ICE Still Forcing Woody Guthrie's 'Deportee' To Haunt Us
📰 THE STORY: The Intercept highlights how Woody Guthrie's 1948 song 'Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)' condemned the refusal of media to name 28 Mexican migrants who died in a plane crash, only identifying their US guards and pilots. Decades later, ICE continues this dehumanizing practice, often referring to deported individuals by serial numbers rather than names, echoing the erasure that
inspired Guthrie. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: The Bracero Program (1942-1964), under which these workers were contracted, was a post-WWII agreement to address US labor shortages. While ostensibly a temporary work program, it was ridden with exploitation, wage theft, and horrific living conditions, often reducing Mexican laborers to disposable commodities. The US has a long
history of agricultural exploitation of migrant workers, extending back to the California 'Okies' Guthrie protested, and forward to today's invisible farmworkers. Double Standard: While Western media frequently champions the individual stories of political dissidents or refugees from US-designated 'adversary' nations, the systematic dehumanization of economic migrants, particularly from Latin
America, by US immigration agencies is framed not as a human rights crisis, but often as a necessary 'border security' measure. When 'migrant crises' hit Europe, the focus shifts to 'humanitarian aid' and 'integration challenges,' rarely on the systemic economic plundering by former colonial powers that drives these migrations. Follow the Money: The dehumanization of migrants directly benefits the