Immigrants worry history repeating itself

PHOENIX - What would be considered a derogatory term today was part of an official policy of racial profiling more than a half century ago. It was called “Operation Wetback.”

In 1954, according to numerous accounts, the Eisenhower administration, concerned about a growing number of illegal immigrants, began a series of immigration sweeps starting in California and Arizona.

More than a thousand border patrol agents, cooperating with local police, fanned out to farming communities and even to Hispanic neighborhoods, looking for those who were in the country illegally. The result was up to a million Mexican-Americans leaving the U.S. and returning to Mexico.

Although there are many who look at the period as a dark time in Arizona’s history, others say it feeds into the fear that SB 1070 will lead to racial profiling.

“The community who have family members who are immigrants or immigrants themselves, there is this tremendous fear, and then there are the stories of my father or great grandfather,” said Jaime Aguilar, an ASU historian.

In fact, there have been a number of periods in history when sentiment grows against illegal immigration. It has often led to mass deportations, as in the 1930s when thousands were sent back to Mexico.

“This happens every 20 years or so,” Aguila said.

It’s something Santos Vega knows well. When he was just six months old, in 1931, his own family was forced to return to Mexico. Although Vega was born in Miami, Arizona, and his mother was also born here, his father was illegal. Rather than break up the family, his mother decided to go to Mexico. They lived there for five years, until his father was allowed to return to the U.S., Vega said.

Now, Vega sees parallels in history, with the passage of SB 1070.

“I'm a fourth generation Arizonan. I'm a veteran of the Korean conflict. I'm a retired schoolteacher. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I've never been in jail. I'm a writer and researcher, and yet I live in fear, because I look Mexican. I am Mexican,” Vega said.

While both Vega and Aguila see the political landscape as far more complex, they also see sentiment growing toward more aggressive laws targeting illegal immigrants.