The large-scale deportation he envisions would be impractical to enact, due to the extent that Mexican immigrants have integrated into U.S. society, said Columbia University history professor Mae Ngai.
U.S.-born children of immigrants have been automatically considered American citizens since the adoption of the Constitution's 14th Amendment in 1868. A Supreme Court ruling in 1898 halted previous attempts to limit the birthright of Chinese-American citizens after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The ruling upheld the clause for all U.S.-born children, Ngai said, and there have been no successful challenges to the clause since.
In the 1930s, Chicano studies professor Balderrama said, officials skirted the issue of birthright citizenship by saying they did not want to break up families.
"But they did break up families and many children never saw their parents again," said Balderrama, co-author of a book about Mexican repatriation in the 1930s with the late historian Raymond Rodriguez, who testified before a California state committee about seeing his father for the last time at age 10, before the father left for Mexico.
That legacy lingers in songs, often played on Spanish-language radio stations, that allude to mass deportations and separation of loved ones, said Lilia Soto, an American studies professor at the University of Wyoming.
For example, the lyrics to "Ice El Hielo," by the Los Angeles-band La Santa Cecilia, speak of a community afraid that federal agents are about to arrive and launch deportations raids at any moment. The ballad "Volver, Volver," sung by Mexican ranchera performer Vicente "Chente" Fernandez, speaks of someone vowing to return to a lover despite all obstacles.
"They're about families being apart," Soto said. "The lyrics are all indirectly linked to this past."
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