Farmworker labor and community organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino came to the United States as a child and had applied for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). In March 2025, he was pulled over by a plainclothes ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent in an unmarked car who broke his car window and forcibly detained him. He has been imprisoned ever since. On July 16, he agreed to leave the United States. His parents had already left in fear after he was arrested, taking his U.S.-born sisters to avoid family separation.
This is not the first time. In the 1950s, there was Operation Wetback.
Harlon Bronson Carter, a convicted murderer, was the head of the U.S. Border Patrol from 1950 until 1957, during Operation Wetback. The Texas-born Carter had been convicted in 1931 of shooting and killing a 15-year-old Chicano boy, Ramón Casiano, because Carter believed without evidence that Casiano had been involved in stealing a car.
The conviction was overturned on a technicality related to jury instructions by the Texas Court of Appeals. Carter also led the NRA (National Rifle Association) from 1977 to 1985.
In 1953, Carter tried to involve the National Guard in deportation raids but was prevented by the fact that this was and is illegal. Instead, he initiated Operation Wetback using the Border Patrol, along with General Joseph Swing, head of Immigration and Naturalization Services; the tactics were those of warfare.
Operation Wetback was lawless; it was arbitrary and it resulted in large-scale violations of people’s rights, including the forced deportation of U.S. citizens. It is unclear how many people were deported. Estimates range from 1.3 million to 3.8 million people. Many U.S. citizens were deported.
Labor activists and community leaders were especially targeted, including Luisa Moreno, a union organizer for the rights of migrant workers, who said of the workers, “Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s industrialized agriculture, the sugar companies and the large cotton interests, that operate or have operated with the labor of Mexican workers.”
Moreno fought against discrimination and police brutality. She was offered U.S. citizenship in exchange for testifying against ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) leader Harry Bridges; when she refused, she had to leave the United States “under warrant of deportation.”
Many people were deported by ship. A Congressional investigation compared the conditions on the ship to that of an “18th century slave ship.” They were landed in Veracruz, far from where they came from. Or they were bused or trucked across the border and left in the desert to die.
Mae Ngai, in her book Impossible Subjects, documents that “some 88 braceros died of sun stroke as a result of a round-up that had taken place in 112-degree heat, and…more would have died had the Red Cross not intervened…‘wetbacks’ were ‘brought like cows’ on trucks and unloaded fifteen miles down the highway from the border, in the desert.”
In the 1930s, there were mass deportations. About half of those deported were U.S. citizens.
The Great Depression was exploited by right-wing politicians and racists in general to increase anti-immigrant feelings and actions. Between one million and two million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were deported from 1929 to 1939; again, about half of these were citizens of the United States.
Fresno’s own Agustín Lira, soon to be inducted in the Valley Music Hall of Fame, was born in Mexico because his parents and uncles, all of whom had been born in the United States, were illegally deported.
The United States has invaded Mexico multiple times, beginning in 1806.
In 1846–1848, almost half of Mexico was seized by the United States, when President James Polk deployed forces across the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo). U.S. people have been indoctrinated through popular culture with “Remember the Alamo” versions of this war, and the teaching of distorted history in our schools portrayed this as a somehow righteous attempt by Texas to become first independent and then part of the United States.
The so-called Mexican-American war was in fact motivated by pro-slavery forces, and this was widely recognized at the time. Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 after a lengthy rebellion and began passing measures against slavery, finally outlawing it in 1829 by decree of then-president Vicente Guerrero, who might himself have had some African ancestry.
Southern slaveholder U.S. migration into the Mexican state of Tejas was the instigation for an “independence movement.”
Ulysses Grant, then a soldier in the ranks, said, “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico.” He also said that “the Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war.”
Frederick Douglass called the U.S. war against Mexico “a slave-holding crusade” and spoke and wrote of “a denunciation of the Mexican war, as a murderous war—as a war against the free states—as a war against freedom, against the Negro, and against the interests of workingmen of this country—and as a means of extending that great evil and damning curse, negro slavery.”
Freshman Congressional member Abraham Lincoln accused Polk of illegitimately escalating a conflict over disputed territory for the sole purpose of extending slave territory. The U.S. army occupied Mexico City, the capital, from September 1847 to June 1848.
In 1914, the United States invaded and occupied the port city of Veracruz, which for those of you not familiar with the geography, is on the Caribbean coast nowhere near the U.S. border. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson sent General Pershing across the U.S.-Mexico border to seek and destroy Francisco (Pancho) Villa. This invasion was a resounding failure ended by U.S. entry into World War I.
Shortly after the current Trump regime took power in the United States, the ideas of an invasion of Mexico or a bombing campaign or both began to circulate. Trump declared drug labs and drug cartels “foreign terrorist organizations.” Plans for airstrikes and special forces raids were publicized. A significant increase in U.S. military surveillance flights along the U.S.-Mexico border occurred.
Republican members of Congress introduced legislation authorizing the use of military force against Mexico.
By March 1, 2025, mainstream news reports read that “the Pentagon is sending nearly 3,000 additional active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border…”
“Fort Carson is sending 2,400 soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, while another 500 soldiers from Fort Stewart’s 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade will also be deployed, according to the U.S. Northern Command.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico is committed to working with the United States to stop the flow of fentanyl, but Mexico, she said, will not tolerate any American interference.
“I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable,’” said Sheinbaum, adding that while the two countries can collaborate, “we will never accept the presence of the U.S. army in our territory.”
To that end, she sent a proposed constitutional amendment to the Mexican Congress that explicitly says the Mexican people reject foreign interventions.
“The people of Mexico will under no circumstance accept foreign interventions…like coup d’états or interference in our elections or the violation of Mexican territory be it by land, sea or air,” reads one proposed constitutional change.
The invasion of Mexico planned by Trump did not occur.
Instead, the U.S. government massively increased its attacks on people of Mexican heritage, including U.S. citizens. We all know that unidentified and unidentifiable masked men in unmarked vehicles terrorize communities and kidnap people, who are disappeared into a system with no accountability, no due process and confinement under conditions equivalent to torture.
These disappearances are like those of the military fascist dictatorships in Chile and Argentina in the 1970s. The U.S. version of dumps into the sea from aircraft is “third country deportation” in which people are sent to countries where they have no ties, and no capacity to communicate or survive.
Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that since Jan. 20, when Trump’s second term began, 75,341 people have been deported, including 68,790 Mexicans and 6,551 foreign nationals. This is probably more reliable than the U.S. government statistics, which are believed by most news sources to be double the actual numbers.
Regardless of the source, it is clear that, overwhelmingly, this program attacks people with connections to Mexico.
Today, we are yet again at a point where a serious difference in moral and political outlooks exists and there are U.S. attacks on Mexico and “Mexicans” regardless of citizenship.
Sheinbaum’s Mexican humanism is a stark contrast to Trump’s U.S. racist neocolonial fascism.
What is happening now is illegal, but there is no reason to believe that the U.S. government will obey the law or the courts.
Here’s what a U.S. court said on July 11, in clear and unmistakable language:
“Defendants may not rely solely on the factors below, alone or in combination, to form reasonable suspicion for a detentive stop, except as permitted by law; Apparent race or ethnicity; Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; Presence at a particular location (e.g., bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.); or The type of work one does.
“Most of the questions before this Court are fairly simple and non-controversial, and both sides in this case agree on the answers.
“May the federal government conduct immigration enforcement—even large-scale immigration enforcement in Los Angeles? Yes, it may.
“Do all individuals—regardless of immigration status—share in the rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution? Yes, they do.
“Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status? Yes, it is.
“Is it unlawful to prevent people from having access to lawyers who can help them in immigration court? Yes, it is.
“There are really two questions in controversy that this Court must decide today.
“First, are the individuals and organizations who brought this lawsuit likely to succeed in proving that the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers? This Court decides—based on all the evidence presented—that they are.
“And second, what should be done about it? The individuals and organizations who have brought this lawsuit have made a fairly modest request: that this Court order the federal government to stop.
“For the reasons stated below, the Court grants their request.”
Here is the example of just one family, one person, of millions who have been harmed already, as people are afraid to leave home to go to work, to school, to the store:
“My name is George Retes. I’m a 25-year-old U.S. Army veteran, a U.S. citizen, and I work as a security guard at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, Calif. On July 10, I was wrongfully detained by ICE agents while simply trying to report to work. I was pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, had my car window smashed, and was dragged out of my vehicle at gunpoint—all while I was nonviolent, and doing nothing wrong.
“I clearly identified myself as a U.S. citizen and an employee of the farm, yet federal agents ignored me, yelled conflicting orders, and then violently detained me. I was held in custody for three days without any charges, without a phone call, and without access to legal help. I was never told why I was arrested. I never received care to clean myself despite being covered in tear gas and OC spray (pepper spray) for days.” (Source: United FarmWorkers Instagram post)
During those three days, Retes’ sister and wife had been trying to call anybody they could to find out where he was taken, but nobody could tell them where he was. His wife, Guadalupe Torres, said, “I just don’t know where he’s at. I’ve been up since 6 a.m. trying to call the sheriff, the police department, Oxnard, Camarillo, Ventura…They say they don’t know.”
This is not the first time that Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and Chicanxs have been rounded up and terrorized and deported without regard for the law or their citizenship or common humanity. But we can and will and must come together in struggle to make sure that it ends here and that this will be the last.
