Time For Operation Wetback II

By Juan Mann

The Center for Immigration Studies recently publicized an Immigration and Naturalization Service report [PDF] that estimated there are over 7 million illegal aliens in the United States as of the year 2000 census. The INS projected that a average of 700,000 illegal aliens entered the country every year from 1990 until 2000. Add in the years 2001 and 2002 at the same rate, and that brings the total of 7 million up to 8.4 million illegal aliens … and counting!

The INS report identified Mexico as the number one illegal alien sending country. California was the number one illegal alien destination. Both win their categories hands down.

The INS estimates that approximately one-third of the seven million illegals are living in California. Overall, approximately 4.8 million are from Mexico – that’s 68 percent — more than two-thirds of the total. Illegal immigration is a nationwide problem, but the statistical evidence of a Mexican reconquista of California is overwhelming.

So why aren’t federal immigration laws being enforced - especially in the Golden State?

And why is there still no systematic method for the public to report illegal aliens?

On VDARE.COM you can find out how to report illegal aliens in both English and Spanish. But in the internet age, the new millennium, the post-9/11 world, or whatever you want to call it, the INS still does not have any way for the public to report illegal aliens through a web site - or even through e-mail!

So much for reinventing government. Or “homeland security.”

The FBI seems to think the internet is a good way for the public to report any suspected criminal activity. Maybe American citizens should start using the web-based FBI form for reporting illegal aliens.

Calling 911 is another excellent option to make a public record of any encounters with illegal aliens.

The soon-to-be abolished INS posts telephone numbers for its field offices as the only way to report “suspected illegal aliens or suspected illegal immigration activity.”

But the new Department of Homeland Security web site does not have any information for how citizens can report illegal aliens. Instead, in its immigration and borders section, it features a link under the U.S. Border Patrol explaining - get this - “how do I report a missing person suspected of falling victim to dangers along the border?”

No telephone numbers for reporting illegal aliens in your backyard though.

So what to do about the 7 million, now 8.4 million illegal aliens? FrontPageMagazine columnist Steve Brown recently called for a new drive to deport aliens through workplace immigration enforcement on a scale of the Eisenhower administration’s Operation Wetback in 1954.

The trouble is that immigration law and the deportation system isn’t what it used to be. Just visit my DeportAliens.com for the whole story. 

In the good old days under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, with a deportation system relying on Special Inquiry Officers for hearings, the federal government was able actually to deport, voluntarily return or scare off possibly over 1 million illegal aliens from Mexico over about a year during Operation Wetback. In Texas, the federal government deported illegal aliens on trucks, busses and even by ship from South Texas to the port of Veracruz, Mexico, in 1954.

But law enforcement under the 1952 Immigration Act has given way to illegal alien “rights.” What was once a streamlined deportation system is now a federal litigation bureaucracy called the Executive Office for Immigration Review – the EOIR – spawned in 1983.

Instead of men with guns detaining and deporting people who have no legal right to be in the country, the EOIR of the new millennium offers a revolving door for detention, a deportation abyss and permanent amnesty for illegal aliens and criminal alien residents. The EOIR is not set up to actually deport illegal aliens, as I have been pointing out since 9/11.

So if the deportation system has been sabotaged with bureaucracy over the years, and there are 8.4 million illegal aliens running around, what is to keep things from getting worse?

Peter Brimelow already answered the question ten years ago in a postscript to his National Review article, “Time to Rethink Immigration?” — by quoting a Washington Post article from May 6, 1992.

"At a Cabinet meeting today, Attorney General William P. Barr said nearly one-third of the first 6,000 [Los Angeles] riot suspects arrested and processed through the court system were illegal aliens, according to a senior Administration official. Barr has not proposed any special effort to have them deported, a Justice Department spokesman said."

The answer: there’s nothing to keep things from getting worse – much worse.

It’s time for a second Operation Wetback. The first step: reform deportation procedures. And that requires getting the idea through the thick skulls of the American elite.

Juan Mann, a lawyer, is the proprietor of DeportAliens.com