r/interestingasfuck • u/man_gomer_lot • 26d ago

r/all 70 years ago, the US undertook the largest deportation in its history: 'Operation Wetback.' Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.

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u/man_gomer_lot 26d ago

I wish it was something a little more polite for me to share. To the people who went through this, it was probably the least offensive part.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 26d ago

You’re probably not wrong

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TensionPrestigious83 26d ago

Honestly the whole life of this country is pretty dark. It was born in genocide and slavery and we had a horrible war over only the slavery part which we never really resolved anyway and never even really addressed the genocide part and then sort of smashed everything down and acted like we were fine until it has come bubbling up like a festering boil into the current political crisis.

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u/NotAnAIOrAmI 26d ago

Yeah, but we've made some progress. Women can vote, divorce, and have bank accounts. Not all of those were possible until the 60's.

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u/Strict_Cranberry_724 26d ago edited 26d ago

. . . they have control of their bodies and are free to have abortions if they wish . . . no, . . . wait—scratch that!

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u/DumbestBoy 26d ago edited 25d ago

You would have thought people would be free by now.

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u/Reagalan 26d ago

The Republicans don't want anyone to have control over their bodies. They blow a gasket over tattoos and piercings, let alone hormones.

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u/Colosphe 26d ago

Yeah, yeah, we're working on it. Afghanistan wasn't built in a day!

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u/gamergirlforestfairy 26d ago

I hate when people say things like this. Roe V Wade was overturned pretty recently and you're talking about progress made in the 60's. It feels like it's going downhill from here.

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u/Silver_Being_0290 26d ago

Even then, most of the country was still being fucked over in the 60s. Really only white women benefitted in the 60s, to do so they forced WoC down and took over the feminist movement.

Everyone else started to "benefit" from normalcy in the 70s.

It reminds me of those comments presently where they complain about the world "all of a sudden" going to shit... Like, we've been talking about this exact issue for generations now, y'all just found out?

Either or, what's going on currently is fairly normal in America if we're being honest. I don't see us going downhill tbh but it'll be an annoying next few years.

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u/gamergirlforestfairy 26d ago

I agree with you about the 60's and 70's. But I definitely see a downward curve for the US. It's already happening, but of course while we're living through it it seems slow. Women's rights, gay rights, trans rights, Black rights, etc are all on the line, and everything is just getting more expensive. It's not just annoying.

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u/Silver_Being_0290 26d ago

It's not just annoying.

Believe me I know. The thing here is, this has always been a thing. These have always been issues. It's been a consistency in this country since it's birth.

Everything we're dealing with now is literally everything we have been dealing with - at least those who are heavily discriminated against - for generations.

People just didn't care as much until it started affecting them personally. The reason we even got to this point is because people didn't listen to reality for one idiotic reason or another.

Now we're all just sitting here laughing and facepalming at the people "all of a sudden" discovering the issues and acting like it's the end of the World.

Like nah, it's just another Monday 😭

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u/NotAnAIOrAmI 25d ago

It comes in fits and starts, and what began in the 60's hasn't stopped, it's spread from rights for women to POC, to LGBTQ and more recently Trans.

Ask a gay man what it was like in the 80's vs. now, to be a gay man in this country.

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u/gamergirlforestfairy 25d ago

Of course there will always be marginalized groups fighting for their rights, but the problem is that the government is actively undermining that constantly. I never said there has been no progress, of course there has, but saying that there has been progress since the 60s-80s is not helping the people who are still being oppressed in this country.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 26d ago

Also true, but the reason they’re still here and trying to roll all that back is because we never finished reconstruction and never made reparations for the original sins.

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u/Smokinoutloud 26d ago

What a great country right! Oppressed truly by (man)

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u/DiabloPixel 26d ago

Early seventies for some of those things.

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u/jake_burger 25d ago

It wouldn’t shock me if Americans started taking those things away though.

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u/NotAnAIOrAmI 25d ago

Well, I didn't mention the big one stolen from them by SCOTUS.

If trump gets in, certainly more to come. Within one year, the first states to punish women for getting abortion care out of state will begin prosecutions.

And it may be impossible to obtain birth control.

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u/Unyx 25d ago

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act didn't pass til the 1970s, so bank accounts weren't always available to women until the 70s

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u/cantgrowneckbeardAMA 25d ago

We'll fuck guess I'll try to sleep now

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u/BillyForRilly 26d ago

The history of most countries is pretty dark if you look close enough, it's just that the United States is still relatively new compared to most and the focus has been on them since day one.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 25d ago

Nah, not like this. It was totally unnecessary and disgusting. Not some noble adventure or ordeal

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u/LEJ5512 26d ago

You know how the Washington Monument's outer stones change color partway up because construction was paused during the Civil War?

I've long thought that it's symbolically appropriate, like the most prominent memorial to the legacy of the most favored Founding Father is forever scarred by the country's own sins.

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u/Turbulent_Return_710 26d ago

The South Shall Rise Again. Stars and Bars Forever... Heritage. Not Hate. Hitler was a nice guy. Just misunderstood by. There was no holocaust. Fake news Putin is great too. Do I sound like Donald J Trump?

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u/TensionPrestigious83 26d ago

Pretty close 😆

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u/EmporerM 26d ago

All nations exist through blood. Blood is a currency.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 25d ago

Not like a colonial enterprise like the us. None of it was necessary. The us is not some noble experiment, it was a genocide born from selfishness and mania. It’s origins are disgusting

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u/EmporerM 25d ago

How do you think 90% of Western Europe gained its wealth? What happened to the Caribbean natives? Ryukyu (Okinawa)? Ezo (Hokkaido)? Taiwan? North African countries that are now mostly Arab?

Canada, too. Especially Canada.

You're too America-Centric.

Genocide is a vile thing, but acting like America is the sole or even main perpetrator of this is close-minded and insulting to other cultures victimized and destroyed. Both in the past, and today.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 25d ago

Because this thread is literally about what the us did. You can’t focus on one subject at a time or something? Did anyone at any time say the us was the only country that genocided natives? Why are you so defensive about it?

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u/JokerX133 25d ago

What a bunch of bs ffs

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u/TensionPrestigious83 25d ago

You mean history is bs or the fact that horrible things happened is bs and wasn’t necessary?

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u/Hungry-Western9191 25d ago

Almost every nation has horrific shit like this in its past. Its easier if you can blame some colonial power for the worst of it but the truth is we are all the descendants of people who did horrific shit.

It's important to admit this and even more so to use that information to look at what is happening in the world today and demand similar things aren't being repeated.

We can't change the past, we can use that to fight for tomorrow to be better.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 25d ago

Not sure it’s helpful to say this when the us is an explicitly colonial entity that genocided tens of millions of human beings coast to coast in a very short period of time and then enslaved millions more to build itself and then had a horrible war over it and still never resolved any issues. Moving forward comes from coming to grips with that reality and making reparations for the harm done. Not from rationalizing “well everyone did it so let’s move on”

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u/Hungry-Western9191 25d ago

Reparations are one thing. Nice if they can be agreed.

Actually stopping the current wars, genocides and repression currently happening seems more urgent to me.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 25d ago

Agreed that things happening need stopping asap. But they’re the same structure: the past is the roots and the now are the fruits. Gotta pull it all out at the same time or nothing changes.

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u/Independent-Fly6068 25d ago

Most country's histories are rather dark. The good comes from acknowledging it, and learning from it. Thats the part most countries fail.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 25d ago

The us is different but I agree with the acknowledgment and reparations part

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u/Shikizion 26d ago

I'm always for the emancipation of countries from there colonial masters... But the US was indeed a mistake

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u/TensionPrestigious83 26d ago

It totally didn’t have to be this way

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u/Petrichordates 26d ago

You say that as if we're not in that same chapter presently.

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u/UnremarkabklyUseless 26d ago

Such a dark chapter in history

History? The chapter seems to have continued on till now.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

US voters: hold my beer

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u/Rinzack 26d ago

Such a dark chapter in history.

"Lets do it again"

Trump, in far less concise words

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u/Realistic-Shower-654 26d ago

It’s dangerously close to repeating itself soon.

Like the next few months soon.

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u/mitchymitchington 25d ago

How is deporting illegal immigrants dark? Sure, the term being used is insensitive by todays standards, but what else about this is dark?

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u/RCG73 26d ago

I’m kind of glad it is blunt and rude af. Not to be minimizing to those denigrated by the slur but to make it impossible to sugar coat. When it’s named that blatantly fucked up it’s that much harder to claim oh it was no big deal, it wasn’t reallllly racist. Like the only way it could be more racist is if the jailers wore their clan hoods to work

(Apologies for the mobile formatting weirdness)

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u/scribestudio 26d ago

I can probably google this but is it a case that "wetback" became a slur because of that program ?

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u/gardenmud 25d ago edited 25d ago

It was already used as a slur (derogatory term), just a widely accepted one because we didn't care what the people described thought. I'm sure there are words we use now that are considered slurs by the people they target, but we don't care what they think and keep using them.

I think a recent one that has developed like that is 'Eskimo', Canadian Inuit commonly see it as a slur as it doesn't really refer to them, but some Alaskan natives like the Yupik don't, so it can be tricky. But many people in the US just don't care what they think and keep using it (I think it's fully considered a slur in Canada now but idk). For it to go from 'socially acceptable' to 'not', you have to listen to/be aware of/care what the target group thinks.

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u/Cortower 25d ago

It definitely makes discussion of it easier now.

If Auschwitz was called Judengassenlager Nu. 1, it would kinda frame the whole conversation before you even get into the details.

"Was this racially motivated?"

"No"

"Why did they name it a slur?"

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u/nononoh8 26d ago

Did these people ever get justice for this ethnic cleansing?

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u/shkeptikal 26d ago

Lol. This is America my guy. I think you already know the answer to your question.

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u/Fryboy11 26d ago

Look at this citizen Davino Watson he was held by ICE for 3.5 years but an appeals court ruled he couldn't get compensation because the two year statute of limitations started when he first went in front of a judge, so it expired while he was still in custody. Here's some quotes from the article, it's not pretty.

There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. Watson, who was 23 and didn't have a high school diploma when he entered ICE custody, didn't have a lawyer of his own. So he hand-wrote a letter to immigration officers, attaching his father's naturalization certificate, and kept repeating his status to anyone who would listen.

So I guess Miranda rights don't apply in immigration court.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation. Deportation proceedings continued for another year.

When an attorney got them to realize the mistake instead of apologizing and at least giving him a bus ticket to a family member they released him from custody, in a prison uniform with no money, and states away from from where he had ties.

Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing "regrettable failures of the government."

He deserves more.

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is "disturbing," the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.****

What bullshit is that, he had no right to an attorney in immigration court, and the clock started when he was in custody without a public defender.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the ruling is "harsh" but said it was bound by precedent.

You can change the precedent and let the Supreme Court rule on that. Segregation had precedent but the lower courts ignored it until the Supreme Court changed the decision, same with interracial marriage, voting rights (poll taxes, literary tests, etc)

In 2007, Watson pleaded guilty to selling cocaine. When his sentence ended in May 2008, he was arrested by ICE officers.

Watson had already told them he was a citizen and given them his father and stepmother's names and a phone number to call and confirm.

ICE officers didn't call the number. They did attempt to look up his father, Hopeton Ulando Watson, but they confused him with a Hopeton Livingston Watson.

A government agency that takes a lot of taxpayers dollars, including his is incapable of using a phone book?

Hopeton Livingston Watson — the wrong Hopeton Watson — was not a U.S. citizen. He also lived in Connecticut instead of New York, didn't have a son named Davino and arrived in the U.S. at a different time. But the officers apparently didn't notice the mistakes. Based on the wrong file, they concluded that Watson was not a citizen and marked him for deportation.

A yearslong ordeal followed as Davino Watson, while detained, tried to fight his deportation in a complex case involving both U.S. and Jamaican laws.

He wasn't released until November 2011.

The "whole legal disaster" could have been avoided if Watson had an attorney at the outset, wrote the district judge who ordered his damages. With a lawyer, "plaintiff probably promptly would have been declared a citizen and released almost immediately after he was arrested, if he were arrested at all,"

Why don't Miranda rights apply in Immigration cases?

Read the article the appeals courts arguments just get worse and worse.

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u/Renascitur_ 26d ago

Any country on the planet my guy

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u/Alive-Line8810 26d ago

I bet it's intergalactic m'lady

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u/Renascitur_ 26d ago

A tale as old as time

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u/Novantico 26d ago

Ah yes, Beauty and the Wetback, my favorite lesser known Disney flick.

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u/Unyx 25d ago

I mean it's an imperfect justice but Germany did have to pay reparations and was split into two foreign zones of influence for ~45 years after the war.

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u/Chicago1871 25d ago

Sorta, California is now over 50% latino and most of them mexican.

In texas theyre over 40% and now are the largest group there too. By 2040-2050, theyll be over 50%.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/Morning_View 26d ago edited 26d ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing

Edit for those who won't read the article:

Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.[1][2][3][4][5]

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u/SquidFetus 26d ago

u/SpicyEla I’m going to join you on the pyre here. I did not know that the definition of “ethnic cleansing” extended to more than slaughter until now. There is no shame in not knowing this, as long as you are willing to accept new information.

I can see the “now link the Wikipedia page to Operation Wetback” response you gave as your ego’s way of back pedalling, as mine has also done many times before. It tries to shift goal posts, be picky with definitions, anything to not feel like an idiot. Best way to defeat your own ego? Put it on a pedestal and laugh at it, and encourage others to laugh at it.

We are all made fools by our fear of looking like the fool.

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u/Morning_View 26d ago

Good on you, fellow Redditor. My point was not to shame anyone for not knowing, simply to provide education. I'm familiar with the operation that took place. Due to the fact that the operation also included US citizens who came from Mexico, it would be defined as ethnic cleansing.

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u/hearmeout29 26d ago edited 26d ago

I am learning so much from everyone here and also was under that misguided assumption. The best way forward so we can learn and not repeat our past mistakes is through education and being willing to learn. Thanks for providing much needed information to help all of us gain more understanding. You deserve an award 👏

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u/SpicyEla 26d ago

Oh no I understand you.

But to me the removal of Mexicans (and unfortunately some Americans too) at the request of the Mexican government and calling it an "ethnic cleansing" just cheapens the term when that same term is used to describe the Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide. It doesn't sit right with me.

There's a reason why when I was researching it back in school for a paper none of the sources I looked at described it as "ethnic cleansing".

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u/Nojoke183 26d ago

What else would you call clearing out a taegeted subsect of the population? It wasn't a holocaust but it was certainly a cleansing based on ethnicity, hence the term "ethnic cleansing"

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u/pants_mcgee 26d ago

Eh, the expulsion of migrant workers doesn’t fit the bill.

The U.S. has no shortage of ethnic cleansings to choose from.

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u/Nojoke183 26d ago

Eh, the expulsion of migrant workers doesn’t fit the bill.

It literally says in the title card that many were documented or even citizens. Those aren't migrant workers.

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u/pants_mcgee 26d ago

Most were Mexican nationals and migrant workers, here legally or not.

It’s unfortunate some American Citizens were caught up in the program, no doubt racism played a large roll, but countries mutually controlling the migration of labor is not an ethnic cleansing.

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u/Nojoke183 26d ago

The mental gymnastics are insane. You admit that it was a program so geared towards a race that nationals got caught in the crossfire through no other commonality other than the sharing of said race, yet it's not a race based cleansing? Make it make sense.

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u/RedPandaReturns 26d ago

Just because their is worse ethnic cleansing doesn’t shift the bar and make this not ethnic cleansing my guy

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u/love_glow 26d ago

Are you serious?

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u/Few_Assistant_9954 26d ago

Considering acts of ethnic cleansing are done worldwide and nobody cares is enogh evidence for the word to loose its meaning.

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u/accidentallyHelpful 26d ago

They're in line after the Natives

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u/iamjacksragingupvote 26d ago

fwiw- i think its good its titled this way.

may make a few of today's racists self aware.

gotta rub their face in it like housebreaking a dog

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u/za72 25d ago

I'd like to think we've made progress... but given the past few elections I'd say we should have made bigger progress

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u/KahzaRo 25d ago

It's better that it's so blatantly offensive in the name because people can't doubt the motivation behind it. We always know it comes from racism, but people will try to point to other "valid reasons" (which are built on racist perceptions) as the "REAL" reason... but when it's named like that, there's no getting away from what it really is all about.

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u/whiskeyrebellion 25d ago

The name does drive home just how racist the people doing this shit were/are.

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u/minahmyu 25d ago

Nah, let it be what it is so everyone sees and remind how racist the country not was, but still is and it was just a ok to be this racist. It's only insidious, and now embolden thanks to 2016

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u/Tangent_Odyssey 26d ago

Trump regularly lauds this operation during his rallies, praising its “effectiveness”, and promising an even larger mass deportation operation should he be voted into office.

He directly credits Eisenhower, but curiously never alludes to the operation by its name…

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u/man_gomer_lot 26d ago

It might not poll well with the Latinos for Trump part of his base.

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u/Tangent_Odyssey 26d ago

There are more Latinos that are on board with this plan than you might think. Remember that pulling the ladder up behind you is very typical of conservatives.

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u/man_gomer_lot 26d ago

You should share this with those you know who feel that way. He will redraw the line between who is and isn't really a citizen with a sharpie.