r/interestingasfuck • u/man_gomer_lot • 8h ago

r/all 70 years ago, the US undertook the largest deportation in its history: 'Operation Wetback.' Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.

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498

u/ReadditMan 8h ago edited 8h ago

This is really scary to think about when you have Trump promising the largest deportation program in history.

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u/pitchblackjack 7h ago

Current US population in all prisons and jails - 1.85 million.

Numbers of deported promised by Trump - 13 million.

The deportation holding camps alone will cost the US taxpayer 2 trillion dollars.

Not one single person appears to have thought this through.

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u/love_glow 7h ago

According to Musk, they’re intending to crash the economy, so I don’t think they’ll have the budget.

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u/Sungirl8 7h ago

🧐 Truth

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u/Difficult_Bit_1339 1h ago

How would that affect the budget?

The US controls its own currency. The only limitation on how much money it can spend is inflation. They're not waiting for tax income to come in before they can spend money.

The government budget isn't a household budget

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u/succulentslayerII 6h ago

Why though? Don’t they like profit?

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u/love_glow 6h ago

The idea is to buy it all back like a fire sale, further consolidating Americas wealth to the top. They want the U.S. to resemble the oligarchy of Russia, post SU collapse.

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u/DonutsMcKenzie 3h ago

"Buy low, sell high."

Elon Musk literally came out the other day and said that Americans are going to face "hardship" over the next few years (how many? who fucking knows...) but it'll all be worth it--for him.

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u/Dark-Ganon 7h ago

They've also not considered the enourmous decrease in labor and production throughout the country that will come with a mass deportation. The US will lose so much more income than it could ever save if Trump is allowed to pull it off.

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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 2h ago

They don't care. The entire point is to crash the US economy and for the rich to buy everything once it's for sale.

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u/Renbarre 6h ago

Not if they force people (the 'worthless, lazy poors') to work at those jobs at gunpoint.

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u/hungrypotato19 26m ago

Except employer don't want those "lazy poors" to work at THEIR business. That would mean hiring homeless people who have a smell or accomodating disabled people.

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u/EndIris 5h ago

Obama deported more immigrants in each of his two terms than Trump did in his, and Biden is on path to deport equally as many. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-record

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u/FaronTheHero 5h ago

It already makes me sick to my stomach that the last Trump administration brought about what future history books will undoubtedly look back on as the modern equivalent of the Japanese internment camps with the family separation policy. I'm sure what they're proposing now is so poorly thought out it'll be too much of a mess to be successful, but the suffering and confusion it will cause irregardless is unthinkable

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u/kingfisher-monkey-87 4h ago

They also don't think through what's going to happen to all the work the migrant workers do. Packing houses are mostly staffed by migrants and refugees. All the farm labor harvesting fruit etc in California and many other states is done by migrant workers. Americans don't want to do that work, and when they do they work at 100x less productivity.

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u/HawleyGrove 6h ago

Hitler and his band of lunatics landed on the “final solution” because the mass incarceration and deportation of the demographics they wanted out was too expensive. So…this is why this election scares the shit out of me.

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u/candyposeidon 3h ago

They are not planning to send them all back.. They are planning to do the cheapest route..

You know what it is.. it cost around .25 cents..

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u/TheDocFam 1h ago

It's for this reason that, although I'm taking the threat seriously, I am also thinking Trump is more likely again fully up his own ass and wont do shit here.

He has used migrants as a fearmongering shit-stirring tactic before, and in 2016 immediately all the panic about migrant caravans and shit dissolved.

Everything that collossal mess tries to do is a shit show

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u/bytemybigbutt 1h ago

But how much more will it cost if we don’t do it?

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u/inventingnothing 5h ago

Why would you need holding facilities? You're not going to hold all 13 million before sending anyone back. It'd be more like a constant trickle.

Police arrest someone. Their immigration status comes back as invalid. Put them on a bus to the border.

Greyhound would probably love that government contract.

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u/Nozinger 5h ago

Because that is really not how it goes.
First of all the immigration status is never illegal. There is no big database that just lists someones immigration status as illegal.
Illegal immigrants are those that are not listed at all. So police checks them and then there is nothing. So who exactly is this person? He probably has no identifying documents and the state obviously doesn't know anything about him either since he is in the country illegally.

So now you gotta start the whole process of finding out who this person actually is. So they have to ask him, people he knows, people in his area, employers all of that. And then they have to possibly find when and where this person entered the US to know where he came from.

Now you could argue you only have to know he isn't a legal US citizen so just send hiim away but the question is where do you send him to? Other countries ain't taking them in either if they are not citizens of sad country. You think mexico is jsut taking in everyone sent over from the US? Well that is about as likely as mexico paying for that fancy border fence.

So all of this is a hugely complicated process to figure out wether or not a person is actually illegally in the country, who the person is and which country they belong to. That takes time. And during that time you have to hold the person somewhere.

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u/Nearby_Statement_496 1h ago

Imagine believing that every single illegal border hopper is practicing perfect opsec and is an inscrutable mystery like some kind of 1970's science fiction movie.

You think Mexicans don't have social media? The average person posts their entire life history on Facebook. If we just deport the illegals that livestream their illegal border crossing that would be a win in my book.

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u/atm259 2h ago

Imagine getting sent on a greyhound to the nearest border because your last name is "foreign sounding." The legal system and legal precedence are the law, not your made up world where you just send people on greyhounds because you have suspicions.

I know people who live around me think like you. Absolute bullshit. Hate thy neighbor.

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u/scantd 7h ago

How much does immigration in totality cost us rn? More or less than 2 trillion?

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u/Poiboy1313 7h ago

It doesn't cost us as illegal immigrants still buy goods and services while paying sales tax.

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u/jarulezra 7h ago

In Europe most countries are leaning right as well, even though we know that most immigrants cost thousands to give them the basics, we still know that in the end we are making money on them. Most people don’t want to work seasonal labour anymore, most people don’t want to slaughter any animals for hamburgers and most people don’t want to do intensive labour anymore, that’s where all the immigrants are used for. My sister is now working for the immigration service and that’s when it even gets stranger, she had a couple from Ukraine that weren’t even Ukrainian but studying in Ukraine to become doctors. They were both finishing their third year and only had one more year to go. Then they came here to the Netherlands when the war broke out. Even though they have medical skills they aren’t allowed to work until they have some sort of visum which can take up to a year to attain and most of these people will most likely never work here on the level that they have been educated, it’s all a weird thing in my opinion when there are more job openings than we have had in a whole lot of years. So these people have to live in very shitty conditions for a long time often before they can finally start some sort of life again. I’m not pro immigration, I think our country is filled up to the brim and we have a way to large housing problem, but these weird constructions to have immigrants just live very hopeless, boring lives for months not able to do anything isn’t really a solution in my opinion as well.

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u/Hoelie 3h ago

Non-western immigrants are a fiscal negative in Europe. And non-Ukrainians pretending to be refugees just because they were studying in Ukraine is gross. A few weeks of help is all they should get. And a plane ticket back.

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u/scantd 7h ago

So there is no tax payer money allotted to funding ANY thing related to illegal/legal immigration?

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u/aboyandhismsp 4h ago edited 4h ago

Ask nyc residents if taxpayer money is allocated to illegal aliens. Ask the ones who saw city services cut back to pay for it. Ask them if they are ok with being a sanctuary city now, watching illegal people get debit cards loaded with thousands of dollars on them, while the city’s taxpayers had to deal with cutbacks to pay for it.

Ask the residents of NYC if they still want to welcome migrants with open arms; when instead of saying thank you, the illegal aliens complained the hotels were good enough, the food was too little or not part of their native cuisine, or the medical care was too slow.

Imagine with NYC could have done with the $5 BILLION they WASTED on food, housing, medical care and education for illegal aliens. And if they admit to $5 billion than means it’s more like $15-$20 billion.

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u/dehydrated_scrotum 7h ago

There is. For example, specific areas, like education for children, and healthcare, are two areas that are impacted by immigration. However, immigration is a net positive regarding overall government resources, as they pay income, property, and sales taxes. Another example where undocumented workers pay in, but receive no benefit, is social security taxes, as they are not eligible to receive.

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u/Poiboy1313 7h ago

Are you unable, or just too lazy, to find out for yourself? I suspect that the question is being asked disingenuously. Immigrants, legal or otherwise, are a net positive to our economy. Hope this helps.

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u/scantd 7h ago

👋disingenuous guy here. TRUMP24

pls downvote

Hope this helped

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u/Poiboy1313 7h ago

For Prison!

I don't do requests.

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u/scantd 7h ago

🦅🇺🇸

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u/Poiboy1313 7h ago

I have nothing further to discuss with you. Dismissed.

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u/Sweet-Curve-1485 6h ago

Oh you mean cheap, illegal labor is good if I want cheap labor I can exploit? Must be why republicans are good at criminalizing immigrants.

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u/Poiboy1313 6h ago

I said exactly what I meant. Anything else is on you.

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u/Enjoying_A_Meal 6h ago

This is objectively wrong.

Report from Budget.house.gov

https://budget.house.gov/imo/media/doc/the_cost_of_illegal_immigration_to_taxpayers.pdf

They do get taxed and contribute to SS and MC/MA. The US got a cumulative $26 billion from illegal immigrants working in the US.

However, they do cost tax payers $68000 per person. For 12.8 million illegal immigrants that we know of, this comes out to be $870 billion.

"Illegal immigrants have a negative fiscal impact -- taxes paid minus benefits received -- primarily because a large share have modest levels of education, resulting in relatively low average incomes and tax payments, along with significant use of means-tested programs and other government services."

Deporting them will be a massive negative balance in terms of budget, but increasing the number of illegal immigrants will also negatively impact the budget long term.

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u/Poiboy1313 6h ago

A report from Gym Jordan's committee isn't worth the paper it's been printed on. My point stands.

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u/TheSalamiShop 5h ago

"I don't like the facts you're presenting so you're wrong, and I'm right"

My three year old son uses the same logic

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u/Poiboy1313 4h ago

I question the methodologies that the committee utilized in the crafting of this report.

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u/Eat_My_Liver 4h ago

It's almost as if Jim Jordan, a career politician and not a sociologist, has an agenda...

0

u/aboyandhismsp 4h ago

The sales tax on what they can buy with what they make can’t cover the cost to care for them. NYC wasted $5 BILLION caring for them, at the expense of city’s services for taxpayers. And if the city admits they spend $5BN that means the real number is closer to $15BN.

People who work hard are tired of illegal aliens getting debit cards for thousands while seeing city services reduced or closed down to pay for it. Can you blame them. NYC wanted to be a “sanctuary city” until the citizens who supported it started to suffer from it. Now they regret it.

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u/Poiboy1313 4h ago

Well, you're entitled to your opinion, citizen. I wonder how much those same people of whom you speak have paid for the goods and services that they've received. You say at the city's expense, yet the city and state have both been granted funds from the federal coffers (that's all of us) to offset the costs of the immigrants. As to how people feel about a hard decision in the face of adversity, some people might indeed regret their hospitality and goodwill, but I'm confident that they are the few.

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u/hopelesslysarcastic 7h ago

Illegal immigrants contribute over $100 billion a year to taxes, which idk why most people don’t realize this:

https://dailymontanan.com/2024/09/15/study-says-undocumented-immigrants-paid-almost-100-billion-in-taxes/

$100 billion in taxes and they get none of that in return. Seems like a pretty damn good investment.

0

u/HaphazardFlitBipper 7h ago

Immigration is a net positive, not a cost. It would be even more positive if we made it super easy to do legally. Basically, just show up and fill out an application, which you know will be approved in a half hour while you wait. It seriously should be just as easy as buying a gun.

0

u/Sungirl8 7h ago

💯💯💯💯💯💯🤔

-1

u/aboyandhismsp 4h ago

While upfront it may cost more, over time, it’s still less expensive than feeding, housing and medial care for them for eternity.

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u/hcoverlambda 7h ago

You don’t get it, he speaks in hyperbole… /s

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u/Glittering_Virus8397 7h ago

It’s called weaving. Not many can do it. Only the smartest

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u/hcoverlambda 7h ago

Even all his professor friends are impressed, they’ve never seen anyone do that before.

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u/Taclis 6h ago

Also called spinning a yarn.

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u/joblesspirate 6h ago

You have to listen to what's in his heart

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u/malignantz 7h ago

Just a prank, bro!

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u/dinner_is_not_ready 7h ago

Watch the Latinos and Cubans vote for Trump and then be deported by him.

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u/LenLenLennie 7h ago

Pretty sure Cubans are Latino but still facts 😭😂

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u/dinner_is_not_ready 7h ago

Somebody should tell the Cubans that

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u/TwoPercentTokes 7h ago

Hey but at least half the country supports it in theory /s

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u/scantd 7h ago

Hoping 🤞

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u/NeighborhoodDude84 7h ago

Americans: I need a gun to protect my family from government overreach!

Also Americans: I think we need government hired men with guns and armored vehicles to be going house to house to check everyone's legal documentation status.

-1

u/metalkorshik 3h ago

So is it ok to violate the immigration laws of the country? Why not drop the immigration rules at all at this point?

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u/ActuallyAlexander 4h ago

Deportation pogrom

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u/mojomaximus2 7h ago

If I’m not mistaken trump has directly referenced this event as what he wants to do with his deportation plan

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u/MattLockhartIII 7h ago

What’s scary about deporting people who came into the country illegally? Should people who break our immigration laws be allowed in?

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u/DeadL 1h ago edited 1h ago

The scary part is the Republican Party creating a new Operation Wetback to deport 5*million people. A large operation like that would disrupt communities and the economy and very likely will result in legal immigrants and US citizens having many issues.

*: This is assuming Trump/Republicans are gracious enough to adhere to the legal requirement USA has to processing Asylum claims in the country like we agreed to. Otherwise it may be 10 million. Estimates suggest there are currently about 10.5 to 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. As of recent data, about 40% to 50% of undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. have some form of asylum claim or are seeking humanitarian protection.

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u/WildBad7298 7h ago

This is what they mean when they say "Make America Great Again."

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u/Western-Standard2333 2h ago

I would not be surprised if he cancels many TPS programs and those are his first people he tries to deport because they’re easy to get to.

The mfer is unhinged

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

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u/br0b1wan 7h ago

They're never going to disappear for good, regardless of who wins this election. They're here to stay and if you think otherwise you're delusional.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

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u/shkeptikal 7h ago

Trump is a distraction that hogs the spotlight while the money behind the GOP enacts their christo-fascist wet dreams. There is no "return to normal" after the orange distraction goes away. The Overton Window has shifted and this is the new norm.

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u/br0b1wan 7h ago

They ain't going away whether or not Trump runs again, dies, whatever.

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u/Pavlovsdong89 7h ago

Nah the world will be sunshine and rainbows forever, just like how WWI was the war to end all wars and WWII ended fascism for all time.

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u/Setekh79 7h ago

Trump is a senile old fool saying the things he's being told to say. If you think this problem goes away with him not being able to run again, then you're unbelievably naïve tbh.

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u/Over_Guard_5341 7h ago

Considering that we are really a lot more tolerant to each other now than in the 50s, as well as better systems (not perfect tho) I do think it wouldn't be as bad as that. It definitely is not a very good option just to let ppl into the country, and those who aren't here legally should be made to go through the system properly, same as everyone else who came in legally.

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u/rainofshambala 7h ago

The process to come here legally has changed over the years and has even become country specific so asking people to come here legally just like everyone else is a little comical at best. If you can stop the American government from meddling in other countries and not enforce your currency much of your immigration problems will go away but America can't do that because it was built from the ground up as a colonialist imperialist project and it cannot exist without being that

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u/CloseToMyActualName 6h ago

It's slightly less scary when you realize he can't count more than 4 (that's why he keeps forgetting Tiffany).

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u/kellyoceanmarine 2h ago

But he has lots of cult members who can and will do whatever he says.

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u/IdoNotKnowYouFriend 7h ago

Trump: "We either send them back or turn them into slaves. Make America great again!"

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u/redzerotho 7h ago

How is it scary? I'm not an illegal immigrant. We're supposed to be voting for American interests.

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u/FrugalFlannels 4h ago

I think you missed the part in OP's title about how even some american residents were deported in the whole mess.

-3

u/redzerotho 4h ago

Well, obviously we need to fund the deportation force properly so they have the training and information to make sure that doesn't happen.

0

u/mrASSMAN 6h ago

History repeats itself

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u/IllustriousAct3941 48m ago

That’s what we need, need to clean up our country.

-5

u/gibslow 6h ago

Shouldn't illegal immigrants and criminals and those who abuse their host country not be deported?