Ramtin Arablui

There were even contests in the local newspaper to name the detention center with names like Mexicalcatraz or Sultry Siberia.

In this case, this doesn't sound like an economic benefit to the local community or to any particular sheriff or one person.

And it also sounds like they're spending, the federal government is spending a ton of money on this.

Is it just for political reasons?

Who is benefiting ultimately economically or is anyone benefiting economically from this process?

There was so much pushback to the site in Brownsville that the federal government backed out of the plan and looked for another location, which it found in the city of McAllen, about 60 mile drive west from Brownsville.

McAllen welcomed the site, even paying for some of the infrastructure itself.

And when it opened in April of 1953, it became a major hub of migrant detention and deportation for Operation Wetback.

How does this represent a turning point?

in migrant detention in US history.

What I take away too is like, this is a major insertion of the federal government into this game.

By game, I mean this business.

This is becoming a show now.

But what's fascinating about this, though, is that in Franklin County, many of the Chinese immigrants kind of just saw it as the rite of passage into the United States.

Why do they think that suddenly people are not going to view it that way that are coming into the country from Mexico?

There was a period of more liberal immigration policy in the 1960s.

The national quota law was abolished and deportations overall went down.

But that didn't stop people from illegally entering the US.

And in just a couple of decades, illegal entry to the US was about to blow up.

Wow.