The Long History of Demonizing Immigrants: From the Great Depression to Today

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Preamble

Episode: The Long History of Demonizing Immigrants: From the Great Depression to Today

Host: Sharon McMahon
Guest: Dr. Ana Raquel Minian
Date: March 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Preamble with Sharon McMahon explores the long history of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, tracing the patterns and consequences of demonizing immigrants from the Great Depression era through today. Sharon delves into government policies, societal reactions, and the cyclical nature of scapegoating immigrants, then hosts a revealing conversation with Dr. Ana Raquel Minian, author of In the Shadow of Liberty, to unpack the lesser-known history of immigrant detention and discuss how past attitudes continue to shape present-day immigration debates.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Historical Stage: The Great Depression and Mexican Repatriation

• Story of the Garcias (03:46): Sharon opens with a vignette of a Mexican-American family in the 1930s, forcibly repatriated as relief organizations, not official government agencies, pressured Mexican immigrants to "return home," often regardless of their citizenship status.
• Scale of Displacement:
  • Over 2 million Americans became homeless during the Depression, with about 400,000 people of Mexican heritage repatriated—an estimated 60% were actually U.S. citizens.
  • California formally apologized in 2012 for illegal raids on businesses and homes during this time.
• Economic & Social Factors:
  • The scarcity myth—“there wasn’t enough pie to go around”—fueled suspicion that immigrants were taking jobs and resources from Americans.

Quote:

“Americans began to view Mexican immigrants like the Garcias… as a burden. They were taking the jobs, they were taking the charity. There just wasn’t enough pie to go around, people thought.”
— Sharon McMahon (04:30)

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2. The Bracero Program and Imported Colonialism (07:10–12:00)

• Bracero Program Origins:
  • After WWII began, labor shortages led the U.S. and Mexican governments to establish the Bracero Program (1942–1964), letting Mexican workers fill jobs on U.S. farms and railroads.
• Broken Promises & Exploitation:
  • Braceros were promised fair treatment, pay, healthcare, and housing—but often received none.
  • The derogatory term "wetback" emerged, marking a racialized stigma against those who crossed the border outside the program.
• Systemic Discrimination:
  • Segregation and labor abuses echoed Jim Crow systems. Despite reliance on immigrant labor, Americans and employers pushed for crackdowns under growing nativist sentiment.

Quote:

“The US has a long history of not just actively recruiting immigrant workers, but building an economy that depended on them all while actively discriminating against them in a form of imported colonialism.”
— Sharon McMahon (11:30)

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3. Operation Wetback and the Escalation of Deportations (13:30–16:00)

• Policy Shift:
  • In 1954, mounting pressure led to ‘Operation Wetback’—a massive roundup and deportation campaign against undocumented Mexican immigrants.
  • Border Patrol employed tactics of shock and awe, stopping trains, setting up roadblocks, and raiding homes and businesses.
• Human Rights Violations:
  • Deportees—including U.S. citizens and legal residents—were denied due process, often separated from families, and transported deep into remote Mexico under inhumane conditions.
  • At least 88 people died from sunstroke in a single incident; deportees described being treated like cattle.

Quote:

“Border agents invaded private homes in the middle of the night... detained anyone they suspected of being in the country illegally. They did this without due process, any kind of hearing, and without regard for their actual immigration status.”
— Sharon McMahon (15:00)

Notable Comparison:

• A historian likened the deportation ships to those that carried enslaved Africans:

  “…conditions on these ships were akin to ships carrying enslaved Africans across the Atlantic...”
  — Sharon McMahon (15:50)

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4. Then to Now: Social Media, Modern Raids, and Economic Realities (16:10–18:00)

• Contemporary Parallels:
  • Today’s anti-immigrant narratives have moved from pamphlets to viral videos and hashtags, but “the same groups of people” remain the focus.
  • Mass deportations are again part of political platforms, ignoring the continued dependence of the U.S. economy on immigrant labor and the permanent settlement of many undocumented individuals.
  • Financial and social costs outweigh the perceived “solutions.”

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Interview Segment: Dr. Ana Raquel Minian (18:06–43:05)

1. The Roots of U.S. Immigration Policy (19:00–23:50)

• Beyond Ellis Island & the Southern Border:
  • Immigration controls began in the 19th century, originally targeting Chinese migrants (e.g., the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act).
  • Prejudices also selectively excluded Europeans—“convicts, lunatics, public charges”—debunking the myth of universally welcoming America.

Quote:

“The real concern around immigration...centered in the 19th century originally around Chinese migrants...then they were like, well, what about other groups of people?”
— Ana Raquel Minian (19:04)

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2. Detention and “Entry Fiction” (23:09–24:58, 37:04–39:27)

• Ellis Island as a Detention Center:
  • Functions as both gateway and prison; up to 15% of arrivals were detained under suspicion (e.g., unaccompanied women suspected of prostitution).
  • Detainees were held in prison-like conditions.

Quote:

“Ellis island was a prison.”
— Ana Raquel Minian (24:25)

• Legal Doctrines:
  • “Entry fiction” allows the government to hold migrants on U.S. soil but legally consider them as not having entered the country, thus denying them constitutional protections.

Quote:

“People can be held in America…but the entrants held within them are considered to be outside of America.”
— Ana Raquel Minian (37:18)

• Asylum seekers, even on U.S. soil, can be legally treated as if they haven’t entered.

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3. Cyclical Patterns: Labor, Politics, and Policy (26:34–31:15)

• Push-Pull of Mexican Migration:
  • Mexican migration rose with labor needs, fell during economic downturns (e.g., the Depression), and was directly influenced by shifting U.S. policies (Bracero Program, guest worker arrangements).
• Shift in Political Attitudes:
  • 1960s–1970s: U.S. left (labor unions) opposed undocumented immigration, while businesses on the right favored open borders.
  • 1980s: Both parties shift, with Republicans championing “law and order” and calls for a fortified border.

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4. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (31:00–32:21)

• Key Provisions:
  • Fortified the border, granted amnesty to long-term undocumented residents and farm workers, and imposed employer sanctions for knowingly hiring unauthorized migrants.
  • Remains the foundation of current U.S. immigration enforcement.

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5. The Modern Age of Mass Detention (35:40–39:27)

• Origins of Large-Scale Detention:
  • First federal immigrant detention on land in 1892 (Ellis Island, Angel Island).
  • Notably increased after 1980, following the Mariel Boatlift from Cuba—shifting public and policy attitudes to favor detention as deterrence.
• Constitutional Exemptions:
  • Migrants stopped at the border subject to “entry fiction,” limiting rights; only those already inside the country without detection are granted due process.

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6. Contemporary Reflections: What Has Demonizing Immigrants Achieved? (41:07–43:05)

• No Positive Historical Outcomes:
  • Sharon asks if anti-immigrant sentiment ever led to societal improvement.
  • Dr. Minian’s response:

    “I also can't think of a single instance of that happening. Yes, anti immigrant sentiment… has never given the people who demand them the solutions that they want.” (42:06)

  • Anti-immigrant rhetoric increases violence and unrest, distracts from real economic or social issues, and historically never results in the improvements its proponents seek.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cycles of blame:

  “Scapegoating doesn’t allow for [real solutions].”
  — Ana Raquel Minian (42:50)

• On enduring myths:

  “We have this belief that European immigrants were all welcome...but...they started to bar some Europeans from coming. Chinese migrants continued to come. They found ways to do so. Europeans continued to come. But immigration...was no longer as easy.”
  — Ana Raquel Minian (19:43)

• On the effect of anti-immigrant sentiment under Trump:

  “We have seen better times as well... Now we have very much moved away from the idea that detention is not necessary, when in fact, detention is not providing us with any safety. It's not deterring migrants from coming...it is a very dire period at the moment.”
  — Ana Raquel Minian (40:18)

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|---------------------------------------------------------| | 03:46–07:10 | The 1930s Mexican Repatriation | | 07:10–12:00 | Origins & failings of the Bracero Program | | 13:30–16:00 | Operation Wetback: Largest mass deportation | | 18:06–24:58 | Interview: Early immigration restrictions & detention | | 26:34–32:21 | US-Mexico migration cycles, policy shifts, IRCA 1986 | | 35:40–39:27 | Rise of mass detention, “entry fiction” doctrine | | 41:07–43:05 | Historic impact of anti-immigrant sentiment |

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Overall Tone and Takeaways

Sharon’s tone is clear, explanatory, and brisk, confident in demystifying complex history for her audience without losing sight of the humanity at the center of immigration stories. Dr. Minian’s expertise grounds the dialogue in well-researched context, debunking myths and making visible often-ignored aspects of U.S. history.

For Listeners New to the Topic:
You’ll come away with a deeper understanding of the enduring, cyclical nature of America’s relationship with immigrants—how economic forces and political expedience have repeatedly scapegoated newcomers, and how present debates are deeply rooted in past choices. The fundamental message is that demonizing immigrants has never yielded the positive results its proponents claim, but it has repeatedly harmed individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole.

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Transcript

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Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. The agents ascended the narrow staircase of the Garcia home, rapping sharply on the door. Rose's heart rate accelerated. Sweat crept across her palms. She opened the door just enough to seem polite. Times are tough here, the agents said. You'll be better off with your own kind of people in Mexico. People that speak your language. At first, the agents employees of a relief organization made it sound like refusal was an option. It's really for the best. You can bring your things with you, and we've got the train tickets all arranged. Will two weeks be enough time to get your affairs in order? It was the 1930s, and the Garcias were not really being given a choice. They were being forced to repatriate. More on that in a moment. But first, welcome to the Preamble Podcast. This week we're focusing on immigration, not on ICE raids today, but what history teaches us about demonizing immigrants. I'm joined by Ana Raquel Minion, who will tell us about the long invisible history of immigrant detention in the US and its lasting effect on all of us. I'm Sharon McMahon and this is the Preamble Podcast. Now back to our story. Imagine for a moment the sum total of every homeless person currently in the United States. How many people would you estimate are currently unhoused in a population of 330 million? The answer is about 650 thousand. And now imagine the United States. In 1930, the population of the country was about 120 million. The number of people who became homeless as a result of the Great Depression was north of 2 million. Most of the social safety net programs hadn't been developed yet and devastation was rampant. President Hoover was loath to do much about the people who couldn't keep a roof over their heads. And most of the work fell to relief societies, various charities who collected funds from the better off and distributed them to those in need. In part because of this significant economic unrest, Americans began to view Mexican immigrants like the Garcias, mostly seasonal workers, as a burden. They were taking the jobs, they were taking the charity. There just wasn't enough pie to go around, people thought, and the simplest answer was to tell Mexicans they needed to go home. Governments persuaded major employers to their way of thinking, and soon businesses like Ford Motors and US Steel were saying to Mexican laborers, you'd be better off elsewhere. During the Great Depression, the federal government never declared a formal deportation program, so state and local governments who lack the authority to deport began to stoke the fires of repatriation, creating the conditions under which Mexican immigrants would just voluntarily return home. Sometimes this included local governments raiding businesses that employed Mexican immigrants. And soon word and fear began to spread. Historians estimate that around 400,000 people of Mexican heritage were repatriated during the 1930s, and around 60% of them were actually US citizens. In 2012, California formally apologized for its role in the illegal raids on businesses and homes. When the US entered World War II, large numbers of American men were drafted into the military and others left their jobs on farms for better paying defense jobs. Agricultural workers were sorely needed, so Americans once again looked south. Together, the Mexican and American governments created the British Bracero program, which allowed Mexican workers to come to the US on short term employment contracts. The US Government promised the braceros that they would not be discriminated against, that they would make the same as a U. S citizen worker and that they would receive healthcare and housing while in the US The Mexican government went for it despite the fact that they would be exporting thousands of their male workers because they knew that the braceros would send money back to their loved ones in Mexico, which would in turn be better for their economy. The bracero program did not result in fair and equal treatment of Mexican workers. Many employers simply ignored the promises of equal pay, didn't provide housing, or hired undocumented workers outside of the official channels. A Jim Crow like system of segregation emerged, restricting where Mexicans could live, where they could travel, and and which businesses would work with them. More than 200,000 contract laborers were hired every year by businesses in the U.S. but the fact that some employers preferred to hire undocumented quote, unquote wetbacks instead of participating in the more highly regulated bracero program, embarrassed immigration and naturalization services. Wetback is a derogatory name that referred to people who crossed the Rio Grande river to come to the United States. I am only using it here because that is what it was called at the time. The bracero program continued for more than 20 years. So the US has a long history of not just actively recruiting immigrant workers, but building an economy that depended on them all while actively discriminating against them in a form of imported colonialism. After the war ended and gis returned home to find many of their jobs occupied by Mexican immigrants and American women who no longer wished to stay at home, pressure increased on the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to do something about wetbacks. How could they increase participation in the bracero program and decrease the hiring of undocumented migrants? If employers were deprived of access to undocumented immigrants, they would by necessity need to participate in the bracero program. Immigration officials reasoned it wasn't difficult to convince some Americans that immigrant labor was detrimental to the country despite actually needing it to function. A pamphlet called what Price Wetbacks? Distributed in Texas by the Texas Federation of Labor and the American GI Forum of Texas, shows exactly how many Americans viewed Mexican laborers. If this was the news that the hard working men and former GIs in your community were passing out, it's not difficult to imagine why public resentment increased. Tuberculosis, crime. Wetbacks, Americans were told, were mere peasants. They readily accepted exploitation, the pamphlet said. They're fine with the starvation wages, the diarrhea, and the unsanitary conditions they are more than willing to suffer. And so many Americans believed wetbacks might as well go ahead and suffer. Back in Mexico, by the summer of 1954, action on Native labor displacement came in the form of operation wetback. The head of border patrol, harlan carter, said that wetback would be the, quote, biggest driver against illegal aliens in u. S. History. Shock and awe became the name of the game as 750 immigration officials faced off against the, quote, hordes of aliens facing us across the border. Immigration officials stopped, trained, and set up roadblocks, Using a strategy they called blocking it off and mopping it up. They relied on massive publicity to convey a show of force far beyond their actual capabilities, holding up traffic and then putting people in the backs of trucks. Mop ups later extended to northern cities like chicago. Border agents invaded private homes in the middle of the night, demanded identification from people who looked like they might be mexican, showed up at restaurants and mexican businesses, and detained anyone they suspected of being in the country illegally. They did this without due process, any kind of hearing, and without regard for their actual immigration status. Sometimes people who were seized during operation wetback were not permitted to even let their family know where they were going or what had happened to them. They simply disappeared. Throughout the operation, border agents sought to amp up the number of deportations they were carrying out in an effort to scare people into leaving voluntarily. People were herded onto planes, trucks, and preferably boats and then carried as deep into mexico as possible without regard for anyone's community of origin. Deportees, nearly one quarter of them, were sent via ship across the gulf of mexico and to the yucatan peninsula. One prominent historian who studied this time period said that conditions on these ships were akin to ships carrying enslaved africans across the atlantic, and one member of congress referred to them as, quote, hell ships. People were unceremoniously dumped off in remote areas of Mexico into the scorching desert where temperatures reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit. They were given no food, water, or means to communicate. In one single incident, at least 88 people died from sunstroke. One mexican labor leader said that deportees were, quote, brought into mexico like cows on trucks. The US government estimates around 1.3 million people were deported in just a handful of months. But historians say this is overstated. For starters, some of these people were likely deported more than once. So the number does not represent unique individuals. It also includes US Citizens and legal residents who should not have been subject to deportation. Historians put the actual number of deportees somewhere in the range of 300,000 to 800,000 people. Regardless of the precise number, two important points emerge. The first is that undocumented immigration from mexico during the bracero program was largely transitory in nature. Meaning people came to the US to seek seasonal work and then a few months later, they returned home the following year. They often did it again. Undocumented immigrants often remained in the United States for short periods of time. Today, many undocumented immigrants have been living and working in the United States for years, some for decades. They have moved here permanently, given birth to citizen children, and in the case of approximately 800,000 dreamers, were brought here by their parents as children and have little memory of any other home. And secondly, Operation Wetback did not solve illegal immigration. It killed people. It deprived them of their human and civil rights, but it did not fix the underlying motivators that speak to why people didn't want to participate in the Bracero program or other legal means of entry. And those underlying structural issues, the imported colonialism, the pull of the US Economy that depended on cheap labor, the push of civil unrest, wars, natural disasters, and the lack of opportunity in their home country. History shows us that mass deportations did little to address those issues. What does this mean for today? Echoes of the past ring especially loudly in this political moment. People no longer pass out pamphlets about quote unquote wetbacks, but they post about the same groups of people on social media. Videos of people nearly drowning in the Rio Grande or children getting trapped in razor wire now draw laughing emojis and reposts in the tens of thousands. Hashtags like deportation now trend and politicians attach their political success to a nativist mindset that is stoked by social media and viral moments. What these tragic viral moments fail to account for are not just the human costs, but the financial ones. Not just the cost to taxpayers in the form of the multi billion dollar price tag needed to carry out mass deportations, but the cost in the form of higher prices in nearly every sector of the economy. Operation Wetback ended nearly as abruptly as it began. Having declared it a success, border agents quietly repurposed the trucks and planes and for the past 70 years had not undertaken a similar effort. But of course, that's all changed now. When we come back, I'll speak with Ana Raquel Minion about the history of immigrant detention in the United States. Running a business is hard enough. Why make it harder with dozens of disconnected apps? I know how challenging it is to manage a tech stack. 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[B]

Thank you so much for inviting me.

[A]

I would love to start with just some really foundational questions because people tend to think that immigration has two time phases in the United States. Number one, Ellis Island. Number two, people entering the United States illegally from Mexico. Those are the two things that I'm sure you're very familiar, like these two sort of stereotypes people have when it comes to immigration. And of course, that is not the case. Of course, that's not actually true. But take us back to the 19th century, when immigration really began to change the face of America in huge ways. I would love to hear more about what was immigration like during my favorite historic time period back in the day? What was it like back in the day of, let's say, mid 19th century?

[B]

So what's interesting about back in the day and the cases that you brought up is that nowadays we consider unauthorized migration, like you said, to be very much linked to the entrance of Mexican, Central Americans and others across the US Mexico border. But the real concern around immigration and immigrants who are coming to the United States centered in the 19th century originally around Chinese migrants. There were a lot of laws that tried to ban Chinese migrants from coming, the best known and most influential being the 1882 Chinese Exclusion act that said that basically most Chinese people couldn't come to the United States. On the other hand, immigration from Europe was also happening at very, very high rates. And we have this belief that European immigrants were all welcome. And while they were much more welcome indeed than Chinese migrants, as soon as American legislators realized, hey, we don't want Chinese people here, then they were like, well, what about other groups of people? We also don't want convicts. We also don't want. And these were their words, lunatics. And so they started to bar some Europeans from coming. Chinese migrants continued to come. They found ways to do so. Europeans continued to come. But immigration starting in the 19th century was no longer as easy. People could no longer come as easily as they had previously.

[A]

What was the driving force behind the exclusion of Chinese immigrants? I mean, we know that a lot of it was racism, but it's not like they were going to the newspaper and being like, well, because I'm a racist, I'm going to pass this law that makes it so that people of Asian descent can't come here. What reason were they actually giving to the American public?

[B]

That's absolutely right. And I think actually when we talk about racism and say, like, oh, that's racist, it's such an easy way to dismiss someone and not to understand what's happening, and so to not actually be able to change that logic because you don't fully understand it. So the logic behind Chinese exclusion at the time was that there was a big recession in California in the 1870s. Chinese people were migrating to California in huge numbers. So there was already concern that Chinese people looked differently, they had different costumes, you know, that they perhaps smoked opium, that they were lazy. But primarily, it became an economic argument if Chinese workers are taking our jobs.

[A]

So the arguments they were making in public were primarily economic, that we can't let this group of people, you know, air quotes these people, come over here and take our jobs, with the subtext being that the jobs belong to us and those people are taking the jobs that should belong to us. Am I understanding that correctly?

[B]

Absolutely, that's correct.

[A]

You mentioned that Starting in the mid 19th century, it began to become more difficult to come to the United States, even for some European groups. Tell us more about that. Because I think there's this idea that, like, if you could get the money for a ticket, you just make your way on down to the dock and you can get on the boat, and then you can come here. And, I mean, that was probably true for a lot of people. But what was it actually like in

[B]

practice for the vast majority of people, it was true. If you came from Europe, if you came from China, it became increasingly hard, as I said. But once legislators realized that, look, we don't have to only stop Chinese people. We can stop other folks from coming into the country. Like, we don't want people who could engage in prostitution. We don't want people who will become a public charge, meaning that they would not be able to pay their way, as legislators believe should be happening for immigrants. All these people were no longer wanted, and they decided that they could be excluded from entrance.

[A]

What exactly was the process for people who arrived but were not going to be admitted?

[B]

Until 1891, federal immigrant detention on land was not legal. So people who arrived and did not have the clearance to enter the country could not be held on land by the federal statutes. They had to be held on the vessels on which they arrived. So, for example, you came on a vessel, immigration officials would enter the vessels, would check if you were allowed to enter, and if they didn't, they were supposed to be deported. There were problems with the system. The ships often had to depart right before immigration officials.

[A]

Sure, we'll wait here indefinitely.

[B]

Exactly. So in 1891, Congress passed a law that said, okay, yes, we can hold immigrants while we Determine whether they can stay or not on land. And the following year, Ellis island opened up. We know of Ellis island as this gateway to America.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But in fact, it also served as a detention center, as a place where immigrants were to be held while immigration officials determined their right to enter or not. Yeah.

[A]

You have a whole chapter in your book called Ellis island was a Prison.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

We associate Ellis island with a Statue of Liberty. You know, like, that's the American viewpoint of it of, like, the people would sail into New York harbor and they'd see the Statue of Liberty and the orchestra would swell in the background, you know, like the. With the violins playing of, like, we've made it. It's been an arduous journey. The promised land is finally here. The streets are paved with gold. It's the land of opportunity. And for some people, that is probably what happened. But for others, Ellis island was a prison. Like, explain. Make it make sense.

[B]

So, like you said, for the vast majority of people, they came, they spend a day in Ellis Island. It was an arduous day, full of medical checkups, legal checkups, and others. And then they entered and were in New York. That was not the case for at times up to 15% of people where they arrived. And government officials, like I said, were not fully sure whether those people had the right to enter the country under the existing exclusion laws. So by this time, it wasn't just Chinese people. There were a lot of categories of people who were not allowed into the United States. So, for example, women. If women came by themselves, officials immediately suspected that they might either engage in prostitution or that they would not be able to pay their own way, that they would become a public charge. So they would detain them in Ellis island until the women could prove that a man that was already in the United States or a family that was already in the United States would take care of them. While this investigation happened, the women would be kept in Ellis Island. Conditions in Ellis island for those detained there very much resembled a prison. People were not allowed to leave the building. Oftentimes the windows were barred. They were pretty awful.

[A]

I want to get a little bit more into what immigration is like today vis a vis the past. Can you tell us a little bit more about how the history of immigration from Mexico and Central America has evolved over time?

[B]

Mexican migration to the United States began in the late 19th century. At the time, there were no laws that barred Mexicans from coming into the United States. Then migration increased until the 1930s. There was actually a net outflow of Mexican migrants. Mexicans were deported in massive numbers during the Great Depression.

[A]

Why?

[B]

There was massive unemployment. And the government blamed migrants, as it has done in more recent years, for that unemployment. They also were blamed for using the existing welfare resources of America. So when a Mexican immigrant came, no matter how long they had lived in the country, and asked for money, the welfare organization would call immigration officials to deport them. At the same time, many Mexicans left simply because they couldn't find jobs and because the treatment that they received became much worse as a result of the Depression. Mexicans only returned to America in 1942, when they were actually recruited by the US government. When the Second World War breaks out, America realizes, oh, no, now we need workers. Let's bring Mexicans. So they create this bilateral agreement with the United States called the Bracero program, by which Mexicans could come for short periods of time, work in the United States, and then return to Mexico. A guest worker program. And with that, Mexican migration increased dramatically until 1964, when the Bracero program ends.

[A]

Tell me more about what happened then. When people who were accustomed to coming via this program, they were accustomed to being guest workers, come and work on a farm or wherever they were going to work, and then they would return home when the season was over, they were accustomed to this is how they fed their families. And then that program ends, and we began seeing an increase in unauthorized border crossings. What was the United States's response, you know, beginning in the 1960s and sort of moving forward into the latter half of the 20th century?

[B]

At first, the US government turns a blind eye to it. Mexicans constituted cheap labor. Farmers very much welcomed them. They were necessary for agriculture. In the 1980s, this begins to change. When Reagan was governor of California, he was very much in favor of unauthorized migrants and turned a blind eye and didn't do much. But once he became president, he came with this slogan of law and order. And suddenly he couldn't just have, you know, undocumented migrants come in such large numbers and still claim to be the government of law and order. At the same time, since 1972 in Congress, there had been debates about how to stop unauthorized migrants with groups that we traditionally associate with being from the left. It was these groups that were anti immigrant, and they were pressuring Congress to say, hey, we need to stop undocumented migration were groups that we traditionally associate more with the right employers. They were saying, like, no, no, let's keep an open border and let them come in. So kind of the opposite of what we see now in terms of Left and right.

[A]

Just so I understand. In the 60s and 70s, the left was primarily in opposition to undocumented immigration, in part because of their affiliation with organized labor in the United States, whereas the right did not have that affiliation with the organized labor. They tended to be more associated with the large businesses, the large companies that benefited from the inexpensive labor costs of undocumented workers. But then what I'm hearing you say is beginning in the 1980s, when we began to implement these sort of quote, unquote law and order policies that were very popular under a very popular president, that's when we begin to see things start to shift.

[B]

Exactly. Both the left and the right start to shift. So the position of labor unions and of Mexican American organizations changes dramatically. But meanwhile, the right sort of really did adopt this ideology of law and order and changed its position, you know, to argue for a more fortified US Mexico border.

[A]

What was the federal response then? Beginning towards the, you know, very tail end of the 20th century. What is the federal response to, you know, this desire to sort of clamp down on the US Mexican border? What does the United States do?

[B]

By 1986, they pass a major bill that continues to be the most important law concerning unauthorized migration today. It was called the Immigration Reform and Control Act. And it basically did a couple of things. First, it said that the border should be much more fortified, so it mandated Congress to direct more resources to border control. Second, it said that unauthorized migrants who already lived in the United States and who had been living in the United States for more than five years, or farm workers who had been working in farms for over 90 days could legalize their status. This, of course, was to satisfy Mexican American organizations while at the same time keeping employers content. Because the part that didn't keep employers content is the third part of the bill, which was, oh, we're also going to impose employer sanctions, meaning employer penalties, on employers who knowingly hire unauthorized migrants.

[A]

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Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. I'm back now with Ana Raquel Minion. When did the United States really began mass detention of undocumented migrants? Because it doesn't sound like that has been a US Policy for all that long.

[B]

It depends really what you consider as mass detentions. The federal immigrant detention System begins in 1892 with the opening of Ellis Island. At the same time in the West Coast Chinese immigrants who continued to come were being held in very large numbers. When we can say we see a dramatic increase, however, is after 1980. So in 1980, more than 124,000 Cubans came to the United States all at once. In that summer, Castro from Cuba announced, you know what? We sent criminals and all of those people who are coming. So Americans became very scared and anti immigrant sentiments increased dramatically. So the government came to believe, you know what? We need to ensure that this does not happen again. That movement of people from Cuba to the United States is called the Mariel Boat Lift. American policymakers said, we don't want another Mariel Boat Lift. And one of the ways that they were going to ensure that this did not happen again was through detention. It was this idea, you know what? If we imprison the people who are coming, we will deter future migrants from wanting to set sail just like these migrants.

[A]

Did you have a chapter in your book called the Constitution does not apply. In what context does the Constitution not apply to people who are migrants in the United States?

[B]

So when Congress allowed detention to occur on land, part of what they said also was, sure, we can now hold people who are arriving in America proper, but let's imagine legally that they're not here. So basically, this means people can be held in America in detention centers anywhere in the United States, in Illinois, for example. But the entrance held within them are considered to be outside of America, to never have entered.

[A]

How do they make that work in their minds? If you're in Illinois, how does that work that you aren't in America?

[B]

It's what's called the entry fiction. It's just a figment of our imagination. We imagine that the people are not here.

[A]

That seems like a great public policy.

[B]

It's interesting. It's a law that passed in 1891, but that continues to have a hold on how we treat those who are apprehended at the border to this day.

[A]

How do we know who is subject to this entry fiction doctrine versus people who are in the United States who do have constitutional rights to whom the Constitution does apply? What is the logic that the United States government uses to separate people into those categories where they are stopped?

[B]

So to not have rights to be considered, quote unquote, an entrant, you have to have been stopped at the border. Then you are imagined to never have entered the United States. So an asylum seeker comes to America. People who seek asylum have a right to seek asylum so they can appear at a processing center, let's say, in Laredo they asked for asylum? Well, they're still considered not to have entered, even if they're already in the US Side of the border. And so those folks are subject to the entry fiction. Now, if someone crosses the border, manages not to be apprehended, reaches la, for example, and then is apprehended and detained, they do have rights. They're considered unauthorized migrants. They're not considered entrants.

[A]

I would love to hear you compare where the United States is right now in terms of anti immigrant sentiment, in terms of the way our laws are currently structured. Can you compare where we are to where we were in the past?

[B]

It's hard to say which period was worse and which one is better. But we do know that there are periods where it's been partitioned particularly hard to be an immigrant. The 1930s, like I said, massive expulsions, massive deportations. The period of Chinese exclusion was particularly hard. So it really has varied. But President Trump, the rhetoric that he used, increased anti immigrant sentiment to levels that we had not seen before his presidency in decades. We have seen better times as well. If we think about detention, there have been periods from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, for instance, where the government actively spoke against immigrant detention and tried to move away from it, where the Supreme Court said, look, this is what enlightenment looks like. These are the qualities of an enlightened civilization. That was a quote to not detain people. Now we have very much moved away from the idea that detention is not necessary, when in fact, detention is not providing us with any safety. It's not deterring migrants from coming. You know, people have still kept on coming. It is a very dire period at the moment.

[A]

Can we point to a time in history when anti immigrant sentiment has led us to a better place? Can you point to a time when something, you know, really positive has occurred as a result of the inflammation of anti immigrant sentiment? Because it seems to me, and I'm ready to be corrected, that has always led us to a place of more political violence. It's always led us to a place of increased hate groups. It's always led us to a place of a civil and economic unrest because the United States economy, like it or not, whatever the words coming out of somebody's mouth is, the United States economy is dependent on immigrants. It was built on immigrant labor, and it remains dependent on immigrant labor. And I'm just curious if I'm missing something. Is there a time where we're like, you know what? It was really good that we did that thing.

[B]

I've studied immigration now for 20 years. I also can't think of a single instance of that happening. Yes, anti immigrant sentiment has, like you said, increased violence made us much more angry as a country separated us. It has definitely made the lives of immigrants harder. But what's surprising is that it has never given the people who demand them the solutions that they want. When we blame immigrants for violence, when it's known that migrants are actually much less violent, part of what it does is it doesn't allow us to tackle the actual problems that we have as a society. It doesn't allow us to tackle Covid the way it should be tackled. It doesn't allow us to tackle unemployment the way it should be tackled. So not only does it make America worse because of this violence that it creates, but also because it doesn't allow us to come up with proper solutions to our problems. Scapegoating doesn't allow for that.

[A]

Thanks to Ana Raquel Minion. You can get her book in the Shadow [e-mail] or wherever you get your books. And be sure to read our weekly magazine at the preamble.com, it's free. Join hundreds of thousands of readers who still believe understanding is an act of hope. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buckparks and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. Thanks for listening.