriation offers. Hospital orderlies, for instance, were asked to round up Mexican patients from local hospitals and bring them, via stretchers, to trucks that would transport them over the border. Mentally ill patients were no exception: Petra Sanchez Rocha was forced to accept repatriation after suffering a nervous breakdown. The staff at Los Angeles County Mental Health Center convinced her family that “her recovery could only be achieved in Mexico.” In some instances, coverage of burial costs were an incentive to return home, and there are accounts of gravely ill patients barely clinging to life before they reached their final destination in Mexico. 

The first official repatriation train from Los Angeles, organized by the county Welfare Department, left on March 23rd, 1931. Local groups tried to make the departure as pleasant and festive as possible: church groups distributed toys to children; Occidental college students recited poems and performed dances; mariachis serenaded the repatriates. But, attempts to inject any sense of festivity into the situation was useless. 

The overwhelming tone of the repatriados’ departure was somber, if not traumatic: men were quiet and pensive, while women and children cried; families said tearful goodbyes to loved ones; older children begged their parents to stay.  In an oral history taken years later, Reverend Alan Hunter recalled:

“We had a feeling of it being totally unjust. We had a feeling – not of helplessness, exactly. All I remember is the vivid feeling of walking up one aisle of the train, seeing these people, and the feeling of hopelessness, but at least you were glad you were a human being, you could smile and let them know you cared. Maybe we cried. I know some people did. I’m a little ashamed I wasn’t more involved.”

Between 1929 and 1936, it is estimated that one-third of the Mexican population of Los Angeles – around 35,000 people – were “repatriated.” Nationally, the number of repatriates is estimated to be around one million. Mexican “Repatriation” in the 1930s violated a number of Constitutional provisions that apply equally to non-citizens, specifically 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure and 14th Amendment guarantees of due process. More egregious still is the fact that an estimated 60% of those who were coerced into a “repatriation” to Mexico were American-born US citizens (a smaller number – around 2% – were naturalized Americans). These Americans were subsequently often denied reentry to the US unless they could present birth certificates or other documents proving citizenship.