Trump’s mass deportation idea not new

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call for mass deportation of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, as well as their American-born children, bears similarities to a large-scale removal many Mexican-American families faced 85 years ago.

During the Great Depression, cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the U.S. over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay.

The result: Around 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans were pushed out of the country during the 1930s repatriation, as the removal is sometimes called.

During that time, immigrants were rounded up and sent to Mexico, often without formal proceedings. Others, scared under the threat of violence, left voluntarily.

About 60 percent of those who left were American citizens, according to various studies on the 1930s repatriation. Later testimonies show families lost most of their possessions and some family members died trying to return. Neighborhoods in cities such as Houston, San Antonio and Los Angeles became empty.

The impact of the experience on Latinos remains evident today, experts say.

“It set the tone for later deportations,” said Francisco Balderrama, a Chicano studies professor at California State University, Los Angeles.

Two weeks ago, Trump said, if elected president, he would expand deportations and end “birthright citizenship” for children born to immigrants who are here illegally. Under his plan, American-born children of immigrants also would be deported with their parents, and Mexico would be asked to help build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“They’re illegal,” Trump said of U.S.-born children of people living in the country illegally. “You either have a country or not.”

A Gallup poll released Aug. 24 found that Hispanics were more likely to give Trump unfavorable ratings than favorable ones by 51 percentage points.

Some immigrant advocates pointed to the removal of prominent Latino journalist Jorge Ramos from an Iowa news conference last week as a metaphor for the candidate’s desire to remove Latinos from the United States.

“Mr. Trump should heed the following warning: Our Latino and immigrant communities are not going to forget the way he has treated them,” the Washington, D.C.-based Fair Immigration Reform Movement said in a statement.