It was known as the Mexican Repatriation, and it began in 1930, as the Great Depression took hold. President Herbert Hoover announced a plan to ensure “American jobs for real Americans” – implying anyone of Mexican descent was not a “real” American.
Historians say more than a million people were forced to go to Mexico, and more than half of them were American citizens. Some families were coerced into “self-deporting.” Others were rounded up by force, even taken from hospitals. One of the most notorious incidents was in Los Angeles, where city police corralled hundreds of people at La Placita Park and put them on trains to Mexico.
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