THE DEPORTED

NATHAN CONNOLLY: Who says that?

OK, we are back. Now Joanne, I think most of our listeners would be surprised to learn that the Chinese were America’s first so-called illegal immigrants. I put that in quotes.

And that much like undocumented people today, they live mostly in the shadows. I have to ask, though, were they also deported? I mean, that’s obviously the big story we think about today.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well, some Chinese were deported but in much smaller numbers than today. So for example, in 1904, the government expelled nearly 1,800 Chinese citizens.

BRIAN: Yeah, but I think, Joanne, we got to think about the size of the federal government at that time. I mean, we had virtually no Army, a very small Navy. But I think what must have been a shock to the system, Joanne and Nathan, is going from zero to 1,800. The fact that just a few years before we really had no apparatus for deporting people, the fact that all of a sudden, 1,800 Chinese are deported must have left a lasting impression.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Remember, there were only about 80 officers policing the entire US-Mexican border in the early 1900s, which compared to today is mighty small.

ADAM GOODMAN: And there are more than 21,000 border patrol agents, 18,000 and change of whom are patrolling the US-Mexico border.

BRIAN: This is historian Adam Goodman, who studies deportation. He says that the government’s ability to police immigration has soared over the last hundred years. Here’s just one example. Last year, US immigration and Customs Enforcement– that’s known as ICE– deported over 240,000 people.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: Yeah, that’s crazy. I mean I have to imagine that’s a large police force, or at least a well-developed bureaucracy.

BRIAN: Well, it happened over a lot of time, Nathan. In fact, the US border patrol, the first official version of this, wasn’t established until 1924. As illegal Chinese immigration tapered off, the government redirected its attention to the Mexican migrants who had been traveling back and forth freely and legally for decades, and nearly all of those deported over the past century have been Mexicans. Goodman says the federal government has developed three ways to deport immigrants.

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ADAM GOODMAN: The most commonly understood mechanism is formal deportation, which historically was usually by order of an immigration judge and carried more serious consequences if someone tried to re-enter the country in the future.

BRIAN: But formal deportations involve arrests, detentions, and court dates, and the process can take a while, which is why those deportations are pretty rare. Plus, they’re expensive.

ADAM GOODMAN: The vast majority of people throughout US history, around 50 of the 55 million people deported in US history, in fact, have been deported through what the government euphemistically terms voluntary returns, or voluntary departures.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: Oh, come on. What does that mean, voluntary?

BRIAN: Yeah. Well, Goodman says there’s nothing voluntary about these deportations.

ADAM GOODMAN: Usually it happens after an immigration official apprehends a migrant who is in the country without authorization, perhaps detains that migrant for a certain amount of time, and then encourages or coerces or in some cases tricks that individual and assigning a voluntary departure slip.

BRIAN: Obviously, that’s a lot faster and cheaper than detaining people and putting them on trial. Deportees sometimes even have to pay their own way home, but there is one more way the government cracks down on undocumented immigrants.

ADAM GOODMAN: And that’s through fear campaigns and scare tactics that are meant to get people to self-deport. Because they recognized it would be impossible to actually apprehend and deport all of the undocumented people in the country.

JOANNE FREEMAN: You know, that’s really a reminder, Brian, about how possible it is for the government to frighten people and how powerful that capability can be.

BRIAN: And it’s especially powerful for governments that don’t want to spend a lot of money. You know, it doesn’t cost a lot of money to scare people.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: Fear as fiscal responsibility, is that right?

BRIAN: That’s right, Nathan.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: So Brian, give me an example.

BRIAN: Well, there’s a very stark example from the 1930s, Nathan. We’ll get back to my conversation with Adam Goodman in a moment, but first, let’s dive into this Depression-era story. Back then, an estimated 500,000 to 2 million Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans were pressured to leave the United States.

This little known episode was called Mexican Repatriation, but some of those targeted say that’s just a euphemism. Ed Ayers and I explored this moment for another BackStory episode last year. Here’s Ed.