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History Illustrated: The US war on migrants

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1 day ago

History Illustrated: The US war on migrants

Gallery|Migration

History Illustrated is a series of perspectives that puts news events and current affairs into historical context using graphics generated with artificial intelligence.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was under the protection of a US court order when he was deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, in what some US officials have admitted was an “administrative error”.

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The case has led to a barrage of counterclaims by Trump loyalists who, without offering proof, have accused Abrego Garcia of belonging to MS-13, a Salvadoran gang. Abrego Garcia is just one example of the US’s war on migrants, a war with roots that go way back.

For example, the so-called Mexican Repatriation happened between 1929 and 1936, during the Great Depression, when President Herbert Hoover supported cities and states as they deported as many as 1.8 million people.

Former California Senator Joseph Dunn says officials across the US would scan public records for “Mexican-sounding names” and then arrest and deport these people to create job openings.

The thing is, about 60 percent of the people of Mexican descent deported actually were “real Americans” — either US citizens or legal immigrants. In many cases, there was no formal process, only raids and intimidation.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them US citizens or legal residents. These people would end up losing homes and other property worth as much as $6.5bn in today’s dollars.

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In 1954, historians say, the US deported 300,000 undocumented Mexican migrants in an effort known by the racist name “Operation Wetback”. Many reportedly died, and some US citizens were also deported. (President Donald Trump has cited the operation as a personal favourite.)

After 9/11, Arabs, Muslims and South Asians were often racially profiled. In 2017, Trump banned citizens of seven largely Muslim states from visiting the US for 90 days.

More recently, on April 17, 2025, a US appeals court upheld an order for the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the US. “[The Trump administration] is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process,” said Judge J Harvie Wilkinson of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals. Sidestepping due process, the court warned, threatens the very foundation of “constitutional order”.

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