The persistent targeting of Mexican people by the United States isn’t random, recent, or really about law and order. Behind the political rhetoric and enforcement campaigns lies a complex web of economic interests, historical precedents, and profitable systems that have made Mexican communities the primary target of immigration enforcement for generations.
America’s relationship with Mexican people didn’t begin at a modern border wall. The roots of this targeting stretch back to the 1800s, when the United States seized half of Mexico’s territory following the Mexican-American War. In an instant, Mexican families who had been citizens of Mexico found themselves designated as foreigners in their ancestral homes.
This pivotal moment established a dangerous precedent: Mexicans were not seen as equals or neighbors, but as intruders in communities where their families had lived for generations. The psychological framework was set—Mexicans didn’t belong, even on lands that had once been theirs.
By the late 1800s and early 1900s, systematic discrimination had intensified dramatically. Mexicans faced relegation to the most undesirable jobs with significantly lower wages, exclusion from public schools and businesses where signs reading “No Dogs, No Mexicans” were common, and brutal violence including a wave of lynchings across the Southwest that some historians label a “forgotten genocide.”
This entrenched racism shaped legislation, education, and residential patterns across the entire United States. Once established as villains in the collective consciousness, Mexicans became easy targets for repeated persecution.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this targeting is the fundamental contradiction at its heart: the United States has consistently relied on Mexican labor while simultaneously criminalizing Mexican workers. During World War II, the US government implemented the Bracero Program in 1942, bringing millions of Mexican men to work American fields and maintain the nation’s food supply. The program appeared mutually beneficial until it officially ended in 1964.
But here’s the crucial point: when the program terminated, the agricultural sector’s demand for inexpensive labor didn’t disappear. Farmers, construction companies, hotels, and restaurants continued relying on this workforce. Mexican workers kept coming to fill these essential roles. The US didn’t stop using their labor—it had become dependent on it. Instead, it imposed the label of “illegal” upon the same workers performing the same jobs. The hands remained the same, the work remained the same, but suddenly these essential workers were reclassified as criminals.
For decades, television and newspapers have fed the American public a singular narrative: Mexicans equal crime, drugs, and danger. This wasn’t accidental—it was systematic conditioning. Throughout the 80s and 90s, action movies consistently featured Mexican drug runners as stock villains. This cultural programming was so effective that when politicians later spoke of “bad hombres,” the concept felt believable because the stereotype was already firmly planted in American minds.
Television news created a continuous stream of fear-mongering reports, with anchors warning of “illegal aliens flooding the border” accompanied by dramatic footage that framed immigration as a crisis. This media feedback loop accomplished its goal: to the average American viewer, Mexicans weren’t neighbors—they were the problem.
Every election cycle, politicians resort to a time-tested strategy: blame Mexicans for the nation’s problems. This playbook is simple and devastatingly effective. Struggling economy? Focus on the border. Need to energize a crowd? Deploy rhetoric about “illegals stealing our jobs.” Justifying increased police funding? Connect it to Mexican immigration.
From Reagan in the 1980s to Trump in the 2010s, across different decades and political parties, the scapegoat has remained the same. This approach is low-risk, high-reward for politicians—it garners applause without requiring complex explanations about outsourcing, automation, or corporate greed.
Several practical factors make Mexicans the most convenient target for any administration wanting to demonstrate immigration enforcement. As the largest immigrant group in the US with over 37 million people, they represent the most accessible target for arrests and deportations. The shared 2,000-mile border simplifies logistics—deporting someone to Mexico requires a bus ride, not a costly international flight to China or Nigeria. A large portion of the Mexican population occupies the lowest economic rungs, making them simultaneously essential to the economy and highly exploitable. They can be paid below minimum wage and silenced with deportation threats.
The targeting of Mexicans has created a massive profit-driven industry. ICE operates with an annual budget exceeding $8 billion and employs tens of thousands of agents. With every expansion of operations, a network of private contractors, tech companies, and security firms reaps substantial financial rewards.
Private prison companies earn billions from government contracts for immigrant detention centers. These contracts often guarantee that a certain number of beds remain filled, creating powerful financial incentives to arrest and detain as many people as possible. Each detained immigrant generates hundreds of dollars per day in government payments to private operators. It functions as a hotel business where guests have no choice but to stay and taxpayers foot the bill.
Politicians receive significant donations from prison corporations, border security contractors, and industries dependent on cheap labor. When leaders use tough rhetoric about Mexicans, they’re not just securing votes—they’re keeping the money pipeline open.
The legal frameworks built to police Mexicans create precedents affecting all Americans. “Show me your papers” laws sanction racial profiling of any person of color. Border surveillance technology gets repurposed for domestic policing. Community trust breaks down when residents fear any police interaction could lead to deportation. These tools forged to control one population inevitably get turned against others, diminishing privacy and due process for everyone.
All these factors converge on a single truth: Mexicans are targeted because it’s immensely profitable. The entire system is lubricated by money flowing to ICE’s massive budget and operations, private detention centers earning per-bed contracts, politicians receiving campaign donations from enforcement industries, and corporations benefiting from exploitable labor.
This isn’t about national security or border control—it’s about a machine that converts human beings into profit. Mexicans aren’t pursued because they’re dangerous; they’re pursued because targeting them generates money.
Understanding this system is the first step toward dismantling it. The targeting of Mexican people represents one of America’s most persistent and profitable forms of discrimination—one that serves powerful interests while devastating working families.
The question isn’t whether this targeting will continue, but whether Americans will recognize it for what it truly is: not law enforcement, but a business model built on human suffering. Only by exposing these economic motivations can we begin to build a more just and rational approach to immigration—one based on human dignity rather than corporate profits.
The cycle will only end when it becomes more expensive politically and economically to maintain this system than to abandon it. That change starts with understanding exactly how much money is being made from the fear and persecution of Mexican families.
Yes, prisons for profit are the great motivator for privatizing prisons, as well. I do suspect, also, that as robots take over manufacturing and people's unemployment is bound to cause problems, by getting rid of immigrant workers, they will be able to force citizens to take lower wages or starve, especially since they are going after the New Deal in a most aggressive fashion. No doubt the orange dung beetle has a special interest here.
You might be interested in Regan's view on immigration, by the way.
https://www.npr.org/2010/07/04/128303672/a-reagan-legacy-amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants#:~:text=Reagan%20And%20Amnesty,entered%20illegally%2C%22%20he%20said.
I think it's also useful to note (although not necessarily in the article, as that was not the point you are making here) that the Treaty of Guadalupe guaranteed rights for Mexicans with property in the States that they could hold onto it after the travesty of the Mexican American war. And of course, like virtually ALL of America's treaties, like the one that America would not build any dams between Mexican/American rivers, it was broken. Another reason to attack the attacked.
Thanks for the article. These clarifications are much needed.
This should be required reading for every American.