Within the last 10 years approximately 1.7 million Mexicans have been deported from the United States in efforts to reduce alleged crime and in doing so President Obama, Biden, and Trump continue to tie Mexicans living within the United States with presumed illegality. It is practically impossible to discuss immigration without mentioning Mexico which stems from the association of Mexicans as non-citizens following the U.S. succession of Mexico.

Any Mexican natives who chose to continue to reside in their native land were not considered as U.S. citizens due to citizenship historically being tied to one’s apparent whiteness. Mexicans lived under a racial ambiguity from the Anglo-American perspective and were rarely considered white as Mexicans are considered mestizo, meaning only a minority of nobles could claim proximity to whiteness through their Spanish heritage. With these limitations, Mexicans were commonly motivated to denounce their culture and identify with their “superior” European roots in order to get essential human rights like the ability to vote and to own land.

Regardless of whether various assimilation tactics were followed, Mexicans would go on to continue to be seen as racial inferiors and eventually the paramount marker of illegality. With these ties to foreignness illustrated in the rich culture of Mexicans came the ultimate construction of racial otherness which allowed insecure white Americans to exploit Mexicans and generalize them as racial inferiors, which would become the foundation of anti-immigrant rhetoric weaponized against all Latinos who are commonly assumed to be one homogeneous nation of Mexicans. This racial ambiguity is what allows anti-immigration rhetoric in the U.S. to target any person who fits these molds and appears inherently “un-American.”

Further anti-Mexican tactics were used through labor exploitation like the Bracero program making labor as one of the common markers of Mexican illegality. The Bracero program motivated Mexicans to migrate to the U.S. on a work visa yet was one of the greatest examples of exploitation and manipulation of Mexican migrate in the U.S. with its denial to human rights to livable accommodation, minimum wage and instability which caused workers who were wrongfully deported back to Mexico to illegally return to continue to support their U.S. based families. These are the mythical Mexican migrant politicians painted as criminals, drug smugglers, and overall scapegoats for American socioeconomic dissatisfaction. Despite the U.S. constantly exploiting and thriving off of Mexican labor, Mexican communities prevail and resist assimilation creating unique identities such as Chicana/o, Mexican-American, and Tex-Mex which serves as modern refusal to denounce their heritage in order to be seen as citizens which allows for sanctuary cities and immigrant communities to flourish, but also create an easy target for anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Current President Donald Trump previously relied on anti-immigrant voter support in all three of his presidential campaigns, and specifically targeted the U.S.-Mexico border insisting that Mexico will pay not only financially for the border, but metaphorically in the implication that all undesirable immigrants are inherently Mexican. These configurations of Mexicans as the sole face of illegal immigration can be seen not only through political campaigns and physical borders, but through the official end of year immigration enforcement report made public on the official U.S Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website.

Between 2016- 2020 Mexican immigrants remain the most deported group, at its peak making up 62.4% of all total deportations during the 2016 fiscal year. Further proof of racial biases shaping immigration enforcement can be seen in the Supreme Court’s ruling of Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo, which allows ICE agents the legal jurisdiction to stop people based off apparent race or ethnicity, further fueling notions of illegality of any person who fits common stereotypical identifications of an illegal immigrant such as the language spoken, job, skin color, geographic location and clothing. Ability to racially profile and detain residents further emphasizes that common characteristics of Mexican culture and identity will continue to be weaponized against all Latinos due to the initial resistance of assimilation and strong establishment of Mexican-American culture within the United States.

In such times where your skin makes you a walking target it is important to understand the historical context behind such constructions of racial otherness within a nation that prides itself on being the “land of the free.” U.S. immigration laws allowing ICE to assume illegality based on race is inherently anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant, carrying on centuries long attempts at establishing white Americans as superior.

Angelina Godinez lives in South Hadley.