Bananas North, Deportees South: Punishment, Profits, and the Human Costs of the Business of Deportation

Sometime in late 1954 James Hockaday, a physician and two-time mayor of Port Isabel, Texas, spent a day at the beach with his family. His camera in tow, Hockaday shot a home movie, the first four minutes of which documented the loading and departure of a hulking ship named the Emancipación. In the clip, multiple truckloads and busloads of people, most of them men, pull up alongside the vessel. Some of the younger ones hop down from the trucks with a spring in their step, while older men carefully make their way down before joining hundreds of others already onboard the crowded boat. The last load is only women and children: some carrying bags, one with a box tucked under her arm. Officials supervising the process pass babies from one officer to the next until they reach the deck. As a boy marches up the stairs, Hockaday's son appears in the background, cutting between the buses and freely roaming about. Once all are onboard a middle-aged man with graying hair and a cigarette dangling from his mouth appears in the frame and waves goodbye to the people on the ship, first with one hand and then with both. He looks back at the camera twice, fully aware of being filmed. Finally, the visibly weighed-down vessel sets off with black smoke billowing. Onlookers on the beach watch the ship leave; one person appears to be looking through binoculars. Then, suddenly, the picture cuts to a woman and two children playing in the water, jumping waves. The last minute-and-a-half is banal footage of boys goofing around for the camera and the amused adults watching them. What we see more than a half century later appears to be an ordinary, relaxing day at the beach for the Hockaday family. The same, however, could not be said for the eight hundred people on the Emancipación—all Mexican deportees—who had just begun the grueling voyage, up to forty-eight hours, across the Gulf of Mexico.¹

Hockaday's home movie captured merely one of seventy-six boatlifts used to deport nearly fifty thousand Mexicans between September 1954 and August 1956. Scholars know little about the history of these deportation trips and even less about the U.S. government contracting private Mexican shipping companies to carry them out. Immigration historians generally have ignored how authorities have forcibly removed people, even as they have focused extensively on immigration policy and “the immigrant experience.” Yet, examining the physical process of expulsion offers important insights into both of these areas of inquiry. Scholars have focused on domestic politics and foreign affairs as the driving forces behind immigration policy and its implementation. The history of the boatlift, however, reveals that interpenetrating, even corrupt, public-private relations have also decisively shaped enforcement practices, with devastating consequences for migrants.²

The U.S. federal government has long relied on third parties for public purposes, so it is not surprising that deportation has both facilitated and fed profit-making ventures. This has only been possible because lawmakers and national elites have actively excluded from citizenship entire groups of people throughout U.S. history and believed that certain racialized migrants represented nothing more than a source of disposable labor. Moreover, during the twentieth century, changing immigration laws and enforcement practices resulted in a growing number of people—and especially Mexicans—considered to be undocumented. These state policies created a market in deportable persons, turning expulsion into a lucrative business. Shipping companies profiting from transporting immigrants and goods to the United States now sought to capitalize on the removal of deportees from the country. In the case of the boatlift, as in others, national imperatives and the economic incentives of private firms interacted to create a mode of expulsion that treated people not as human beings, but as cargo. This was neither accidental nor incidental. The commodification of people allowed the federal government to minimize its expenditures and enabled companies to maximize profits by providing migrants with only what they needed for bare survival.³

The abysmal conditions aboard the ships and the precarious journey across the Gulf of Mexico also served another fundamental purpose: to punish deportees. Despite the Supreme Court's 1893 declaration that expulsion of noncitizens was not a punishment but an inherent power essential to the security of sovereign nations, the history of the boatlift leaves little doubt about deportation's retributive and disciplinary nature. Bringing this violent past to light reveals that authorities used the process of removal to inflict trauma on migrants' bodies and minds in hopes of discouraging deportees from returning to the United States. This strategy, a precursor to later “prevention through deterrence” efforts, did not stop future immigration, but it did deliberately cause substantial, often overwhelming, physical and psychological suffering and material hardship. Deportation was punishment, and, not infrequently, punishment became the point. The federal immigration agency cared more about its institutional objective of controlling the nation's borders than the particular means utilized to achieve that end. By examining the how of the expulsion process, this article uncovers the web of public and private actors driving the deportation machine; the bureaucratic, capitalist, and racist motives that fuel it; and the human costs of punitive, profit-driven policies.⁴

Buses, Trains, Boats, and Planes

Since the late nineteenth century, when immigration enforcement became the sole domain of the federal government, authorities have relied on a variety of publicly and privately owned buses, trains, boats, and, later, planes to move deportees both within the United States and across international borders. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and a series of congressional acts in the first quarter of the twentieth century restricted immigration and expanded the population of deportable people, creating opportunities for entrepreneurial individuals and private transportation companies. By the 1920s, deportation had become an important source of revenue for shipping firms. After World War I, during a time of heightened nativism, the Bureau of Immigration created the Deportation and Transportation division to oversee a network of cross-country deportation trains run by private companies such as the Southern Pacific Railroad. Hoping to land these lucrative government contracts, companies vied with one another and offered reduced rates—often at a significant cost to the people being forcibly removed.⁵

The method authorities chose to expel people depended not only on financial considerations but also on how effectively a particular mode deterred future unauthorized migration. This consideration took on particular importance in the case of Mexicans, given Mexico's geographic proximity to the United States and the relatively unguarded two-thousand-mile border between the two countries. As early as 1923, people such as R. B. Sims, the superintendent of the Arizona State Prison, considered deporting people just over the land border to be “an absolute farce.” In his opinion, Mexicans convicted of crimes should be put on ships and “deposited in Veracruz, Yucatan, or some other far interior point,” adding that otherwise deportation “just might as well be abolished.” Immigration officials generally agreed.⁶

Authorities relied on multiple forms of transportation during the bracero program, a series of bilateral temporary contract labor agreements from 1942 to 1964 that brought some four hundred thousand documented (and many more undocumented) Mexicans to the United States. In the years leading up to the infamous Operation Wetback deportation campaign of the mid-1950s, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Ins) used government planes and private airlines to transport deportees within the United States and to their home countries. The first airlift took place on a sunny morning in the fall of 1946, when a U.S. Air Force B-25 aircraft (“originally designed for much more lethal cargo”) transported a group of apprehended migrants from Tucson, Arizona, to Texas for deportation. The most infamous of these airlifts was the January 1948 flight that crashed near Coalinga, California, killing all thirty-two people aboard, including twenty-eight Mexicans. The flight—memorialized by Woody Guthrie's song “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)”—was run by Airline Transport Carriers, Inc. The Ins fielded a wide range of offers to operate airlifts to Mexico, including proposals from a California-based helicopter company, a large clearinghouse association representing more than a dozen charter airlines, and a Mexican pilot offering to fly more than 1,300 deportees each month from Arizona and California to Guadalajara, Jalisco, in central-western Mexico, at $10 and $15 per person ($93 and $140 today). Although it is unclear whether the Ins ever enlisted the services of Mexican pilots, officials investigated whether the law allowed for it. They concluded that hiring foreign pilots was permissible as long as the individuals acquired a “permit for the transportation of non common carrier goods such as personal property.” Whether or not deportees fit into this category was another question, but the opinion of Alva L. Pilliod, an official in charge of the lift, spoke volumes about how the Ins viewed migrants: “Our contention is that the Mexican aliens are, in a sense, personal property in that they make no decisions as to the means of transportation or destination.” Eventually, the Ins directed most of the airlift business to the Flying Tiger Line of Burbank, California. Starting in June 1951, up to three twin-engine, sixty-passenger C-46 Flying Tiger Line planes began making nightly seven-hour deportation runs from southern California to Guadalajara. Over the next year the airline transported more than 34,000 deportees to Guadalajara on the service's behalf.⁷

Though the Ins found the airlift effective, limited congressional funding forced the agency to suspend it in 1952. Two years later, during Operation Wetback, the Ins opted for a cheaper alternative, contracting Pacific Greyhound bus line to transport Mexicans apprehended in California to Nogales, Arizona, where Mexican officials used chartered trains to take them away from the border. Mexican authorities might have agreed to assist the United States in principle, but in many cases deportees never made it very far south. Desertions from the trainlifts “occurred in large numbers,” with some deportees “bribing the train guards to turn their backs” when the deportees disembarked at transportation hubs that facilitated their return to the border. On one trip, Gilbert P. Trujillo, an undercover Border Patrol inspector, reported that only two of the sixty deportees remained on the train when it arrived at its final destination. Mexican transportation companies profited from this arrangement. Yellow Line, a bus company, “believed that such aliens should be permitted to go where they chose” and told U.S. officials that “bus lines in Mexico would transport [deportees] where they wished to go at reduced rates if necessary to secure the business.” Yellow Line once sent at least six buses, each with a fifty-person capacity, to San Luis, Sonora, on the Arizona-Mexico border, to take deportees who had left the trainlift back to Mexicali and Tijuana, on Mexico's border with California. Given the ineffectiveness of the buslift and trainlift, and the airlift's prohibitive cost, Ins officials were eager to find another way to deport people deep into the Mexican interior. As Operation Wetback wound down in the fall of 1954, they turned to large, ramshackle ships as a possible solution.⁸

Bananas North, Deportees South

From September 3, 1954, to August 24, 1956, immigration officials contracted two Mexican companies, Transportes Marítimos y Fluviales (Tmf) and Transportes Marítimos Refrigerados, S.A. (Tmr), to transport deportees 550 miles south, from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico. (See figure 1.) Initially, Attorney General Herbert Brownell recommended the use of U.S. Navy ships, but concerns about the Mexican public's potential reaction to “the arrival in Mexican port of a United States warship discharging Mexican nationals” led officials to choose privately contracted Mexican-flagged vessels. The first ship to transport deportees was the Emancipación, the Tmf-owned “1800-ton riveted steel construction passenger-cargo vessel” seen in Hockaday's home movie. The U.S. and Mexican governments approved the ship to carry up to eight hundred deportees per trip. Starting in June 1955, because of increased demand and frequent mechanical and weather-induced delays, the Veracruz joined the Emancipación in making weekly deportation runs. The impetus for the boatlift came from the United States, but the Mexican government collaborated on the selection and inspection of vessels, shared responsibility for the custody of deportees, and helped pay for the operation.⁹

For private shipping companies already hauling bananas, cement, and other cargo from Mexico to the United States, deportees represented a potential moneymaking opportunity for the return trip south. But to win the boatlift contract Tmf, and later Tmr, needed to make offers to transport as many people at the lowest possible cost. In doing so, they created conditions onboard that, though approved by the U.S. and Mexican governments, led some to refer to the vessels as “hell ships” comparable to “black slavers.” The Mexican government received numerous complaints about the Emancipación as early as January 1955 and became “increasingly concerned about [the ship's] continued use” and the “possibility of a disaster.” That summer, the Mexican government called for the inspection of all flagships after the passenger vessel La Flecha sank during a storm and some thirty people drowned. It sent José T. Rocha, the Mexican official in charge of the bracero program, to personally examine the Emancipación at Brownsville. Rocha found the concerns about the vessel justified and reported back to Secretary of the Interior Gustavo Díaz Ordaz that using the ships would be dangerous in bad weather. Other officials also expressed serious doubts about the Veracruz. On the eve of the ship's first trip, the Mexican ambassador to the United States sent a cautionary letter to the U.S. secretary of state warning against integrating the Veracruz into the boatlift. Citing the “bad conditions and small dimensions … which must inevitably occasion crowding and unjustified inconveniences,” the ambassador called the boat “unsafe” and described the conditions onboard as “inhumane.” He made it clear that the Mexican government would not take responsibility in the event of an accident and, moreover, “such responsibility would fall upon the American authorities that ordered this form of deportation.”¹⁰

Critiques of the Emancipación and Veracruz in the Mexican press became more biting and more frequent during the summer of 1955, leading the Mexican government to act. A July 25 article in La Prensa described the trip aboard the Emancipación as “painful and inhuman,” adding that the deportees are treated like prisoners and “transported like cattle.” The article concluded by warning that “it is feared … that the Emancipación will suffer the same tragedy as ‘La Flecha.’” On August 29, 1955, the Mexican government refused to clear the Emancipación and Veracruz for passenger transport. Neither ship made any trips for the next six weeks, forcing the Ins to rely on other methods to deport thousands of people. Detainees who had been transported to McAllen from El Paso were sent back to El Paso, and the Ins had little choice but to expel them just across the border or by trainlift to Monterrey.¹¹

Factors other than negative press coverage were also at play. Mexican officials may have had less power than their U.S. counterparts, but they still exercised considerable control over the boatlift. Some Mexican bureaucrats even enriched themselves from the deportation machine. The Mexican government did not call for the end of the entire operation in response to the public outrage over the boatlift; it called instead for the termination of Tmf's contract. As a possible replacement company, Rocha suggested Tmr. What he did not mention, but Ins officials soon learned, was that “Mr. José T. Rocha [was] a member and stock-holder of the firm Transportes Marítimos Refrigerados, S.A.”¹²

The Mexican navy finally cleared the Emancipación and Veracruz for use transporting deportees and the boatlift resumed on October 16 with Tmf remaining the provider. Just over a week later, however, Ins commissioner Joseph M. Swing expressed his desire to utilize the vessels Mercurio and Frida, owned by Tmr. Swing officially claimed that the ships were “smaller and better conditioned,” but the six-week hiatus, ongoing negative press in Mexico, and pressure from Mexican government officials “who would apparently like to get their ships in business” also pushed the Ins to act. “The Mexican Ministry of the Interior has assured us that it desires and endorses the change,” Swing noted.¹³

By the end of the year Tmr had prevailed. After Tmf's boats had expelled 32,797 people on forty-one different trips, the Mercurio, a vessel built originally for the Canadian navy in World War II, left Port Isabel bound for Veracruz on New Year's Eve 1955 with 450 deportees onboard. (See figure 2.) Although the Ins's agreement with Tmr stipulated that “no member of or delegate to Congress, or resident Commissioner, shall be admitted to any share or part of this contract, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom,” that clause seems to have only applied to U.S. officials. The Ins was aware of Rocha's conflict of interest and the corruption involved in pushing the agency to drop Tmf in favor of Tmr. But that did not matter: the Ins cared much more about continuing the boatlift and obtaining buy-in from the Mexican government than about which contractor carried it out or whether a Mexican official stood to financially benefit. The boatlift was indispensable to the Ins, based on the conviction of Swing and other officials that deporting Mexicans “to points distant from their place of employment and apprehension in the United States is the most effective means of preventing their unlawful return to this country.”¹⁴

Although Ins officials may have been indifferent regarding which company carried out the boatlift, the terms of the new contract with Tmr shaped immigration policy in consequential ways. The two sides initially agreed that the Mercurio would carry between 400 and 450 deportees per voyage, but after the first trip the maximum number increased to five hundred. Because that change would result in more profits for Tmr and more deportations for the Ins, both parties were amenable to the modification. When Tmr guaranteed to provide a minimum of five trips per month carrying at least four hundred deportees per trip, the Ins set a quota of boatlifting two thousand people per month, regardless of need.¹⁵

Hoping to avoid delays similar to those encountered with the Emancipación and Veracruz, the Ins insisted on exclusive use of the Mercurio. Prior to the agreement with the Ins, Tmr had dedicated its ships to transporting bananas from the Mexican state of Tabasco. But when tropical storms devastated Tabasco's banana plantations in 1955, the company's only source of income disappeared. Tmr saw the boatlift as a stopgap while banana production recovered and as an opportunity to diversify and expand its business. Even though Tmr's vessels were cargo ships not conditioned or approved for passenger transport, the company hoped to transport bananas north and deportees south.¹⁶

Tmr may have initially agreed to enter into an exclusive contract with the Ins when it had no bananas to transport, but when the banana business picked up again the company instead promised to use two ships to make eight trips per month for the Ins while also fulfilling the needs of its “steady banana customers.” A Tmr representative explained to U.S. officials that the Mercurio and Frida had long been used to haul bananas, and he did not want to “neglect his former customers completely for a short term contract [with the Ins].” Though U.S. officials did not want to enter into this nonexclusive contract, they eventually did. The new arrangement led to routine delays related to the Mercurio picking up Tabasco bananas and hauling them to customers in places such as Alabama. The ship also needed to be scrubbed down on either end, “after unloading bananas and after unloading gente.” But, despite this inconvenience, the U.S. government's desire to maintain uninterrupted boatlift service, Rocha's personal financial interest, and Tmr's goal of maximizing returns resulted in continuing the operation. Soon thereafter, Tmr installed air-conditioning in the between deck: not for the deportees but to ensure that the bananas arrived in good condition.¹⁷ (See figure 3.)

In addition to their willful neglect of Mexican migrants' physical welfare aboard the ships, U.S. officials also made deportees provide financial support to sustain the boatlift. The Ins paid Tmf and Tmr $8 or $9 per deportee ($77–$86 today), but soon after the operation commenced the service defrayed part of this cost by collecting money from people deemed able to pay—although not all who were able to pay did. In total, the Ins paid Tmf and Tmr around $400,000 ($3.84 million today) over seventy-six boatlifts. At the same time, they collected $32,850 ($315,000 today) from deportees on forty trips, defraying 8 percent of the overall cost and nearly 20 percent of the cost of the trips during which they solicited funds. Forcing Mexicans to subsidize their own expulsion enabled the Ins to apprehend, detain, and boatlift even more people. This in turn benefited private firms eager to profit from migrants' misfortune.¹⁸

U.S. officials also had other reasons for wanting to extend the boatlift. The ships used in the operation functioned, as William Walters has argued about vehicles used to deport people in general, as “mobile sites of power” and “mobile zones of governance.” Although the Justice Department claimed that the boatlift “wasn't punishment for the wetbacks but only served to teach them a lesson,” Commissioner Swing's testimony before the House Appropriations Committee in February 1955 left little doubt about the operation's real purpose. “‘They (the Mexicans) hate the boat trip like a devil hates holy water. They get out and they get seasick and the boat lift is the most salutary thing that we have hit on yet.’” How the Ins deported people mattered, and officials hoped the conditions on the ships, along with the destination deep in the Mexican interior, would traumatize migrants and deter future unauthorized migration.¹⁹

The Human Costs of the Business of Deportation

What did deportation as punishment and profit-making enterprise look like to migrants on the ground or, in this case, on the sea? What was it like to be boatlifted? What were the human costs of the business of deportation?

After apprehending migrants, the government transported those slated for the boatlift to the McAllen Detention Camp in the lower Rio Grande Valley. (See figure 4.) The facility had an official capacity of five hundred but often filled to more than twice that amount and sometimes held as many as two thousand people. “The matter of excess numbers and prolonged detention,” an official reported in early 1955, “has caused unrest among the prisoners and has resulted in escape attempts and, on one occasion, a mass demonstration.” In the middle of the night on March 1, three teenage migrants tried to scale the fence in the northeast corner of the camp. Two of the boys stopped after officer Carl G. Cole fired a warning shot, but seventeen-year-old Porfirio Flores Pruneda kept climbing. As he reached the top and attempted to navigate his body through the concertina wire, Cole took aim with his shotgun. Flores Pruneda dropped to the ground after two shotgun pellets struck him in the back and another two lodged in his leg. A doctor removed the round, metal masses, dressed what he described as “very slight” wounds, and told officials they could send Flores Pruneda on the next boatlift. Responding to such escape attempts, the Ins recommended measures to tighten security at the camp, from requiring more vigilance from agents when searching detainees to repositioning watch towers and illuminating the external fence.²⁰

The vast majority of boatlifted Mexicans never went before an immigration judge and never had the chance to fight to stay. This included people who had long lived in the interior of the United States. Instead, the Ins deported them via a coercive, fast-track administrative procedure the government euphemistically called “voluntary departure.”²¹

Approximately two hours before the scheduled departure of the Emancipación, Veracruz, or Mercurio, Ins officials loaded detainees onto as many as ten or twenty buses and placed their baggage and personal effects onto separate trucks for transfer to Port Isabel. (See figure 5.) When a bus broke down, the Ins forced deportees to “double up.” Crowding twice the number of recommended people onto a bus violated laws and regulations but was a common practice. On an inspection trip to McAllen in 1953, Border Patrol official Harlon B. Carter noted, “Our officers call this the ‘Border Patrol Pack,’ and comment facetiously upon the extent they have improved upon the sardine canning industry.” Though authorities were aware of the danger of overloading buses, they refused to release detainees, spend more money on transportation, or cut down on migrant apprehensions.²²

Upon arriving at Port Isabel, deportees were loaded onto the ship and forced to descend into the forward below deck, their place of confinement until the vessel departed. As soon as the ship cast off, most, if not all, deportees returned to the top deck. A trip when someone jumped overboard was “not at all unusual.” During the first month of the boatlift two deportees did so. “Two wetbacks lived up to their name,” read the lede to a Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, Tx) story, adding that it “was unreported whether the men left the boat in a swan dive or half-gainer, or whether they used the Australian crawl or a free-style stroke to reach shore.” Despite an extensive search by Border Patrol boats and observation airplanes, the men were never found, which “threw the Border Patrol in a tizzy, although one high B.P. Official said the U.S. Government's responsibilities ended when the wetbacks were loaded aboard.” To prevent the recurrence of such an event, a Border Patrol boat followed each ship full of deportees until it cleared the channel.²³

Onboard the ships, U.S. and Mexican immigration officials and Mexican shipping company representatives cooperated in the administration of the boatlift. Generally, an Ins officer, a Mexican migration official, and a Mexican doctor joined the captain, crew, and deportees. The doctor vaccinated all deportees and tended to any sick or injured passengers, while the U.S. and Mexican officials maintained general order, broke up fights, mediated accusations of theft, and stopped illicit gambling. Ins officers also acted as intelligence gatherers, questioning deportees about their experiences and future plans.²⁴

Gender norms and expectations influenced how officials policed deportees aboard the ships. Reporting on the second boatlift ever, on September 9, 1954, a U.S. newspaper noted: “In contrast with the first cruise, which was strictly stag, the trip of the SsEmancipación which began today was co-educational.” Adult men made up the vast majority of boatlift passengers, but the Emancipación and Veracruz also carried a considerable number of women and children, who at times represented more than 10 percent of the eight hundred deportees. In some cases boatlifts swept up entire families. Women and children usually stayed in the passenger-class cabins. When cabins were not available, they received reclining canvas deck chairs and cots on a separate deck of the ship. The women and children's quarters were almost always off limits to men and, in some instances, the crew took extensive measures to regulate contact between the sexes. On an August 1955 Veracruz boatlift, officials roped off all points leading to the women's deck and then stood guard. The patrol inspector on that trip reported that “these steps proved very effective and as a result, indications of prostitution were not present.”²⁵

Business interests and socioeconomic status also shaped the experiences of boatlifted deportees. Whereas cabins on the Emancipación and Veracruz were initially reserved for women and children, Tmf's desire to maximize profits led them to start renting cabins for $5–$10 per night ($48–$96 today) to “aliens having the necessary funds.” In theory, cabins were to be rented only if extra were available after all women and children were accommodated. However, exceptions occurred. On the December 6, 1954, boatlift, which carried sixty-three women and twenty-two children, four-person cabins packed in six adult women. Tmf's desire to ramp up profits exceeded its desire to provide deportees comfortable facilities.²⁶

Authorities usually relegated men to the hold and the open deck, where tarps blocked the sun and rain. Deportees often contended with inclement weather. Passengers on the January 2, 1955, boatlift complained about a lack of blankets and said they were “too cold to sleep at night.” Patrol Inspector Marvin L. Butler Jr., who accompanied the Emancipación on that trip, largely dismissed these complaints: “While cool nights, and in some cases, insufficient clothing did serve to make them more or less uncomfortable, I do not believe there was any real suffering from the cold.” But deportees on the open deck certainly contended with adverse climactic conditions. When the Mercurio encountered rough waters soon after leaving Port Isabel on March 19, 1956, “the bow-splash kept those who stayed on deck wet and cold.”²⁷

Still, most deportees stayed on the ships' open decks since the holds were “hot and crowded,” “very filthy and foul-smelling.” A south Texas newspaper noted that even the Mercurio, whose below-deck area was air-conditioned for the transport of bananas, “is undoubtedly messy and must be crowded when from 400 to 500 wetbacks pile aboard.” A political cartoon that ran in the government-aligned Excélsior (Mexico City), one of the nation's two major national daily newspapers, critiqued the boatlift by depicting Mexican laborers as sardines packed into a tin labeled “Mercurio I.” (See figure 6.) While one government inspection found that several overhead floodlights illuminated the Mercurio's hold around the clock, another claimed there were only two lights, one forward and one aft, and darkness prevailed “for over 170 feet amidships.” A couple of small barrels of potable water sat at each end of the hold. Although the Ins's contracts with Tmf and Tmr stipulated that the service would provide mattresses or install bunks, such actions would have added costs, and these sleeping accommodations never appeared. On the Mercurio deportees used life jackets as pillows and bedding.²⁸

The boatlift also offers insights into the intersection of social control, public health, and the state's coercive efforts to regulate immigrants deemed dangerous. Soon after leaving Port Isabel, the ship's doctor began administering smallpox vaccinations to deportees. Officials sometimes stamped meal tickets as proof of vaccination, which migrants then had to present to receive a meal. Authorities kept track of who had already received food in hopes of preventing people from getting more than one portion. Someone caught trying to do so was denied a future meal as punishment. Feeding occurred in shifts since just thirty-to-fifty people could be accommodated at once. Long lines were common, and the crews often served food almost all day and night. Gabriel Esquivel, a twenty-six-year-old migrant apprehended in California, flown to Brownsville, and boatlifted in 1955, described his desperation from hunger but having to wait until night to eat because so many people were in line ahead of him. During the Veracruz's first boatlift, on June 11, 1955, a bottleneck occurred when men began crowding to the front. According to the patrol inspector, “This situation was alleviated and corrected for subsequent meals by the rigging of firehoses and threatening to turn them on the aliens in a state of semi-riot.” In addition to the lengthy waits and violent treatment at the hands of immigration officials monitoring the meals, deportees also complained about the food's quality. “The food is the worst,” one man told a Mexican newspaper. “Poorly done and undercooked rice, beans without salt, and watery coffee.” On a May 1956 boatlift, deportees complained that “‘the beans were spoiled and the rice was sour’” and people “seemed to think that they were sick from the food rather than being seasick.”²⁹

Seasickness was a real problem, though, and affected a considerable number of deportees. On one trip the patrol inspector reported that “seasickness was prevalent,” adding that “most cases were not serious, however a few appeared desperately ill.” From March to August 1956, the Mercurio's logs indicated that, depending on the conditions, anywhere from 5 to 60 percent of the five hundred passengers were seasick. Rough seas caused as many as three-quarters of the deportees to fall ill on some runs. As a twenty-five-year-old Michoacán native recounted, “I was seasick the entire voyage and decided that I would not return to the United States illegally because I never wanted to get on another ship.” Even if a deportee did not become seasick, the seasickness of others and the “resulting mess” affected the conditions for all.³⁰

The U.S. and Mexican governments and private Mexican contractors did not prioritize onboard safety. The Ins-Tmf contract specified that the Emancipación and Veracruz, which each transported eight hundred deportees per trip plus the crew, should carry “four (4) seaworthy lifeboats each with a capacity of thirty-seven (37) adult passengers.” It also called for eight hundred lifejackets, but even that would not have been enough for the deportees plus captain, crew, doctor, and migration officials on board. Upon inspecting the Mercurio prior to its enlistment in the boatlift, a Mexican naval official called on Tmr to place an adequate number of life rafts onboard in addition to lifeboats to account for the total number of crew and passengers. The Mexican government later approved the ship for use provided that it carry an additional ten to fifteen life rafts. However, it seems that Tmr never complied. The company's contract with the U.S. government required the Mercurio to carry only two lifeboats, each with a twenty-four-person capacity. The patrol inspector accompanying the vessel on April 11, 1956, reported that it carried two lifeboats and five rubber rafts, in addition to “an undetermined amount of life jackets which, considering the amount of passengers, seemed hardly adequate in case of an emergency.” An official inspection later concluded that the total capacity of the lifeboats and rafts was 356. But U.S. and Mexican officials repeatedly approved the Mercurio to carry up to five hundred passengers, in addition to twenty-six crew members.³¹

The Ins attempted to evade U.S. safety-inspection laws to expedite deportations and continue the boatlift. Though the Ins's initial petition to the secretary of defense to waive “safety-of-life at sea requirements” for the Mercurio was unsuccessful, it seems that officials later approved the exemption. The United States argued that waiving inspection requirements was “in the interest of national defense” because, in the context of the Cold War, the “constant presence of such a large number of [Mexican] aliens whose loyalty could not be determined constituted an ever present and serious security threat.” By waiving U.S. inspection requirements, the Mercurio had to comply only with Mexican safety standards. As a U.S. official pointed out in a draft of a letter later amended to omit this section: “Mexico is not a signatory nation to the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea, 1948, and while its vessels are adequate for its own standards, they do not generally conform to the United States inspection requirements.” Safety was not a priority for any of the parties carrying out the boatlift since, in financial terms, adhering to lesser requirements allowed the governments to deport more people at a lower cost and enabled the companies to maximize their profits.³²

Most boatlifted deportees arrived safely in Veracruz, but at least two deportees aboard the Emancipación died of heart attacks. On January 31, 1955, Gen. Frank Partridge, a special assistant to the commissioner, inquired about whether the United States was “bound to acknowledge [the first death] with Mex. Govt.” The second man, Manuel Arroyo Hernández, died of a heart attack at 3:30 am on August 23, 1955, and was “buried at sea as per instructions” of the Public Health Office at Veracruz. It is unclear whether U.S. or Mexican officials contacted either man's family, or if anyone took legal action against either government. What is clear, however, is that Ins leaders considered covering up these tragedies to avoid a diplomatic standoff or negative press coverage that might have jeopardized the entire operation.³³

Upon arriving at Veracruz, Mexican migration officials met the ship and transferred deportees to a large warehouse near the dock, where they were processed, examined by a doctor, and given sandwiches, fruit, and the chance to exchange dollars for pesos. Usually on each trip between a dozen to twenty of the deportees were “repeaters”—people who had been deported before—plus others who avoided detection by using false names or other means. Mexican authorities separated repeaters from other deportees, lectured them, and, at the behest of the U.S. government, took them to Allende Prison in hopes that a short jail stint would discourage future migration. In some instances, rumors spread about repeaters receiving harsh prison sentences, but in reality, they usually ranged from a few days to a couple of weeks. On occasion, Mexican immigration officials released repeaters without requiring any jail time. The motivation of the authorities ranged from bribery to pity, as when they chose not to imprison any of the seventeen repeaters who arrived on Christmas Eve 1954.³⁴

For the vast majority of the migrants, Veracruz was only an intermediate point on their deportation journey. Despite the U.S. government's claim that expelling people via boatlift would put them closer to their homes, the vast majority of deportees came from the historic migration region in central-western Mexico or from the border region. From Veracruz most deportees were sent to Mexico City. Those who had money could pay for a ticket aboard chartered buses run by Mexican companies such as ADO. Others bribed Mexican officials to stay in Veracruz. Deportees who could afford neither a bus ticket nor a bribe were herded onto freight train boxcars that the Mexican government funded. This slow trip to the capital took forty hours, considerably longer than by bus or the twelve-hour trip on the first-class Pullman trains. Upon arriving in Mexico City, deportees continued by bus, train, or on foot to their homes. Eustacio Maldonado Martínez, who arrived without any money, described the difficult journey home to the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas: “The trip was very hard since I had to walk a long distance each time in order to reach my home…. I wore out my shoes and had to walk from Mexico, D.F. to Mantes without shoes.” Leopoldo Belmontes Ramos, from the central-western state of Michoacán, had a similarly trying experience. “I had no money for transportation and had to walk all the way to my home. I begged for food from houses along the way and did whatever work I could find.” Others returned directly to the northern border to try their luck once more, but some decided that they were done. As one man declared, “The boat trip was very bad for me and if I ever got on land again I would never get on another boat or take the chance of being sent to Veracruz again.”³⁵

None of these hardships were unintentional. The dreadful onboard conditions, the trips taken on rough waters, and the removal of deportees to points not only far from the border but also far from their homes were all products of the operation's punitive, for-profit nature. The boatlift across the Gulf of Mexico was grueling by design. And immigration authorities and company officials tried to maximize the number of deportees subjected to this traumatic form of expulsion. In fiscal year 1956, the Ins used the boatlift to expel more than 40 percent of all Mexicans apprehended in the Border Patrol's Southwest Region, and during some months that figure topped 60 percent.³⁶

In early August 1956, Democratic congressman Robert H. Mollohan, chairman of the Legal and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee under the House Committee on Government Operations, called for an investigation into the operation and into whether the Mercurio met the U.S. Coast Guard's safety and sanitation standards. He found reprehensible the U.S. and Mexican governments' approval of the vessel's use and compared it to an eighteenth-century slave ship, opining that it “seems shameful to subject these aliens to penal conditions and practices that Western civilization abandoned over a century ago.” In addition, Mollohan wondered how five hundred deportees could possibly fit onto a ship that previously carried seventy to ninety people. “I am sure that the people of this Nation will not countenance the transportation of human beings on a standard which appears to be below that required for the hauling of livestock.”³⁷

In response to growing criticism and pressure resulting from Mollohan's investigation, navy captain John D. Reese Jr. was called upon to inspect the Mercurio. Strong accusations notwithstanding, Ins officials believed themselves on firm ground. “I'm not preocupado … about the inspection,” Charles Beechie, the Ins attaché in Mexico City, wrote. “We can't (and shouldn't try) to make a luxury liner out of a ship that has been operating out of Mexico with a Mex crew for years, but I think she'll be plenty presentable.” Moreover, he continued, “now that I have learned that the hold Is air-conditioned, I'm convinced that we couldn't do better. Sure hope we come out on top.” Reese inspected the ship on August 24, 1956, accompanied by other Ins officials, the local Mexican consul, and other Mexican migration officials. Responding to Mollohan's accusations of overcrowding, Reese explained that although the Mercurio had held ninety to one hundred people during its use by the Canadian navy, Tmr converted the ship after purchasing it. “The wetbacks now are berthed,” he stated, “in the tween decks which periodically are used as cargo space for bananas.” In other words, five hundred people now occupied the same space as ninety before, squeezed in like the yellow fruit for which the ship's hold had been designed. Echoing Beechie, Reese told reporters, “It is no luxury liner, but it appears to do the job.”³⁸

Reese and other migration officials' perceptions of Mexican migrants shaped the process of expulsion and the cruel treatment of deportees. As Reese explained in an attempt to justify onboard conditions, the boatlift's accommodations “must take into consideration the character and type of individual being transported.” He then proceeded to describe the “character of the wetback.” His conclusions, among others, included:

The wetback, by and large, has never been accustomed to the necessities of life, much less luxuries.

Most wetbacks have never known what it is like to sleep in a modern bed, most of them living in the open, sleeping on the ground and living in general not much better than animals.

Many of the wetbacks are not used to such modern conveniences as wash basins and toilet facilities…. It was explained by the officer in charge of the [McAllen] camp that the wetbacks frequently make their toilet in the wash basins, and wash their hands and face in the toilet bowls.

Many wetbacks do not sleep in the same position as the average American, but squat on their haunches and bury their heads in their arms.

During 1951, the Immigration and Naturalization Service weighed approximately 10,000 wetbacks to determine an average weight. The figure, complete with personal belongings, was 110 pounds.

These findings supported a patrol inspector's earlier assertion that the “conditions on the [Emancipación] were reasonably good considering the type of persons being handled.” At the end of his inspection, Reese and Mexican migration officials concluded that the Mercurio was in compliance with its contract and announced that the vessel would sail that same day with a full load of deportees. What they did not know then was that it would be the ship's final trip and the last boatlift ever.³⁹

The End of the Boatlift

In the early hours of August 26, 1956, a mutinous uprising on the Mercurio led by deportees upset about their treatment and the boatlift's conditions forced Captain Jorge Noval Espinosa to reroute the Veracruz-bound ship to Tampico. As a man who had been apprehended eleven times and boatlifted four times told Ins officials, even before the last trip deportees felt that “the Mercurio was not fit to haul human beings, that it was alright for cargo, but not for human beings.” Once the ship anchored near the Tampico dock, around forty deportees jumped overboard. Those who did may have hoped that reaching Mexican soil would void any jurisdiction or power boatlift officials had over them. Some insisted that they jumped after the captain refused to let them off at Tampico instead of Veracruz. A petition later circulated, which supposedly gathered more than three hundred signatures of those who also insisted on a Tampico disembarkation. After making it to shore, a few deportees contacted the Mexican press and encouraged others to describe the boatlift's conditions, as well as how they were treated.⁴⁰

Some deportees who jumped overboard never made it ashore. Reports in the press varied, claiming either four or five had drowned. At first, the Ins denied that anyone had died, but a couple of days later three bodies were found. An article in the Noticias de Tampico newspaper conjectured that the men were “probably devoured by sharks that abound in these waters,” a guess that proved to be somewhat prophetic. When the U.S. vice consul at Tampico and a local clerk went to identify the bodies, they could only take thumbprints because of their “rapid decomposition” and missing body parts. Despite their physical state, two of the men were identified as wearing Levi's pants, which led the U.S. consul to conclude “that the three men were very possibly ‘wetbacks’ who were traveling aboard the Ss MERCURIO.”⁴¹

The Tampico incident resulted in Ins investigations and denunciations in the U.S. and Mexican press. A U.S. newspaper editorial stated that the conditions aboard the Mercurio “ought to be made the object of an investigation by an international tribune.” The Mexico City–based Zócalo placed the blame on Mexico: “We should be ashamed that we do nothing effective to prevent them from going to provide their services elsewhere.” The Excélsior described the Mercurio as “old and unsafe” and opined that the conditions were worse than those endured by Chinese “culíes.” Another Excélsior article lamented that “not a single Mexican voice protested, until now, that 500 Mexicans were treated like animals.”⁴²

Members of the Mexican Congress also voiced strong opinions and called for an investigation. “It's inhuman what happened. Extremely unfortunate. Necessary steps should be taken so that it doesn't happen again,” said one congressman. Two of his colleagues described the incident as “profoundly painful for Mexico” and noted that although the United States had the right to deport people, “the deportations should be humane. Our emigrants are men, not animals.”⁴³

Yet in the weeks leading up to the Tampico incident, Mexican officials had defended the conditions onboard the Mercurio. In mid-August, Mexican migration officials reported on the satisfactory nature of the food, safety and sanitary conditions, medical attention, and general treatment of deportees. The Mexican consul in Brownsville insisted his government would not allow the ship to sail if they deemed it unsafe. But, like their U.S. counterparts, Mexican officials also used degrading stereotypes to describe deportees. Even after the Tampico incident, the Mexican migration chief at Matamoros dismissed deportees' complaints as “typical”: “They will never be satisfied, with any food or any treatment…. As for not having beds,” he continued, “they would have torn them apart. I tell you, you don't know these people. They are my people, but they are bad some of them, and they would complain if you fed them a banquet.”⁴⁴

Other Mexican government officials felt that the bad press surrounding the Tampico incident was politically motivated since it fell less than a week before the president's state of the nation address. The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Pri), the ruling party, was “extremely embarrassed and upset.” The opposition Partido Acción Nacional (Pan) seized the opportunity: “The events in Tampico constitute a national embarrassment,” the Pan proclaimed and laid the blame on the Pri for ignoring the inhumane treatment of Mexican migrants. Captain Noval also harbored stereotypes about deportees and used them to discredit critics and clear himself—and in turn the Pri—of any wrongdoing. He slandered the deportees in the press, asserting that among those aboard the Mercurio during the Tampico incident “were numerous bad actors, thieves, homosexuals, escaped prisoners from Mexico and agitators that dedicated themselves to provoke discontent that ended in the uprising.” He claimed elsewhere that the group also included many thugs, delinquents, and drug traffickers. But records prove that these characterizations did not accurately describe the vast majority of Mexicans aboard the last boatlift.⁴⁵

By describing deportees as criminals, and worse, U.S. and Mexican government officials and Tmr representatives attempted to justify their treatment of migrants and deflect blame from themselves in hopes of continuing the boatlift. Their efforts failed. At the end of August, the Mexican government terminated the boatlift in response to investigations and growing criticism in the U.S. and Mexican press, as well as throughout Mexican society. The following week a Mexican official announced that migrants “will never again be transported like beasts.”⁴⁶

The Ins made multiple attempts to reinitiate the boatlift, believing that deporting Mexicans into the interior of the country “ha[d] prove[n] to be an effective weapon in [its] all-out campaign to rid the country of the wetback menace.” Swing, for his part, warned that “in order to maintain continued control of the border, steps should be taken immediately to resume the repatriation of wetbacks by sea,” and he urged State Department officials to pressure the Mexican government. Despite the Ins's and Tmr's desire to extend the boatlift, that action required the approval of all involved parties and the Mexican government was not willing to do so.⁴⁷

The boatlift's termination may have hurt Tmr, but it opened up new opportunities for other transportation companies both in the immediate aftermath and in the decades to come. The Ins first turned to charter bus companies and Mexican government-operated trainlifts, and then reinitiated the airlift to León, Guanajuato, deep in Mexico's interior, in November 1957 to avoid deporting Mexicans just over the land border.⁴⁸

In the following decades, private U.S. and Mexican carriers deported millions of migrants. People on both sides of the border were critical of the for-profit interior lifts, albeit for different reasons. For example, in the mid-1970s, U.S. companies hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning deportation business could not have been pleased with the effort of immigration authorities to contract Mexican companies to “make the program more palatable” to the Mexican government. The Ins went as far as allowing representatives of Mexican bus companies and airlines to enter detention facilities in the San Diego sector to sell tickets to deportees, which sometimes led to kickback schemes that lined the pockets of U.S. and Mexican officials. During a six-month period around the same time, five different contract airlines, including at least some based in the United States, transported more than 23,000 people from the border to the Mexican interior at a cost of $2.75 million ($12.3 million today). In Mexico, rumors spread that deportees were being removed “under sub-human conditions (e.g. in ‘chicken coop’ cages on freight air planes) and deprived of earnings and other rights.” Upon arriving in Mexico City, deportees from different parts of the country frequently found themselves stranded and received no help from the Mexican government. Meanwhile, U.S. newspaper reports in 1976 described the airlifts as luxurious to a fault, noting that deportees were “just like any tourist taking the ‘Fiesta Flight’ to Mexico,” during which they were “served dinner and, if they wanted it, California champagne” on the U.S. government's dime. Despite these controversies and the substantial expense to the U.S. government, immigration authorities remained convinced that interior repatriation was a “significant and cost effective deterrent to illegal reentry,” which led them to rely on the lifts whenever possible.⁴⁹

The Lessons and Legacy of the Business of Deportation

Deportation remains a big business. In fiscal year 2016 alone, U.S. officials deported more than 110,000 people on chartered planes and another 6,100 on commercial flights. The map of internal and international airlifts is so extensive that one source described it as “look[ing] like a page from a commercial carrier's in-flight magazine.” Moreover, in recent years for-profit prison companies such as the GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America) have secured government contracts and influenced state laws and federal policy, contributing to the expansion of immigration detention and the carceral state. By 2017, immigration detention made up around 25 percent of the two companies' portfolios, up from 13 percent and 10 percent a decade earlier. During the same period, the GEO Group's revenue increased more than 250 percent, reaching an all-time high of $2.3 billion in 2017. The companies each contributed $250,000 to Donald J. Trump's inauguration festivities. Over the president's first eighteen months in office, GEO Group and CoreCivic combined spent more than $3 million on federal lobbying—and the Department of Homeland Security granted them a total of $800 million in contracts.⁵⁰

Public policies have propelled the boom in immigration detention and the growth of the enforcement bureaucracy, helping make the system more profitable than ever. In 2009 Congress implemented a quota that eventually required as many as 34,000 immigration detention beds to be available on a daily basis, irrespective of need. The current immigration detention capacity is 40,000, which the Trump administration has proposed raising to 52,000 in fiscal year 2019. Similar to the contract between the Ins and Tmr that set a quota of at least 2,000 monthly deportations via boatlift in the mid-1950s, bed mandates have created an artificial floor on detentions. They have also incentivized harsher enforcement policies by limiting the government's ability to rely on less costly, more humane alternatives to detention that could have saved up to $1.44 billion a year. Instead, GEO Group and CoreCivic's shareholders, like Tmf and Tmr's shareholders before them, have benefited financially while taxpayers have footed the bill.⁵¹

Immigrants have, of course, paid the steepest price of all. People held in immigration detention facilities have limited rights and little means of recourse. Noncitizens have frequently been transferred to remote facilities across the country far from their loved ones and lawyers. Many immigrants have also been held in local jails, which have not always been required to meet federal detention standards. Immigration officials have been willing to accept or overlook this. As the Ins senior counsel for field operations explained in May 1998, “It's not in the Ins's interest to force the jails to meet certain standards because we need the space.” Private detention centers have not proven any better and have become notorious for their treacherous conditions, systematic cover-ups of negligent medical care, and widespread abuse by guards. At least 180 people have died in U.S. immigration custody since October 2003.⁵²

Despite this grim reality, the current administration's penchant for threatening people with extended periods in detention has not slowed immigration. Nor have other prevention-through-deterrence measures, past or present—from shipping people deep into the Mexican interior; to building walls and pushing migrants to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in the most isolated, dangerous, and deadly places; to, most recently, forcibly separating detained Central American children and parents who are seeking asylum.⁵³

Though such enforcement efforts have not stopped people from coming to the United States, they have exacted an incalculable toll on migrants over the last century. Although we can hardly quantify the extent of the suffering these policies have caused, this article shows that, for many people, enduring state-sanctioned trauma has been a central element of the immigrant experience. The article also illustrates that to understand the formulation and implementation of deportation policy, scholars must examine the process of expulsion itself and the wide range of public actors and private interests inside and outside the United States that shape it.

Will the violence against noncitizens that has long defined this so-called nation of immigrants ever end? Institutional inertia and the general political climate make it difficult to imagine that things will change anytime soon. Since September 11, 2001, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security two years later, both Democratic and Republican administrations have prioritized national security interests over personal liberties and civil and human rights. The symbolic politics of border and immigration control and the moneyed interests driving them are as strong as ever. And the enforcement bureaucracy has never had so many resources to carry out its century-old mission. Yet, at the same time, an unprecedented number of immigrants and their allies have taken to the streets and the courts. Building on the strategies and struggles of the past, they have mobilized by organizing mass marches, engaging in acts of civil disobedience, and orchestrating sophisticated media campaigns to push for legislative reform and executive action. They have called for abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and have appealed to Congress to implement laws that protect all immigrants and keep families united and free. Their efforts have resulted in important victories, from rallying broad public support for their cause, to halting removals, to winning temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of people. Whether they will succeed in dismantling the deportation machine remains to be seen. But history makes clear that the human costs will continue to be high until our nation's policies no longer prioritize punishment and profits over the well-being of people.

Notes

This article is based on material from his forthcoming book, The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). The author thanks C. J. Alvarez, Dan Amsterdam, Eiichiro Azuma, Xóchitl Bada, A. S. Dillingham, Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, David Gutiérrez, Robert Johnston, the late Michael B. Katz, Paul Kramer, Erika Lee, Peter Pihos, Tom Sugrue, Yukari Takai, Lorrin Thomas, Hilda Vázquez Medina, the four anonymous reviewers, and the JAH editors and staff for their constructive feedback and for their support. He is also grateful to Daniel Immerwahr for making the map, in addition to offering useful suggestions on a draft.

Footnotes