A 1950′s-era immigration policy that resulted in the deportation of more than an estimated one million migrants could be resurrected if Ron DeSantis wins the presidential election.
“We’re going to do the Biden 8 million, that’s a big task, Eisenhower had a program in the 50s, so we are going to do that,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis referred to “Operation Wetback” during a televised town hall in Iowa on Tuesday, President Dwight Eisenhower’s mass deportation policy during his presidency.
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The policy’s name is an insensitive term derived to describe the Mexican immigrants who swam across the Rio Grande into the United States.
In the 50s, authorities used military-style tactics to round up and deport as many as 1.3 million migrants - including some who had become American citizens. DeSantis claimed that 8 million migrants have entered the United States illegally, during President Biden’s administration.
“We would focus on the people that have come under Biden and clear those out, 8 million, that won’t happen at the drop of a hat, but I don’t think there’s any other way to secure our country,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis said that every undocumented migrant in the United States would be deported, adding that he’d also eliminate automatic birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
Immigration Attorney Rebecca Black said the mass deportation of migrants would impact all of society.
“I feel it will have a horrendous, horrendous impact on many families, many American families around the country because there are so many blended families where the father or the mother is undocumented. They have established employers, they have relationships and churches and they have kids,” Black said.
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In the 1950s, “Operation Wetback” was successful temporarily in intimidating migrants from coming to America fearing the presence of military and local law enforcement, but Black said there are other solutions.
“Have some sort of meaningful and positive immigration reform, that would fix a lot of problems,” Black said.
Lawyer Shannon Schott said mass deportation would result in several major legal challenges, adding that since the 1950s, constitutional law has developed protecting both US citizens and anyone who is on US soil.
“Anyone who is here, whether they’re documented or undocumented would be entitled to the same protections, and the policies that were in place in the 1950s did not wholly contemplate the constitutional rights of individuals who were affected by those policies,” Schott said.
DeSantis said he’d declare immigration a national emergency if he was elected.
“If we don’t do that, people are going to continue to come illegally because they will say if you get across the border, you get a piece of paper which says come to a trial 2 years in the future. It just doesn’t work,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis also said during the town hall that he’d crack down on asylum requests and promised to finish the border wall and make Mexico pay for it. Donald Trump also promised that but it did not become a reality.