CAESAR CHAVEZ, 1974: And Mexico should take the initiative and stop exporting the poverty to us. They should do something about the rural economy over there.

Cesar Chavez all the way back in 1974 understood the importance of protecting America’s borders: “We don’t want Mexico exporting its poverty to us.” pic.twitter.com/MaYdP5NWJg

— Don Keith (@RealDonKeith) February 10, 2026

This question of the illegals is . . . I find very interesting. Would you say that it's at this particular moment as important as any other of the problems facing the Union?  

Oh, yes, in the last three weeks it has become, last two weeks, it has become an emergency for us.  Was an awful lot of illegals coming in by the hundreds, by the thousands, our people are not only in some of the some of the crews where there is now strike breaking.  Some of the schools are 100% illegals outright, openly with no attempt to disguise it.  And, so it's so bad now that we estimate 60 to 70% of the Farm Workers in California are the resident worker.  The citizen is out of a job because of the wetbacks. They're coming in by the thousands.  Just unbelievable.  See they're coming in with the consent of the Immigration Service which is part of the Department of Justice.  How else could they come?  We, for instance, know that if you go to Coachella, you go around the El Paso area, the secondary immigration checkpoints have been have been unmanned now for, oh, at least three, four weeks. They're closed.  They're . . . at night, they're dark.  There aren't any patrol in there.  It's, it's a gimmick.  We think that it's a prelude, the beginning to a big drive on the part of the administration and the Mexican Government to bring the Bracero Program again.  It's a vicious attack on the, on the local worker and it's just one of those things that every business thinks they can get away with, and our job is to inform the whole country what's happening together with the boycott and solve it that way.  And so the workers themselves, even though a lot of them are Mexican descendants and descendants themselves,  are very uptight, very, very worried and very mad about the illegals coming to break their strikes. It takes away their jobs.

Does that put you in and comfortable position to be to be against the illegal immigrants because they are from Mexico?  In other words, part of your, part of your program has been an appeal to equal treatment of people of Mexican origin.  

Oh, yeah, sure but we're speaking of the legal ones. You know, we don't want Mexico to export its poverty to us.  And then we pay . . . it's not their culture, it's not society in general, it's a farm worker again paying for those sins you know.  And Mexico should take the initiative and stop exporting the poverty to us.  They should do something about the rural economy over there.  And then, see it's, it's a way of breaking the strike. It's a way of demoralize in a Farm Workers.  And for instance, workers are going to ask for stamps, for food stamps.  They go, they're lining up in the offices for welfare and they're being told we can't give you a job because there are plenty of jobs, and the workers say, well, there aren't any jobs. We just came from the fields.  They won't hire us or they just laid us off because either because we're strikers or because we're members of the Union or because the Braceros, the illegals rather, the illegals, will do the job for half the money we're getting . . .

The US and Mexican governments collaborated on Operation Wetback in June 1954.

from Martin Armstrong @ Armstrong Economics.

Illegal aliens are pouring into America from the southern and northern borders. Cities have been destroyed, public places overrun, and local governments are wiping out their budgets to support these intruders. US citizens are beginning to clash with refugees, as was witnessed in Staten Island, NY, when people tried to prevent migrants from exiting a bus. The NYPD was there in full force but was nowhere to be seen when Black Lives Matter was burning down neighborhoods. The migrants are here because the Biden Administration allowed them in. If elected, Donald Trump promises to kick them out.

“One of the most important issues in this campaign is ending the nation-wrecking catastrophe on our southern border,” Trump stated. He says that the invasion has created such a crisis that he would work to secure the borders on day one. “A vote for President Trump means Joe Biden’s horror show at the southern border ends at high noon on Inauguration Day, 2025,” he stated. Trump said he would end every open border policy and follow the Eisenhower Model.

Here is Trump in 2015.

I love the spin by the CNN reporter, "Trump's claim is true but misleading."  If it's true, doesn't that make the claim a fact, taking it out of the realm of an unproven claim or conjecture?

President Dwight Eisenhower implemented Operation Wetback in 1954 to deport Mexican citizens. The term “wetback” has been considered derogatory ever since, but both the Mexican and US government participated. America needed cheap labor during World War II and introduced the Bracero program from 1942 to 1964. Mexicans could work in the US temporarily on short-term contracts. Mexico agreed as they wanted their citizens to return with USD to boost the economy. The US government was unable to handle the influx and this led to the El Paso incident where Border Patrol simply opened the borders with Texas. Two million Mexicans applied for the Bracero program but 70% were denied.  

Mexico was facing a time of political instability and extreme poverty. No one wanted to return to Mexico with their dollars, angering the Mexican government, and a portion were there illegally without a contract. The US and Mexican governments collaborated on Operation Wetback in June 1954. The goal was to deport as many people as possible with little to no processing time. Numerous planes, buses, and boats descended on the US and brought everyone they could find back to the Mexican border. The Mexican government then moved these people to a portion of the country in need of labor, primarily agricultural. Over 1,074,277 people were deported back to Mexico.

Human rights groups back then shrieked at the inhumane handling of migrants. In today’s world, the Social Justice Warriors would use their own children to barricade the border to prevent this from taking place. But there is no alternative. South Korea recently implemented a less extreme mass deportation strategy that was successful. There are estimates that over 3 million illegals have entered the nation under Biden, and they’re not here to work in the fields. Trump has long touted the importance of securing the border and perhaps now others will listen.