The Appalling History That Enabled Trump’s Immigration Cruelty

At dawn on June 20, 1954, Border Patrol agents erected roadblocks across the Southwest, and reporters rode alongside as officers looked for anyone of “Mexican appearance.” They descended on farms, ranches, warehouses, and neighborhoods, stopping people on highways and pulling workers out of fields. Trucks and buses carried Mexican migrants to detention centers. Trains and airplanes carried them farther away. Some were handed over to Mexican authorities and transported hundreds of miles into the…