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The California Report

Mass Deportations May Be Unlikely, But It's Happened Before

Keith Mizuguchi
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mexican repatriation
Mexican and Mexican-American families wait to board Mexico-bound trains in Los Angeles on March 8, 1932. County officials arranged these mass departures as part of "repatriation campaigns," fueled by fears that Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were taking scarce jobs and government assistance during the Great Depression. (Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library/Herald Examiner Collection)

Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, August 28, 2024…

  • A bill making its way through the state legislature in Sacramento would commemorate a little-known chapter of US history: a large-scale deportation of Mexicans – and Mexican-Americans – nearly a century ago that hit California hard. It comes in an election year when mass deportation is again a political topic. 
  • Undocumented immigrants may soon qualify for a California program that gives loans to first time, first generation home-buyers. A bill expanding the program – known as The California Dream For All – advanced in the state senate on Tuesday.

CA Bill Confronts Painful Past Of Forced Deportations 

It was known as the Mexican Repatriation, and it began in 1930, as the Great Depression took hold. President Herbert Hoover announced a plan to ensure “American jobs for real Americans” – implying anyone of Mexican descent was not a “real” American.

Historians say more than a million people were forced to go to Mexico, and more than half of them were American citizens. Some families were coerced into “self-deporting.” Others were rounded up by force, even taken from hospitals. One of the most notorious incidents was in Los Angeles, where city police corralled hundreds of people at La Placita Park and put them on trains to Mexico.

Tamara Gisiger learned about the deportations in high school a couple years ago when she wrote a research paper on how the Depression affected people of Mexican heritage like her. Gisiger’s paper came to the attention of State Senator Josh Becker and together they wrote a bill to place a monument at La Placita Park in Los Angeles. “Today we are seeing the same kind of hateful, vile rhetoric coming from political leaders, actually calls for mass deportation,” Becker said. “And I think many people think, oh, that’s just rhetoric that will never happen. We’re here to say this happened in the past and obviously could happen again.” In 2006 California issued a formal apology for its role in the Mexican Repatriation, acknowledging it violated peoples’ constitutional rights.

Undocumented Immigrants May Soon Qualify For CA Home Loan Program

The state senate has approved a bill that would expand California’s Dream For All program to immigrants who are lacking permanent legal status. 

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AB 1840 prohibits the California Housing Finance Authority’s home purchase assistance program from disqualifying an applicant based on their immigration status. But California’s Department of Finance tells KCRA the program has no money to provide, and with the massive budget shortfall, the legislature and governor failed to appropriate any more funds for the program this year.  

Fresno Democratic Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, who authored the bill, said applicants still have to meet federal requirements to apply for the loan. He tells Politico “we simply wanted to be as inclusive as possible within our policies so that all who are paying taxes here in our state were able to qualify.”

 

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