Latinos, Race, and Immigration: Historicizing the Postville, Iowa Raid of May 2008 i
By Jerry Garcia
…this is the largest operation of its type ever in Iowa….ICE is committed to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws in the workplace to maintain the integrity of the immigration system. We carry out that obligation in a fair and responsible manner, ensuring humanitarian needs are taken into consideration.
Comments by Matt M. Dummermuth, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa and Claude
Arnold, ICE Special Agent in Charge, May 12, 2008 ii
We meet today under very trying circumstances. The past few months have witnessed an ever intensified campaign on the part of the American reaction to wipe out the liberties and civil rights of the American people…We the Mexican people have a particular interest in this conference. We have long been the victims on a mass scale, of deportations, we have long been denied our civil, economic and political rights.
Comments by Alfredo C. Montoya, Presidente Associacion Nacional Mexicana-Americana, November 3,
1951.
iii
The threat of deportation has served as a very effective weapon to keep Mexican people as whole in bondage.
Isabel Gonzalez, Committee to Organize the Mexican People, 1947.
iv
The Raid
At 10:00 a.m. on May 12, 2008 under the jurisdiction of the Department of Home
Land Security (DHS), 900 federal agents infiltrated, rounded up, and cleansed Postville,
Iowa (population 2400) of its Latino community.
v
The coordination and execution of this military-style raid was achieved with the cooperation of sixteen agencies from federal, state, and local law enforcement. Meeting for months in secrecy, the agencies designed and unleashed the largest single-site raid against immigrant workers up to that point in gringolandia and the largest in Iowa’s history.
vi To ensure a high body count, the sweep was planned for the early morning hours and was executed with stealth and precision.
Indeed, the magnitude and intensity of this type of operation is normally reserved for suspected terrorists, hardened violent criminals, and general high value targets. The focus of this operation were mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters allegedly not carrying
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papeles (papers) showing legal residency in the U.S. and other trumped-up charges.
vii
In order to obtain two search warrants at the facility, federal prosecutors convinced a judge that the plant housed a methamphetamine laboratory and that workers carried weapons to the plant.
viii
Although this military-style assault resulted in no casualties, the collateral damage was significant. Prior to this raid Latinos represented 75 percent of the workforce at Agriprocessors Inc., and one-third of the overall population in Postville, fifty percent of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, and one-third of the school district.
ix
The government investigation of Agripocessors, the Kosher meatpacking plant where the immigrants were employed, began approximately a year before the raid, with logistical preparations and reconnoitering of the plant starting as early as December 2007.
It was determined that the workers could be rounded up, detained, and processed at the
National Cattle Congress compound. At the compound two pavilions, twenty-three quickly erected mobile trailers, and dance halls served as the command center, detention facility, and makeshift courts.
x
Using a veil of secrecy and in their zeal to, as one agent put it, “do the will of the people,” temporary courts were created to process nearly 400 individuals within 72 hours. Based on the writ of habeas corpus the government had this limited period after the raid to either charge or release the prisoners. The escalation of the war on immigrants in the U.S. has again reached a level where the due process of the law can be bent and circumvented to suit the needs of a system that created the need for immigrant labor.
xi
In this particular case, it appears that the federal government denied the right of the accused from seeking proper representation as many of the defendants were forced into speedy plea agreements possibly violating their fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth amendment rights.
xii
It is not by accident that Iowa became the epicenter for this
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war. Indeed, the Postville raid arguably became the pilot project for further Immigration,
Control, and Enforcement (ICE) assaults.
xiii
The removal of Mexicans and Latinos or their cleansing has occurred on a number of occasions since their forced incorporation into the U.S. and the Postville raid represents the latest in a pattern stretching back to the nineteenth century. This paper, however, will focus on two periods. The first is the decade of the 1950s to argue that the anti-communist hysteria of this era and the subsequent legislation created a climate of fear that eventually manifested into the largest round up of Mexican immigrants in U.S. history. The second is the period from the early 1990s to the present. In this second period the so-called “war on terror” has produced similar legislation from the 1950s, which many have interpreted as unlawful and an attack on the due process of the law.
And, like the 1950s, a surge in nativism evolved into anti-immigrant legislation primarily directed at Mexicans.
Although an anti-immigrant climate in the U.S. existed long before the September
11 attacks, this paper argues that the aftermath of those attacks has allowed the U.S. government to escalate its war on immigrants and encouraged a range of groups and organizations to rain havoc on the public discourse surrounding immigration. First,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its various subsidiaries, such as ICE and
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with an estimated FY 2009 budget of approximately 50 billion dollars, has contributed to the victimization of the immigrant populations.
xiv
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was eliminated and its responsibilities fell under the jurisdiction of DHS. This mega-agency, primarily charged with protecting the homeland from terrorists, has justified its existence not by
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investigating, arresting, and charging terrorists, but rather, immigrants and their families.
Second, a fear created, invented, and promoted by anti-immigrant interest groups and the
George W. Bush Administration has attempted to justify the surveillance of citizens and non-citizens within the U.S. This fear, exploited by government agencies such as ICE,
CBP, and civilian vigilante groups the likes of the Minutemen, far-right pundits such as
Patrick Buchanan, and mainstream scholars that use their positions to give legitimacy to the anti-immigrant rhetoric.
xv The coalescing of these groups fostered public support and mobilized local communities for the military style assaults on immigrants and expanded the anti-immigrant base, which eventually morphed immigrants and terrorists into a singularity producing domestic public enemy number one, Mexican immigrants. Indeed, the Bush administration’s illegal and unconstitutional response to the September 11 attacks required an American public in a state of panic in order for the government to be given a carte blanche mandate to safeguard the homeland. By and large, these tactics have worked. There has been an overwhelming support for the enforcement first strategy; hence a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexican border, but there has been little concern over the military style raids.
xvi
Under this pretext, immigrants have been enveloped within the sweeping charge given to DHS to protect the homeland and very little differentiation has been made between immigrants and terrorists.
Third, as in the past, in order to create a sense of undesirability towards a particular group they first must be reconfigured as the other and de-humanized so when the endgame nears the general public will react with antipathy and be unwilling to come to their aid. The implementation of a pogrom of ethnic cleansing can only be achieved with the willing participation of the general population and their complicity is crucial, not
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just to justify the actions, but to place a degree of moral authority on the means to that end. For Mexicans this has vacillated between otherness , de-humanization, and displays of the spectacle. By spectacle I mean immigrants, generally invisible in everyday life, become the main attraction for the public to gawk act when apprehended and paraded like caged animals as if at Roman games. Lastly, ordinary American citizens are complicit in their animus towards Mexican and Latino immigrants and their silence against the violation of civil liberties and due process supposedly afforded to all who fall under U.S. jurisprudence, even undocumented immigrants. The Postville raid of May 2008 illustrated the terror inflicted by the machine developed to combat an illusive enemy, principally those who attacked the U.S. on September 11, but re-directed towards immigrants.
The epigraphs used at the beginning of this paper illustrate the historical pattern of reactionary immigration legislation, the maltreatment of Mexicans and Latinos, and the resistance to such oppressive legislation and tactics. The current public debate and the government’s response to immigration as a result of September 11 continues the historical pattern of draconian measures meted out against an elusive enemy, in this case, terrorist, but nearly sixty years ago the enemy within were labeled communists. And like the 1950s, a domestic front on the war on terror was opened against any entity resembling those who attacked America whether imaginary or real. Groups and individuals who challenged the veracity of the government’s response and methods are considered un-
American and their loyalty suspect. However, the panic created by the September 11 attacks and the public’s psychological need for protection allowed the U.S. Government to pass un-democratic and unconstitutional legislation similar, but wider in scope, than
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the legislation passed in 1950s. In this manner, there was an unspoken collusion between the public and the government that allowed and unleashed an instrument of destruction.
Against this backdrop immigrants came to represent the phantom terrorist within the state and immigration signified the laboratory for DHS to field test ICE and CBP.
Furthermore, long before September 11, a large section of the American public viewed immigrants as a menace and threat the country, labeled Mexicans who answered the public’s call for work as criminal because they arrived without documentation, and the public resisted little as additional legislation was enacted whittling away guaranteed protections under the constitution. By the early twenty-first century, the American middle-class suffered from a rapid degradation of its position and deflected its insecurities on those vulnerable and the least likely to defend themselves, undocumented immigrants.
Rather than address the central issues as to why the position of the American middle-class has diminished, such as corporate greed and globalization, it became convenient and nationalistic to attack immigrants as the cause rather than a symptom of a condition created by the American consumer and government. Indeed, the U.S.
Government and the American public rewarded corporate America in late 2008 and 2009 for its greed and mismanagement with the largest bailouts in American history. In a classic form of misdirection and cooperation, the general public, the media and Corporate
America portrayed immigrants as the central reason for declining wages, declining health care, deterioration of schools and neighborhoods, and general quality of life.
xvii
In my courses on immigration I often ask students why Mexican Americans and
Mexican immigrants, over the long duree of the last 160 years, have been singled out and
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described as the “Mexican problem,” the “Mexican menace,” the “wetback problem,” and as “illegal aliens (translation “wetbacks”)? These inquisitive and bright students come up with the usual laundry list previously mentioned developed to disguise the true sentiments towards Mexican immigration. In the end, the students conclude that the one commonality that has remained constant is a cultural animus and fear of Mexicans, and,
Latinos in general. I must agree with this conclusion. The Mexican presence in the U.S. reminds the American public that conquest and invasion comes with consequences and that the American Empire was forged under these circumstances. As the Latino population reached 40 million and then 45 million by the early twenty-first century, the
American public has been reluctant to recognize this demographic shift and how it shaped the past twenty-five years and changed all levels of U.S. society. Perhaps one can argue that recognition has been bestowed through various forms of resistance to the
Mexicanization and Latinization of the U.S. For example, Mexican immigrants have been particularly attacked because of sentiments shared by many including mainstream intellectuals such as Samuel P. Huntington who wrote in, Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity , “No other immigrant group in American history has asserted or has been able to assert a historical claim to American territory. Mexicans and
Mexican-Americans can and do make a claim.” xviii
Thus, an American public bombarded with images of immigrants surreptitiously entering the U.S. remain in a constant state of suspicious alertness and gripped by a fear of a reconquista, as so many like to put it. A
Mexican take over of the Southwest has remained embedded in the psyche of the
American people ever since Mexico’s northern territory was conquered. There is validity in Huntington’s own assertion, but this type of rhetoric portrays Mexican immigrants as
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“fifth column” waiting to undermine the U.S. Instead, Mexicans, like all other immigrants to the U.S. have sought economic opportunities or family reunification. More importantly, since September 11 the rhetoric and discourse on immigration has reached extreme and vitriolic levels where some have advocated for another 1950s “Operation
Wetback,” while others have urged taking more extreme measures with violence on the rise against immigrants.
xix
Cleansing Mexicans: The Historical Pattern
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ethnic cleansing is when persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, and killing occurs to an ethnic minority by a majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity.
The twenty-first century ushered in two important developments in regards to
Latinos. First, the United States experienced what many called the “Latin” explosion in the form of music, dance, film, art, literature, and population. The demographic shift that began decades earlier was confirmed by the 2000 U.S. Census and 2006 Census updates illustrating a Latino diaspora that had moved well beyond its traditional zones of the
American Southwest, Miami, Chicago, and New York and into all regions of the country.
Nationally, the Mexican population had increased 54 percent, and in some areas, almost four times that amount.
xx
This created a conundrum where on the one hand this so-called explosion provided a sense of visibility to all Latinos, but on the other hand, created a false impression that Mexicans and Latinos are new arrivals, just coming onto to the scene. Historically, Mexicans are one of the oldest ethnic groups in the U.S.
Simultaneously and pervading the public consciousness was how to interpret the growth of the Mexican and Latino diaspora and what it represented. A large portion of the public interpreted this growth as a threat to the European based U.S. society, while others
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viewed Latinos as parasites seeking to exploit what little remained of the social welfare system. The end result has been a sense of panic and fear that has reverberated with those inclined to see the removal of Latinos. This fear, seen on multiple levels, but increasingly resulted in disparaging images and violent attacks against Latinos, that often were directly and indirectly supported by scholars and politicians who pandered to hysteria and those who feared change.
Two examples illustrate this point. Mentioned earlier was the 2005 publication of
Samuel Huntington’s
Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity , which mislead the pubic in regards to Latinos in the U.S. and those recently arrived from
Latin America. Huntington argued that “Hispanics” are the single greatest threat to the
American identity based on a false assumption that Hispanics (especially Mexicans) do not integrate into American society. Simultaneously Huntington wrote, “Mexico is the only country that the United States has invaded, occupied its capital, placing the Marines in the “halls of Montezuma,” an then annexed half its territory,” referring to the invasion, conquest and occupation of Mexico’s northern territory in the 1830s and 1840s.
xxi
Huntington’s alarmist view of “Hispanics” feed right into the ascending anti-immigrant rhetoric of the early twenty-first century.
Patrick Buchanan’s 2007 publication
State of Emergency: The Third World
Invasion and Conquest of America is more perfidious and disturbing. With chapters such as “The Invasion,” “A Grudge Against the Gringo,” and “The Aztlan Plot” simply encouraged individuals to advocate for the “ethnic cleansing” of Mexicans in the United
States, as one reviewer of his book stated.
xxii When taken to extremes ethnic cleansing is often associated with the genocide of Jews and others in Nazis Germany during the 1930s
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and 1940s or the cleansing of Serbs in the former Yugoslavia during the decade of the
1990s. However, the United States created environments and conditions where ethnic cleansing took place throughout its history. Very few would deny that ethnic cleansing and genocide were responsible for the near extermination of the indigenous population in the United States, who were systemically hunted until less than 250,000 remained in
1892.
xxiii
The American Civil War ended slavery in the U.S., but created conditions where Blacks throughout the United States were lynched as a form of hatred and resistance towards Black emancipation. From 1882 to 1944 the Tuskegee Institute recorded 3,417 lynchings of blacks.
xxiv
Nearly 500,000 Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals were rounded up and deported to Mexico between 1931-1938.
xxv
During World
War II nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps for the duration of World War II.
xxvi These round ups effectively cleansed the west coast of its Japanese population. And from the early 1920s through the 1970s, tens of thousands of men and women, mostly women, were forcibly sterilized to prevent socalled undesirables from reproducing and contaminating the gene pool of the U.S. based on the popular eugenics movement.
xxvii
The post World War II era continued the pattern of reactionary immigration legislation that placed Mexicans in the U.S. in the cross hairs of round ups and deportation drives again.
From “Operation Wetback” to Postville
Shortly after World War II Isabel Gonzalez, Executive Secretary of the
Committee to Organize the Mexican People (COMP), wrote Step-Children of a Nation:
The Status of Mexican Americans , a report for the panel on Discrimination of the
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National Conference for Protection of Foreign Born, held in Cleveland, Ohio, on October
25 and 26, 1947. This report was an indictment of the American people and U.S.
Government regarding the treatment and position of Mexican Americans in the late
1940s.
xxviii
More importantly, this organization illustrated the agency Mexican
Americans developed to combat ongoing discrimination against Mexican descendants.
Further, COMP drafted a proposed legislation to address Mexican immigration and concerns about civil liberties as stated by Gonzalez, “toward making democracy work in this country of ours.” The proposed legislation included a literacy test in Spanish or
English; regulate industry in regards to the importation of “illegal” immigration and prosecute violators; Spanish interpreters at all immigration hearings; congressional hearings held to ascertain the true condition of the Mexican in the U.S. Written in 1947, this COMP document indicates a level of awareness that was progressive and prophetic.
By the end of the twentieth century, the U.S. government eventually implemented all of the 1947 suggestions. In contrast, as early as 1946 the INS, in its Monthly Review , published articles such as “Some Mexican Border Problems,” and in 1947 one issue of
Monthly Review was titled, “New Procedures Planned to eliminate Wet-Backs.” xxix
The
INS implemented those plans in the early 1950s with the largest deportation drives since the 1930s.
This all came on the heels of the largest importation of Mexican labor in the history of the United States due to labor shortages caused by the mobilization for World
War II. In a complete reversal from the 1930s deportations and officially known as the
Emergency Farm Labor Program (Bracero Program), nearly 500,000 Mexican laborers returned to the United States under temporary contract between 1942 and 1947.
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However, because the program proved to be highly successful for growers in need of cheap labor, the program continued until December 31, 1964 with approximately five million Mexicans making the journey during its twenty-two year lifespan. Based on the inconsistent immigration policy directed towards Mexicans since the 1920s, COMP’s
1947 concerns were well founded. Despite the deportations and experience of the 1930s or the contributions made by Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals during WWII, the views and treatment of Mexicans had changed little. By the 1940s the Bracero program had become a mechanism to control the flow of labor to the United States. Any movement of Mexican labor outside the confines of this apparatus was considered detrimental to the system. Simultaneously, the Bracero program created an informal network of labor migration to the United States with many ex-Braceros and non-Braceros circumventing the official program and finding their way back to their previous places of employment or elsewhere. After 1947, employers also preferred this method to the legal version because the U.S. Government halted its subsidy and placed the cost of transportation in the hands of the worker and employer making the program economically prohibitive. In locations like the Pacific Northwest, the Bracero program ended due to its cost, but continued unabated throughout the Southwest, especially in California. With a well-groomed infrastructure and large numbers of Mexicans entering the U.S. undocumented and, in a prelude to “Operation Wetback,” the U.S. government began, as early as 1946, to erect detention facilities to hold thousands of Mexican immigrants.
According to the INS, “Our strategy was to contain the large number of ‘wet’ aliens in the border area until we could construct the detention facility and establish practical means of deportation.” xxx
Although some have argued that the Illegal and Immigration
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Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) set the tone for today’s immigration enforcement, the deportations of the 1930s as well as the immigration legislation and national security acts of 1950s Cold War era set the precedent for the contemporary treatment of Mexicans and development of immigration policy well into the twenty-first century, with the 1996 acts as part of this continuum.
xxxi
A brief discussion of the 1950s illustrates this pattern.
During the 1950s the U.S. Governemnt initiated two simultaneous campaigns against individuals and groups considered an imminent threat to national security and the social fabric of the country, but also in an effort to control and subordinate Mexican labor. The first, popularly known as the “red scare,” was a hunt for communists and those considered subversive that eventually manifested into the creation of the House Un-
American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the erosion of civil liberties as various forms of legislation was created to empower the government to persecute communists.
The second, and not as well known, was the “brown-scare” and the hunt for Mexicans in order to deport and terrorize Mexican labor into submission to keep them unorganized.
xxxii The U.S. government propagated the fear of a communist infiltration throughout American society that eventually found its way into the imagination of the American public and into immigration policy. As the U.S.
Government battled an internal phantom menace known as communism, its other objective focused on labor, especially any threat to the government’s control of Mexican labor. The presence of well-organized Mexican labor migrating into the U.S. or emerging from the ranks of unions deviated from the controlled state apparatus known as
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the Bracero program and caused alarm to the anti-communist forces in the U.S. As indicated in Isabel Gonzalez’s 1947 report for COMP, “a the threat of deportation has served as a very effective weapon to keep the Mexican people as a whole in bondage because, as soon as a leader arise among them, deportation proceedings are immediately used to remove him from such leadership.
xxxiii
The Asociacion Nacional
Mexicana-Americana, an organization established in 1950 to prevent the separation of family members and the expulsion of people living in the U.S. for many years, reported a strong concern over the passage of various immigration laws such as the McCarran-
Walter Act. This association also recognized the historical relationship between the U.S. government, Mexicans, and immigration policy. For example, in a speech to the Los
Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, the President of this association
Alfredo C. Montoya wrote, “We have long been the victims on a mass scale, of deportations, we have long been denied our civil, economic, and political rights.” xxxiv
Like others, Montoya and the Asociacion Nacional Mexicana-Americana were not willing to succumb to their victimization, opting to devise a “People’s Program to defeat the attack against the rights of the foreign born and consequently to save the liberties of the American people.” xxxv The atmosphere the Bush administration created after 9/11 bears an uncanny resemblance to the concerns discussed by Gonzalez and Montoya. The Asociacion Nacional Mexicana-Americana remained suspicious that the FBI, the INS, and HUAC worked together to identify, surveillance, and deport those who deviated from the ideology of the state. Montoya analyzed five key points where the American public and U.S. government had focused “to maintain the
Mexican people weak and dis-organized.” xxxvi
Of the five points, the use of the
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deportation techniques was central to Montoya’s report and provides insight to this period, but also a glimpse into the future.
xxxvii Montoya noted that Mexicans in the
United States had been deported for over one hundred years without the due process of the law. More importantly, Montoya observed that Mexicans were used as case studies to hone the deportation techniques of the INS. Like Isabel Gonzalez, Montoya concluded that the deportations of the early 1950s were actively employed to prevent unity and labor organizing within the Mexican community.
xxxviii This repression against the unfettered movement of Mexican labor began in the early throes of the Bracero program.
According to the INS, as early as 1944, the U.S. government began reporting increased numbers of “illegal” entrants from Mexico due to the inability of the Bracero program to maintain a sufficient number of workers for growers and ranchers. Yet, significant numbers of Braceros were imported during this period that numbered over sixty thousand. The likely cause of the increase in undocumented labor was the proclivity of growers to use undocumented workers to circumvent the bilateral agreement that required paying prevailing wages and other conditions. As a result, farm owners began to hire undocumented Mexican laborers to supplement their Braceros. Reports from 1944 indicated that 30,000 undocumented
Mexican workers were apprehended. The following year, 1945, over 70,000 were detained. It increased to 100,000 in 1946, and 85,000 during the first six months of
1947.
xxxix
As indicated in various INS reports, the government became concerned with these increasing numbers. By the late 1940s, the government created a multi-leveled program that involved the military, local law enforcement, and a large-scale publicity campaign to construct the “wetback” as the immigrant equivalent to the evil communist
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attempting to sneak into the country and do it harm. Many of the common derogatory images of Mexican immigrants can be traced to this period. For example, by the early
1950s the INS began to play a central role in characterizing “illegal” immigration as deviant and “wetbacks” inherently prone to crime as stated within its reports. “The evils of illegal entry were not simply a matter of violation of the border, but rather the cumulative results of lawbreaking…The Mexican quarters of cities like Los Angeles became breeding places for crime and delinquency.” xl In a 1954 edition of the I and N
Reporter xli , “The Wetback Issue,” William F. Kelly, Assistant Commissioner, Border
Patrol, Detention and Deportation Division wrote that the “wetback flood has increased to more than 100,000 per month…we made reports to the Attorney General of this alarming worsening situation, and told him of the many reports we were receiving of the misery, disease, crime, and many other evils attendant upon this illegal influx.” xlii This description was reinvoked during the 1990s, as I discuss later.
Similar to the 1930s, the American public had to be convinced that the Mexican immigrant posed an inherent and imminent threat to the public. This image was vital in convincing the public to become willing participants of the mass deportations. As part of his public relations campaign, Assistant Commissioner Kelly noted that excerpts of his report on the “wetback issue” were from an address delivered before the Annual
Assembly of the Division of Home Missions of the National Council of Churches of
Christ in the U.S.A., Buck Hill Fall, Pennsylvania, on December 15, 1953. Grooming such organizations remained essential to the success of “Operation Wetback.” The timing of Kelly’s report is also important. His report was written in January 1954 based on information gleaned from 1952-53 and “Operation Wetback” was launched on June 17,
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1954, a mere five months after the publication of the “wetback issue.” In his sensational account of the “wetback issue” Kelly discusses that the U.S. Attorney General Herbert
Brownell Jr., was so awe struck by the accounts he received from the INS that Brownell went on a fact finding tour of the border region and according to Kelly Attorney General
Brownell heard the following:
A United States Public Health Officer in Calexico reported that three percent of the braceros coming in to work on farms under the International Agreement with
Mexico were found to have active tuberculosis. These were not “wetbacks” entering illegally, understand…If three out of every one hundred legally entering
Mexican workers [sic] who have already been examined in Mexico are so affected, what then of the “wetback” and their danger to our society!
These officers expressed equal concern over the increase in venereal diseases. Not all
“wetbacks” are farm workers. Following in the wake of the workers are the prostitutes…It is reported that the illegal alien traffic has greatly increased the traffic in narcotics…And the “wetback” himself, once a tractable and for the most part an inoffensive creature, is becoming more and more difficult… xliii
It is also important to note that Kelly used medical racialization and racial hygiene to convince the public that Mexicans posed not just a health risk, but that their presence in the U.S. created a moral degradation of U.S. society with their frequent use of prostitutes and increased rate of venereal disease. In fact, Kelly’s comments subtly infer that the prostitutes are Mexican females as they are “following” the “wetback” into the United
States.
The “brown-scare” culminated with the 1954 “Operation Wetback,” an organized
INS military offensive to round up suspected undocumented immigrants. The
Immigration Commissioner at the time was Joseph M. Swing, a retired U.S. Army
Lieutenant General, who in turn brought on board Generals Frank Partridge and Edwin
Howard, as consultants to the INS.
xliv
The term “wetback,” well established in everyday vernacular by the 1950s, gained additional primacy and legitimacy during the decade of
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the 1950s. In fact, the Department of Justice (DOJ) routinely used this word and “wet” in its publications to discuss Mexicans. For example, the DOJs Immigration and
Naturalization Service Monthly Review began as early as 1946 by using the word “wet” to describe “aliens” originating from the interior of Mexico, xlv
and by 1947, the Monthly
Review featured essays like “New Procedures Planned to Eliminate “Wet-backs.” xlvi
Media outlets also embraced the term “wetback” in preference to Mexicans. “Wetback” remains in use during the contemporary period and is similarly offensive as the “N” word for Blacks in the U.S.
It is no coincidence that the post 9/11 world resembles the 1950s when constitutional guarantees and civil liberties have been diminished in the name of a perceived threat and unchecked powers granted under a climate of fear.
xlvii
To fully understand the jeopardy the founding charters of freedom faced during the George W.
Bush administration in the name of homeland security, one only needs a cursory examination of legislation from the past as a comparison.
xlviii
The contents of the USA
PATRIOT Act I and II indicate a dangerous level of invasion into the privacy of individuals, such as increased government surveillance, phone and internet wiretapping, secret searches of library records and bookstore purchases. The acts have also diminished the rights and due process of the law for immigrants that have included, the unfair targeting of immigrants under the pretext of fighting terrorism, stripping even lawful immigrants of the right to a fair deportation hearing, and the veil of secrecy created to prevent the public from knowing the true nature of the government’s role in weakening the U.S. Constitution.
xlix Legislation from the 1950s contains similar, in some cases identical, language and power. The structure for the USA PATRIOT Act I AND II
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resembled the legalistic framework from the “red scare” and “brown scare” era on how to subvert the U.S. Constitution under the guise of national security. The importance of this is to understand that during both periods Mexicans and, immigrants in general, were reconfigured as threats to the American way of life and sacrificed.
At the onset of the Cold War, the Internal Security Act of 1950 (ISA) and the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 provide the best comparison to today’s environment. Similar to the authority provided with the passage of the 1996 IIRAIRA, that provided for the “delegation of immigration authority section 287(g),” which the
USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 adopted as Agreement of Cooperation in Communities to
Enhance Safety and Security (ACCESS). Each of these sections, 287(g) and ACCESS, delegated immigration authority to local law enforcement that had previously been the sole jurisdiction of the federal government and its agents. Likewise, local law enforcement colluded with federal authorities in the 1940s and 1950s to find, raid, and deport Mexicans. ISA provided broad and sweeping authority by the U.S. Government, interrogated and searched without warrants. For example according to Jeffrey M.
Gracilazo, “In April 1949 Los Angeles police conspired with the [Immigration and
Naturalization Service] (INS) by setting up road blocks, interrogated Mexican Americans on street corners, burst into homes without warrants, raided shops and factories, and hunted ‘deportable’ Mexicans in train depots and bus stations.” l
The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 provided the U.S. Government with questionable authority and power to search and destroy terrorist cells infiltrating the homeland and raid the homes and work places of suspected immigrants. During the 1940s and 1950s, Mexicans were caught in a similar web of ultra-nationalism and fear. The
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American public was in a state of panic from a possible communist infiltration and U.S. propaganda circulated to the public that communist sleeper cells lurked in the shadows or perhaps lived next door waiting for a signal from the Kremlin to undermine the American way of life. Indeed, a component of the ISA required all members of the American
Communist Party to register with the Attorney General.
li
The 1950 ISA was followed by the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which redefined the ideological grounds for the exclusion and deportation of immigrants. INA provided grounds for the exclusion and deportation of any alien who engaged or had purpose to engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest or subversion to national security.
lii
Under this environment hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans were rounded up and deported to Mexico under large-scale deportation campaigns, the most infamous code-named “Operation Wetback.” The image of the Mexican, like the communist of the
1950s, had been constructed as not only a threat to national security, but also shaped into a non-citizen, a person without loyalty or rights. ISA also provided the authority to hunt communists and deport not just Mexicans, but anyone who was considered a threat to the
U.S. whether real or imaginary. This pattern continues well into the twenty-first century.
Beyond Postville and the De-humanization of Mexicans
The Postville raid represented an extension of the various wars proclaimed against the other such as the “war on drugs,” from the 1980s to the contemporary “war on terror” and the continued “war on immigrants.” The danger of these domestic and international wars is that they often come with attacks on civil liberties and violation of human rights.
For Latinos it has been a legacy of racial profiling and falling into the abyss of a system seeking not justice, but rather numbers to justify its very existence. In this manner,
20

Mexicans and Latinos become high value targets in the war against terror to pacify an
American public. However, this protection is based on illusion and a performance created and exploited by agencies such as ICE. The illusion is that the American public is protected from terrorism based on agents, in full military tactical gear, performing assaults on what are peaceful places of employment and rounding up men, women, and sometimes children as a false display of success on the war on terror and immigration.
Also in league with the government, if not directly, certainly indirectly by taking queues from the government, are numerous domestic terror organization and anti-immigrant groups, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, Ku Klux Klan, American Border Patrol,
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Young Americans for Freedom
(YAF) and the Minutemen. These groups pose a clear and present danger, not only to the stability of the U.S., but to all immigrants in the country and they have played an active role in de-humanizing the Mexican and immigrant.
Vigilante groups of numerous persuasions are a reminder, as Scott Michaelsen states, “the borderlands remain in a permanent state of a racial emergency , or the permanent state of legal racial exception
,” where a fear of the foreign has lingered and constitutional law and due process somehow is lost in the chasm of the borderlands.
liii
This state of racial emergency can be illustrated by the armed groups emboldened by politicians and by the anti-immigrant rhetoric who go by such names as American Border
Patrol and Minutemen Civil Defense Corps while others have no names, but continue a pattern of vigilantism along the U.S.-Mexican border that dates back to the nineteenth century. These modern-day Mexican hunters are armed and ready to kill. For example,
Operation Gatekeeper, a 1994 initiative by the Clinton Administration to stem the flow
21

of Mexicans crossing into the U.S., brought out vigilantes like Bob Maupin who organized a group of civilians to patrol the border, apprehend Mexicans, and kill them if necessary. A New York Times reporter observed that Maupin and his posse were dressed in camouflage fatigues, carried semiautomatic rifles, and had their own Vietnam-era seismic sensors and zip ties for handcuffs. In a macabre and surreal way many of these groups could be viewed as comical with most appearing to be weekend deer hunters, not only towing a cooler full of Schlitz beer, but also frames that are unlikely to move well in desert conditions, not to mention chasing their human prey. Yet, these groups have posed serious threats to Mexicans and the U.S. public. The following was an exchange between a reporter and a civilian patrolling the border: "We get together at night and make a game out of it, who can catch the most [Mexicans]," he says. "If you dress properly, they don't know who you are, so we get really, really good cooperation." Always? "We live in an earthquake zone, and the last guy who got in my face, the ground shook so hard it knocked him on his back, if you see what I mean." liv
A recent ABC Primetime special showed a man talking about using a gun for target practice, stating, “You know what kind of I cans like to use? Mexi-cans and Puerto
Ri-cans.” lv This state of de-humanization is not relegated to the U.S.-Mexican border. A high school student newspaper in Oregon, promoted by the vigilante group Minutemen
Project, ran a cartoon with the following dialogue: “Let’s git us some
Mexicans…Remember, women and children are worth only two-points.” lvi
The terrorist attacks of September 11 intensified the anti-immigrant rhetoric and racial oppression against Mexicans that has persisted since their incorporation into the United States.
Furthermore, a culture of fear that has persevered before and after 9/11 has allowed
22

individuals and groups to terrorize Latinos nation-wide. According to one report, hate crime statistics published annually by the FBI show anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35 percent between 2003 and 2006.
lvii
And, it has been this persistence of oppression, whether in the form of economic, legal, race, class, and gender, that has defined, in large measure, the Mexican experience in the United States.
lviii
It should be stressed that one does not need to be near the traditional borderlands of the American southwest to encounter the anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican sentiment.
The Midwest has plenty to offer in this regard and the two following incidents demonstrate the widespread attitudes towards Mexicans and immigration. During the early 1990s, a local radio station in Lansing MI, for instance, has routinely sponsored an advertising gimmick, that belittles the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo .
lix
This is not so unusual and because of the commercialization of Cinco de Mayo in the past thirty years, local, regional, and national campaigns have focused on this particular celebration as a way to sell products ranging from cars, to beer, and tequila. However, the radio campaign broadcast by WJXQ-FMQ106 went well beyond the exploitation of a Mexican holiday.
In fact, the script to the campaign is so riddled with racial stereotypes, hatred, and antiimmigrant sentiments that it is surprising it ran for four consecutive years and that the
Federal Communication Commission did not step in and pull it off the air. Nevertheless, this so-called Cinco de Mayo contest is an excellent illustration of the perpetuation of
Mexican stereotypes and discrimination that can be traced back to the colonial period and the development of the bandido image of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The following is a partial script that was broadcast over the airwaves in
23

promoting the Cinco de Mayo Contest. The author of the transcript, Tim Barron, hosted a morning radio program called the “Breakfast Club:
Some are giving away trips to Mexico City but, we are bringing Mexico to you, that’s right, we’re giving away Mexicans, real live Mexicans. Ay Carramba.
We’ll be smuggling illegal aliens across the border in the wheel-well of a station van then we’ll give one to you. Imagine, your own personal Mexican, they’ll wash you car, clean your house, pick your crops, anything you want because if they don’t, you’ll have them deported. Adios Amigos. Be the fifth caller when you hear this sound (mooing cow, sound effect), and win a Mexican. Members of this station and their families are not eligible to own Mexicans. Bathing and delousing of Mexican’s [sic] is winners’ responsibility. Station assumes no liability for infectious diseases carried by Mexicans. Celebrate Cinco de Mayo in your own home everyday, with your very own Mexican. Keep listening to win.
The Breakfast Club.
lx
Simmering in the early 1990s was a national anxiety over the economic viability of the middle-class and hard hit was the state of California, a large immigrant receiving state and historically reactionary towards immigrants. Based on economic conditions and the resultant sentiments towards immigrants, the 1990s, then, has much in common with the 1930s and 1950s. According to community members, this 1994 Lansing Cinco de
Mayo broadcast was in its fourth consecutive year and this period coincided with an economic recession, a national immigration debate that first resulted with the passage of
California’s Proposition 187. Proposition 187 attempted to regulate immigration to
California and limit the social services that undocumented and documented immigrants used. In 1997, the United States Federal District Court ruled the proposition as unconstitutional, but the debate unleashed an anti-immigrant movement not seen since the early twentieth century that resulted with the passage of the 1996 Immigration Act discussed earlier. In this context, the aforementioned radio campaign was part of the national pattern that emerged in the 1990s to sustain a campaign against immigration that continues well into the twenty-first century. Undeniably, conservative groups and anti-
24

immigrant organizations were empowered by the Republican win of the White House in
2000 and 2004, but more importantly, was the radicalization of mainstream society and any inhibitions white supremacist groups might have shown prior to 2000 were no longer a concern. This sharp conservative shift coupled with the September 11 attacks ignited a full-scale assault on immigrants with widespread collateral damage.
For example, in November 2006 the conservative student group Young
Americans for Freedom (YAF) at Michigan State University attempted to stage a “catch an illegal immigrant day” where, according to their statement, they would dress an individual to resemble an “illegal” immigrant, however, it was unclear from their statement what exactly this might look like. According to the YAF chair, the event was to bring awareness about “illegal” immigration and stated, “we are committing cultural suicide if we don’t address it and we need to establish a national language because it defends our culture.” lxi
Although the College Republicans agreed not to participate with the event, but when questioned about the racist overtones, Chair, Mark Wiggins, stated that he did not see the issue of race connected to the event.
lxii
The event never took place, but not because YAF decided on its own accord to drop the campaign. On the contrary, in the fall of 2006 a coalition of MSU student organizations that included Movimiento
Estudantial Xicano (Chicano) de Aztlan and Chicanos and Latinos Unidos mounted a counter campaign against YAF that culminated with a widely attended press conference.
Shortly afterwards YAF announced it had postponed the event. Similar events were conducted throughout the U.S. on college campuses to take advantage of the “free speech” doctrine that often times blurred the lines between free speech and hate speech.
The widespread use of this tactic indicated a concerted effort on part of national anti-
25

immigrant groups who had infiltrated college campuses and used provocation as a means to intimidate and divide communities. Due to it extremist nature, racism, and homophobic agenda, the YAF chapter at MSU was placed on the Southern Poverty Law
Center’s 2007 list of hate groups, the first time a recognized student organization made this list.
lxiii
YAF continued its egregious nature against anything Mexican, Latino or counter-hegemonic to dominate society.
On August 27, 2007 Michigan State University celebrated the arrival of its first cohort to the newly established PhD program in Chicano and Latino Studies. This was a significant development for the field of Chicano and Latino Studies and Michigan State
University because it represented the second university in the nation to offer such a degree and the first in the Midwest.
lxiv
However, all did not share in the excitement. On
September 27, 2007, a website known as the Spartan Spectator and associated with the
MSU student organization YAF posted an entry with the following headline in reference to the new PhD in Chicano and Latino Studies, “MSU Offers Doctorate in Savagery.” lxv
The entry was juxtaposed with John Vanderlyn’s 1804 painting “The Murder of Jane
McCrea,” which depicts two indigenous warriors with their tomahawks drawn and a white woman knelling, in the grasp of the Indians with a terrified look on her face.
lxvi
This blog entry and painting was an attempt by individuals to perpetuate their racist views, but instead confirmed their ignorance of indigenous history, reinforced the need for Chicano and Latino Studies, and validated that images and stereotypes of indigenous peoples, including Mexicans, persist in multiple forms, even at institutions of higher education. The ranting of a racist blogger and the violent treatment of undocumented immigrants cannot be dismissed because these are not isolated incidents, but events
26

linked through one singular commonality, a sustained and pervasive view that Mexicans are savage, exotic, foreign, expendable, and a threat to the American way of life.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century it was clear to demographers and others that the United States experienced a population shift not seen since the early twentieth century. Most of this shift can be attributed to the surge in the Latino population.
However, coupled with this phenomenon was the statistical fact that 30 percent of the overall U.S. population was comprised of racial minorities and increasing.
lxvii Taking all this into consideration, the contemporary period bears a striking similarity to the early twentieth century where the cleansing of Mexicans took place via deportations with a climate that is not just anti-immigrant, but de-humanizing. When readers of Pat
Buchanan’s book state they are “armed and ready to go,” it is difficult not believe a
Serbian style cleansing is what they have in mind. How did such language enter the debate on immigration in the United States considering that the only objective of the
Mexican immigrant is to work?
lxviii
Do undocumented immigrants deserve to be killed simply for crossing the U.S.-Mexican border? The immigrant backlash in this country, like in the past, has de-humanized Mexican immigrants with the end result, not surprisingly, increased violence against Latinos, raids and deportations, and the use of language advocating for the cleansing of an entire ethnic group. Thus, removal by attrition is the current endgame for immigrants and with little to no distinction made between immigrants and terrorists. Even when Latinos are marginally and temporarily accepted in U.S. society they are viewed from various tropes that has defined the other .
For example, no Mexican link to the September 11 terrorist attacks has ever been suggested, yet, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, the 700 mile wall, and
27

military style assaults on work places primarily employing Mexicans and other Latin
Americans suggest and portray Mexicans as a threat to U.S. national security. And it is no surprise that Arabs and Mexicans are stereotypically, pejoratively, and taxonomically viewed as the same ethnic group. The contemporary debate on Mexican immigration and public reaction illustrates the continued racialization of Mexicans. Images created over a century that depicted Mexicans as unalienable, undesirable, dirty, and as an invading horde remain constant and embedded in U.S. society. I submit that the current immigration backlash and portrayal of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. symbolizes a reconfigured bandido and greaser image created by popular culture to de-humanize the
Mexican. The tropes associated with bandido are identical to how Mexican immigrants have been depicted for the past one hundred years. And, similar to the bandido of the past, undocumented immigrants are to be hunted down indiscriminately as one popular talk radio host stated:
All of you who think there’s a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong.
We’re going to have to start killing these people. I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position your self and then do what has to be done.
lxix
And those meting out borderland justice in the present-day are familiar foes from the historical past. The extra-legal violence and injustice inflicted upon Mexicans is perpetuated by armed vigilantes along the U.S.-Mexican border, ICE, and various law enforcement agencies, that harass and conduct raids all across the country against undocumented immigrants and indiscriminately inflict physical and psychological trauma.
lxx
In the contemporary period the role of the hero is bestowed upon armed ultra
28

nationalistic individuals who view themselves as the last stand against an imagined adversary, but with very real consequences. One recent report indicates the since 2004 sixty-two immigrants have died in the custody of ICE. According to the report ICE officials have made it difficult to obtain any data on the deaths of the sixty-two individuals. Bipartisan reports of abuse have forced Congress to seek the establishment of an office of detention oversight within the Department of Homeland Security.
lxxi
Conclusion
The Postville raid of May 2008 can be contextualized within the contours of globalization while reinforcing the historical economic shifts that have taken place in
Iowa and, overall, in the U.S., where a dependency on immigrant labor in multiple industries attracted workers from many areas, especially Mexico and Central America.
This reliance on particular forms of labor illuminated the complexities of the structural forces at play that on the one hand viewed Latinos and immigrants as saviors to the economy, but on the other hand depicted immigrants as villains, criminals, and burdens, while leaving the federal government, employers, and consumers virtually unscathed from culpability. For example, one federal judge from the raid appeared to simultaneously take both positions when he stated the following to the defendants as he sentenced them, “…I don’t doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people who have done what you did to help your families. Unfortunately for you, you committed a violation of federal law.” lxxii
Furthermore, the government’s targeting of only immigrants and not employers reveals the imbalance and flaws of the current enforcement first strategy.
lxxiii More
29

importantly, the Postville raid and the use of 900 heavily armed federal agents against
400 unarmed factory workers made up of men, women, and children displayed a disproportionate response to the alleged crime they supposedly committed. This shift, of using overwhelming force, fast tracking to plea agreements, and the public display of the immigrants to a national audience as a de facto reality show, created a surreal atmosphere where it was no longer enough to just arrest the immigrants, the public now clamored for a public humiliation. This treatment has blurred the lines between immigrants, terrorists, and the very concept of due process.
“A line was crossed at Postville,” said Erik Camayd-Freixas, one the U.S District
Court’s interpreter in the aftermath of the single largest workplace immigration raid at the time in U.S. history.
lxxiv
On May 4, 2009, nearly a year after the raid, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled the line unlawfully crossed was not by immigrants, but by U.S.
Federal Prosecutors for using, illegally, identity-theft law against immigrants who used a false social security number in order to convince the alleged offenders to plead out.
According to Camayd-Freixas, after the raid the U.S. Government offered a uniform pleas agreement that had three possibilities and I paraphrase,
If an immigrant plead guilty to the charge of ‘knowingly using a false social security number,’ the government would withdraw the heavier charge of
‘aggravated identity theft,’ and the immigrant would serve five months in jail, be deported without a hearing, and placed on supervised release for 3 years. If the immigrant pleads not guilty, the wait could be 6 to 8 months for a trial (without right of bail since they were on detainer). Even if they won the trial, they would be deported, and could end up waiting longer in jail than if they pled guilty. They could also risk losing a trial and receive a 2-year minimum sentence, before being deported.
lxxv
The Department of Justice and ICE came to the conclusion that without the inflated aggravated identity theft charge they had no leverage and most of the immigrants would
30

receive a lesser charge and sentenced at the discretion of the judge. With the plea agreement every federal judge was forbidden to deviate from the mandatory sentence.
lxxvi
The May 2009 ruling by the Supreme Court stated that those workers who used a fake identification number must know they belong to a real person to be subject to a two-year sentence extension for “aggravated identity theft.” lxxvii
Although this ruling will have no impact on the immigrants rounded up from the Postville raid, it will deter the U.S. government from using the aggravated identity theft charge because of their inability, in most cases, to prove that workers knew the number belong to another person.
One has to wonder why Iowa was chosen as the pilot project of DHS considering its demographics and Postville, one of the most diverse communities in a state that lacks it? Iowa is one of the least diverse states in the nation in terms of non-white groups, has one of the slowest growth patterns, and for the past three decades has consistently lost people to other regions. One exception has been the growth of the Mexican and Latino population. From 1990-2004, Iowa underwent a 221 percent increase in its Latino population contributing 97 percent of Iowa’s population growth for this fourteen-year period.
lxxviii
As of July 2006 there are approximately 114,700 Latinos in Iowa constituting almost 5 percent of Iowa’s population, and representing a 28.1 percent increase from the
2000 Census. Mexicans remain dominate at 74 percent; Central Americans, 5 percent;
Puerto Ricans, 3 percent; South Americans, 2 percent; Cubans, one percent; and other
Latinos at 15 percent.
lxxix
Many of the factors mentioned earlier that explains this growth remain the same. At the current rate of growth the Latino population in Iowa is projected to reach 305,900 by 2030.
lxxx
What do all these numbers mean to Iowa, to Latinos, and to the non-Latino
31

population? As mentioned earlier, the extraordinary growth of the Latino population has been met with resistance, acceptance, and tolerance, but the dramatic growth for Latinos has not translated into a political voice. Indeed, one ramification for Latinos was a nativist reaction to their growth when in February 2002 the Iowa House of
Representatives passed the English Language Reaffirmation Act. Governor Tom Vilsack signed the bill into law on March 1, 2002, thus making English the official language of the state. More importantly, as of 2005 there was only one Latino elected official in the entire state, a municipal official from Storm Lake. This is a most troubling fact considering the high concentration of Latinos in certain counties and cities in Iowa. Thus, while Latinos are increasing their numbers and contributing to the growth and development of Iowa they remain a politically marginalized group throughout the state.
This marginalization may partially explain why federal agents chose Postville, Iowa as their target in May 2008 to initiate a nation-wide sweep against undocumented immigrants. This brings us back to the historical pattern of deportability and the racialized state of Mexicans and Latinos in the U.S.
lxxxi
And, by doing so, continued a pattern of unconstitutional sweeps and deportations that are traced to the very existence of Mexicans and Latinos in the U.S. that was, as one scholar put it, “born of war and annexation.” lxxxii
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i
Since the earliest incorporation of Latinos into the U.S. (Mexicans, 1848) there have been a variety of different labels to describe individuals of Spanish-speaking background. Officially, since the early 1970s, the U.S. Federal Government has used the term Hispanic to identify Spanish-speaking people in the United
States. It should be noted that some shun the Hispanic label because it is viewed as an imposed descriptor; the label dilutes the individual histories and cultures of the various Latino subgroups, while other eschewed it on political grounds. Yet, a large number of Spanish-speaking people have adopted the term.
Simultaneously, the term Latino has been widely seen as a more acceptable term of self-identification by people of Latin American ancestry and it is used throughout this entry. However, Latino, like Hispanic, carries similar cultural and political baggage. Names such as Mexican, Puerto Rican, Guatemalan, Cuban, etc. are used when speaking of national origin.
ii Press Release. Department of Justice and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “ICE and
Department of Justice Joint Enforcement Action Initiated at Iowa Meatpacking Plant.” U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (Department of Justice. Monday, May 12, 2008. iii Alfredo C. Montoya, Presidente Associacion Nacional Mexicana-Americana, Los Angeles, California.
“Problems of the Mexican People.” Comments presented to the California Conference and the Los Angles
Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born. November 3, 1951. iv Isabel Gonzalez. Step-Children of a Nation: The Status of Mexican-Americans . New York: American
Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, 1947, pp. 3-15. v ICE (Immigration, Control, and Enforcement); FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation); DEA (Drug
Enforcement Administration); and ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). According to a Department of
Justice Press Release the following agencies were involved as well: United States Postal Inspection
Service; Iowa Department of Public Safety; Iowa Department of Public Transportation; Federal Protective
Service; Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigations; United States Department of Labor; Public
Health Service; United States Department of Agriculture; United States Environmental Protection Agency;
Iowa Department of Natural Resources; Waterloo Police Department; and the Postville Police Department.
See Department of Justice and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “ICE and Department of
Justice Joint Enforcement Action Initiated at Iowa Meatpacking Plant.” U.S. Department of Homeland
Security (Department of Justice. Monday, May 12, 2008. vi Any place where white people predominately reside and control regardless of their minority population status. This control is usually attained through control of the community infrastructure and access to capital vii Eventually many of the detainees were charged with identity theft and social security documentation fraud. viii Susan Saulny. “Hundreds Are Arrested in U.S. Sweep of Meat Plant.” The New York Times . May 13,
2008. ix U.S. Census Bureau. See also Wayne Drash, Senior Producer, CNN. “Mayor: Feds turned my town topsy turvy.” CNN.com, October 14, 2008. Before May 12, 2008 Postville had a Latino population of approximately 480. The raid rounded up nearly 400 Latinos, mostly males. All that remained were a handful females and children who were born in the United States. x According to Robert Rigg, a Drake University law professor who is president of the Iowa Association of
Criminal Defense, court officials began to make plans in December for the mass proceedings. See Julia
Preston. See also Erik Camayd-Freixas. “Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in US History: A Personal
Account.” Unpublished article. Erik Camayd-Freixas is a professor at Florida International University.
Professor Camayd-Frexias was one of 26 federally certified interpreters hired by the government for the
Postville raid. Approximately one month after the raid he released on the internet an eye-witness account of
33

the proceedings within the Detention compound. Professor Camayd-Freixas’ account of the Postville raid, written one month after, is highly detailed and provides details that otherwise would not be available. xi See Juan R. Garcia, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in
1954 . Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980. Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez. Decade of
Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006, revised edition. These two books examine the 1930s and 1950s, respectively, for violations of civil rights and deportations of Mexican Americans and Mexicans. Similar to the current period, the 1930s and 1950s were filled with fear, real and unreal, in regards to the financial crisis of the 1930s and 1950s with an added dimension of communist infiltration in the U.S. in the later period. xii 4 th Amendment , The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized; 5 th Amendment , No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation;
6 th Amendment , In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence; 8 th Amendment , Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
xiii Such raids have been occurring long before the Postville raid. For example in 2006 federal authorities made sweeps throughout the country, including one in December 2006 at the Swift & Co. plant in
Marshalltown, Iowa. In April and August 2008 raids were occurring in Texas and North Carolina. At the time of this writing (October 2008) another major raid took place in South Carolina. A commonality among these raids is the targeting of rural or semi-rural communities and factories. Very few raids up to this point have occurred in urban areas such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Houston. One exception has been in and around the San Francisco Bay area. xiv Department of Homeland Security. “Fact Sheet: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Announces 6.8
Percent Increase in Fiscal Year 2009 Budget Request.” Released February 4, 2008. Accessed at http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1202151112290.shtm
http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_
1202151112290.shtm
xv See Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity . New York:
Simon&Schuster, 2005 xvi The exception to this has been the immigrant right groups and the massive pro-immigrant marches of
2006. xvii Ira. J. Kurzban. “Democracy and Immigration.” In David C. Brotherton and Philip Kretsedemas, eds.
Keeping Out the Other: A Critical Introduction to Immigration Enforcement Today . New York: Columbia
University Press, 2008, p. 65-68. xviii Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.
New York:
Simon&Schuster, 2005, p. 229 xix The latest tragedy in the endless cycle of violence was the murder of Luis Ramirez.
34

xx From 1990-2000 the following states experienced tripe-digit growth in its “Hispanic” population: North
Carolina, 393.8%; Arkansas, 337%; Georgia, 299.5%; Tennessee, 278.2%; South Carolina, 211.7%;
Alabama, 207.9%; Kentucky, 172.4%; Mississippi, 147.3%; Virginia, 105.4%. At the metropolitan level
Fayetteville, Arkansas experienced a 1,630.1% increase in its “Hispanic” population; Greensboro-Winston-
Salem, 776.7%; Charlotte, North Carolina, 622.4%. Source, U.S. Census, 1990, 2000 as cited by Raymond
Mohl. “Globalization, Latinizaton, and the Nuevo New South.” Journal of American Ethnic History ,
Summer 2003. xxi Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.
New York:
Simon&Schuster, 2005, p. 229 xxii The so-called “Aztlan Plot” refers to a region that some consider the ancestral homeland of the Mexica, who created the Aztec Empire in central Mexico. Although its exact location has never been verified, many
Chicanos in the United States consider the American Southwest, especially those areas invaded and conquered by the United States in the nineteenth century as Aztlan. Buchanan and his supporters believe that Mexicans in the United States are plotting to take over the Southwest and using this fear and mechanism to drive their anti-immigrant rhetoric. xxiii Lenore A. Stiffarm with Phil Lane, Jr. “The Demography of Native North America: A Question of
American Indian Survival,” pp. 23-53. In M. Annette James. The State of Native America: Genocide,
Colonization, and Resistance . Boston: Race and Resistance Series, South End Press, 1992. See also Ward
Churchill. A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492-Present . San
Francisco: City Light Books, 1997, p. 1. It is estimated that between 75-100 million people lived in the
Western Hemisphere prior to first contact with Europeans. Roughly 12.5 million lived in what is now the
United States. xxiv Philip Dray. At the Hands of Person Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. New York: The
Modern Library, 2003. xxv For information on the 1930s deportations see the following: Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond
Rodriguez. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s . Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1995; David G. Gutierrez. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the Politics of Ethnicity.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995; George C. Kiser and Martha
Woody Kiser, eds. Mexican Workers in the United States: Historical and Political Perspectives .
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979; Abraham Hoffman. Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929-939.
Tucson: The University of Arizona Press,
1974 xxvi Roger Daniels. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese American in World War II.
New York: Hill and
Wang, 1993. xxvii See the following works on the use of eugenics and so-called racial betterment: Nancy Ordover.
American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism . Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2003; Alexandra Stern. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in
Modern America . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005; Alexandra M. Stern. “Making Better
Babies: Public health and race Betterment in Indiana, 1920-1935”. American Journal of Public Health .
May 2002, 92:5, pp. 742-752.; Sally J. Torpy. “Native American Women and Coerced Sterilization: On the Trail of Tears in the 1970s.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal . Vol. 24, No. 2, 2000, pp.
1-22.; James A. Tyner. “The Geoploitics of Eugenics and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans.”
Antipode 30:3, 1998, pp. 251-269.; Philip R. Reilly. “Involuntary Sterilization in the United States: A
Surgical Solution.”
The Quarterly Review of Biology . Vol. 62, No. 2 (June 1987), pp. 153-170; Antonia
Hernandez. “Chicanas and the Issue of Involuntary Sterilization: Reforms Needed to Protect Informed
Consent.” Chicano Law Review. Vol. 3, 1976, pp. 3-37.
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xxviii Isabel Gonzales. Step-Children of a Nation: The Status of Mexican-Americans . New York: American
Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, 1947, pp. 3-15. Hereafter cited as Step-Children of a Nation:
The Status of Mexican-Americans.
xxix Albert Del Guercio. “Some Mexican Border Problems.” Department of Justice, Immigration and
Naturalization Service, Monthly Review . Vol. III, No. 10 (April 1946), pp. 289-293; “New Procedures
Planned to Eliminate Wet-Backs.” Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service Monthly
Review.
Vol. IV, No. 10 (April 1947), pp. 126-128. xxx Albert Del Guericio. “Some Mexican Border Problems,” p. 292. xxxi David C. Brotherton and Philip Kretsedemas, Eds. Keeping Out the Other: A Critical Introduction to
Immigration Enforcement Today. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 8. xxxii Jeffrey M. Garcilazo. “McCarthyism, Mexican Americans, and the Los Angeles Committee for
Protection of the Foreign Born, 1950-1954.” Western Historical Quarterly . Autumn 2001, pp. 273-295.
Hereafter cited as Jeffrey M. Garcilazo. “McCarthyism, Mexican Americans, and the Los Angeles
Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, 1950-1954.” xxxiii Step-Children of a Nation: The Status of Mexican-Americans , pp. 13-14.
Gonzalez cites two cases that
COMP and the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born defended. First, Humberto Selix, who was the regional director of the International Union of Mine and Smelter Workers of America, CIO. In
1946 the Department of Justice attempted to deport Silex on the basis of a 30-minute visit he made to
Mexico in 1945. It was defeated, but the Department of Justice then attempted to block his naturalization.
At the time of Gonzalez’s writing it was unclear whether the Department of Justice was successful in its attempts. The case was that of Refugio Ramon Martinez of Chicago who was a member of the staff of the
United Packinghouse Workers of America, CIO. In 1947, the Justice Department started deportation proceedings against Mr. Martinez on the ground that, from 1932-1934, he was a member of the Communist
Party of the United States. According to Gonzalez’s article 100 foreign-born Americans were being defended by the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born. xxxiv Alfredo C. Montoya, Presidente Associacion Nacional Mexicana-Americana, Los Angeles, California.
“Problems of the Mexican People.” Comments presented to the California Conference and the Los Angles
Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born. November 3, 1951 xxxv Ibid. xxxvi Ibid. xxxvii Ibid., the other four included isolating the Mexican people from American people in general, especially from trade unions and the Negro people; pitting United States-born Mexican against Mexican
Nationals; negating, neglecting, and distorting Mexican history and culture as well as to deny the use of the
Spanish language; the institution of an effective discriminatory system which denies the Mexican people of their social, economic, and political rights. xxxviii Ibid. xxxix Robert H. Robinson. “Importation of Mexican Agricultural Workers.” In Department of Justice,
Immigration and Naturalization Service, Monthly Review . Vol. 5, No. 4 October 1947, p. 41-42. xl Helen F. Jackson. “Major Immigration Groups.” Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization
Service, I and N Reporter . Vol 7, No. 3 January 1959, pp.31-34. xli The I and N Reporter was a publication of the United States Department of Justice, Immigration and
Naturalization Service. This periodical replaced the INS Monthly Review in 1952.
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xlii William F. Kelly. United States Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, The I and N Reporter . Vol. II, No. 3 January 1954, pp. 37-39. xliii Ibid. xliv Juan Ramon Garcia. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in
1954.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980, p. 172. xlv Albert Del Guerico. “Some Mexican Border problem.” In Department of Justice, Immigration and
Naturalization Service, Monthly Review . Vol. III, No. 10, April 1946, pp. 289-293. xlvi Jorge A. Bustamante. “The ‘Wetback’ as Deviant: An Application of Labeling-theory.” American
Journal of Sociology , Vol. 77, Issue 4 (Jan. 1972, pp. 706-718. xlvii Jeffrey M. Garcilazo. “McCarthyism, Mexican Americans, and the Los Angeles Committee for
Protection of the Foreign Born, 1950-1954.” xlviii These three charters of freedom are the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S.
Constitution. xlix Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist, American Law Division. “USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization in
Brief.” Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service, August 10,
2005. See also American Civil Liberties Union. “How ‘PATRIOT Act 2’ Would Further Erode the Basic
Checks on Government Power That Keep America Safe and Free.” http:/www.aclu.org/safefree/general/173461eg20030320.html. Accessed April 27, 2009. l Jeffrey M. Garcilazo. “McCarthyism, Mexican Americans, and the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, 1950-1954.” p. 277. li Ibid, fn18. The Internal Security Act of 1950 is a United States federal law that required the registration of communist organizations with the United States Attorney general and established the Subversive
Activities Control Board to investigate persons suspected of engaging in subversive activities or otherwise promoting the establishment of a “totalitarian dictatorship,” fascist or communist. Members of these groups could not become citizens, and in some cases, were prevented from entering or leaving the country. Citizen members could be denaturalized in five years. lii Also known as the McCarran-Walter Act. http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/index.php?content=pr0604 .
Accessed April 27, 2009. liii Scott Michaelson. “Between Japanese American Internment and the USA PATRIOT Act: The
Borderlands and Permanent State of racial Exception.” Aztlán 30:2 Fall 2005. University of California
Regents. liv Ted Conover. “Border Vigilantes.” New York Times Magazine . May 11, 1997. http://www.tedconover.com/border.html
Accessed January 28, 2007. lv ABC News PrimeTime. ABC News Ethical Dilemmas. March 23, 2006. John Quinones, Host. lvi “Citizen Patrol Looks Out for Illegal Immigrants on the Arizona Border.” The Elevator . Oregon City
High School Student Newspaper, April 15, 2005. Originally created by the Minutemen Civil Defense
Corps. lvii Ibid.
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lviii Nicolas De Genova and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas. “Latino Rehearsals: Racialization and the Politics of
Citizenship between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago.” The Journal of Latin American
Anthropology , 8 (2):18-57, 2003. American Anthropological Association. lix Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence. In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated in honor of the
Mexican victory over the French military on May 5, 1862. This victory was known as the Batalla de
Puebla (Battle of Puebla) and has come to represent Mexican unity and patriotism. Although a Mexican holiday, this celebration resonates’ the most in the city of Puebla. In the United States, Chicanos also celebrate this holiday for a variety of reasons that includes the notion of self-determination and unity amongst Chicanos. The general U.S. public has co-opted the holiday as a day of festival. lx Dennis Mockler, General Manager and Mark Stevens, Manager, WJXQ Q106 Radio Station, Holt,
Michigan. Transcription of “ Promotion for Cinco de Mayo Contest ,” May 5, 1994, played by WJXQ –
Q106FM. Cesar Chavez Special Collection, Michigan State University Library. The author of the transcript, Tim Barron, was the host of a morning radio program called the “Breakfast Club.” The following is the full transcript of the radio promotion: “Some are giving away trips to Mexico City but, we are bringing Mexico to you, that’s right, we’re giving away Mexicans, real live Mexicans. Ay Carramba.
We’ll be smuggling illegal aliens across the border in the wheel-well of a station van then we’ll give one to you. Imagine, your own personal Mexican, they’ll wash you car, clean your house, pick your crops, anything you want because if they don’t, you’ll have them deported. Adios Amigos. Be the fifth caller when you hear this sound (mooing cow, sound effect), and win a Mexican. Members of this station and their families are not eligible to own Mexicans. Bathing and delousing of Mexican’s [sic] is winners’ responsibility. Station assumes no liability for infectious diseases carried by Mexicans. Celebrate Cinco de
Mayo in your own home everyday, with your very own Mexican. Keep listening to win. The Breakfast
Club.” For a longer discussion on this event and how it contributed to the rescinding of a city ordinance that proclaimed Cesar Chavez Boulevard in East Lansing, Michigan see Todd Mireles, Working Paper,
Julian Samora Research Institute. lxi Lindsay Machak. “MSU, U-M plan “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day.” The State News . September 21,
2006. Accessed May 28, 2009 at http://statenews.com/index.php/article/2006/09/msu_u-m_plan_039catch .
These comments were made by the MSU YAF chapter chair Kyle Bristow in an interview with the State
News, the Michigan State University student newspaper. lxii Ibid. lxiii David Holthouse. “Campus Hatemongers Lays Down Torch of Freedom.” Hatewatch: Southern
Poverty Law Center . February 26, 2008. Accessed May 28, 2009 at http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/02/26/campus-hatemonger-lays-down-%E2%80%98torch-offreedom%E2%80%99/print/ lxiv The University of California at Santa Barbara established the first PhD program in Chicano/Latino
Studies. lxv Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization, was founded in 1960. lxvi John Vanderlyn. The Death of Jane McCrea , 1804. lxvii Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Karen S. Glover. “We Are All Americans”: The Latin Americanization of
Race Relations in the United States.” In Maria Krysan and Amanda E. Lewis, Eds. The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004, pp. 149-184. lxviii Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are Ae: The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York:
Simon&Schuster, 2005; Patrick J. Buchanan. State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007. The following was a response to Buchanan’s book on
Amazon’s Customer Review section. “pats on the money here. We got a huge problem with immigrants in
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this Nation, and the way he puts it, the term “ethnic cleansing” doesn’t seem too wild and ridiculous. And unlike the illegal immigrants many of us Americans descend from, these ones pay taxes. We might depend on them, but God knows, its time for a revolution. im armed, are you? Signed Richard J. Schulte III,
Brecksville, Ohio.” There was a time that this type of language would have been considered on the fringe of the immigration debate, but books that I just mentioned provide the justification and encouragement that this is no longer the case. This individual’s comments are not isolated comments, but becoming more mainstream. lxix Brentin Mock. “Immigration Backlash: Hate Crimes Against Latinos Flourish.” Southern Poverty Law
Center, Intelligence Report , Winter 2007. Hal Turner, labeled a Neo-Nazis radio host on March 30, 2006 in North Bergen, New Jersey, made these particular comments. lxx See Riverside County Sheriff’s video and public outcry. lxxi Nine Berstein. “New Scrutiny as Immigrants Die in Custody.” New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/us/ . Accessed June 25, 2007.
lxxii Julia Preston. “270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push.” The New York Times . May 24,
2008. Hereafter cited as Julia Preston. Comments by Judge Bennett, United States Federal Judge, Northern
District of Iowa, to Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans rounded up in the largest federal raid of immigrants at the time in the U.S lxxiii According to an article in the Washington Post since 2002 workplace arrests have risen tenfold, from
510 to 4,940, only 90 criminal arrests have involved company personnel officials. See Spencer S. Hsu,
Washington Post Staff Writer. “Immigration Raid Jars a Small Town: Critics Say Employers Should be
Targeted.” Washington Post , May 18, 2008. lxxiv Erik Camayd-Freixas. “Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in US History: A Personal Account.”
Unpublished article. Erik Camayd-Freixas is a professor at Florida International University. Professor
Camayd-Frexias was one of 26 federally certified interpreters hired by the government for the Postville raid. Approximately one month after the raid he released on the internet an eyewitness account of the proceedings within the Detention compound. Professor Camayd-Freixas’ account of the Postville raid, written one month after, is highly detailed and provides details that otherwise would not be available. lxxv Ibid., p. 5. lxxvi Ibid., p. 9. lxxvii Adam Liptak and Julia Preston. “Justices Limit Use of Identity Theft Law in Immigration Cases.” The
New York Times . May 5, 2009. See also Supreme Court of the United States. Syllabus. Flores-Figueroa v.
United States. Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. No. 08-108. Argued
February 25, 2009 – Decided May 4, 2009. lxxviii U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Redistricting Data (Pl 94-171) Summary File. lxxix State Data Center of Iowa and the Iowa Division of Latino Affairs: Latinos in Iowa: 2007. lxxx Ibid. lxxxi Subhash Kateel and Aarti Shahani. “Families for Freedom Against Deportation and Delegalization.” In
David C. Brotherton and Philip Kretsedemas, eds. Keeping Out The Other: A Critical Introduction to
Immigration Enforcement Today . New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. See fn5 in regards to the
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notion of deportability. The authors cite Nicolas De Genova’s Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and
“Illegality” in Mexican Chicago . Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. lxxxii Ngai, Mae M. “The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation
Policy in the United States, 1921-1965.” Law and History Review , Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 1-37.
Hereafter cited as Ngai, Mae M. “The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and
Deportation Policy in the United States, 1921-1965.”
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