В музее Калифорнии открылась выставка о цикле массовых депортаций и трагедии мигрантов

An exhibit titled “Help Wanted/Leave Now: ‘Operation Wetback’ & the Revolving Door of Mass Deportation” was unveiled Thursday, and will stay at the California Museum in downtown Sacramento until January. The museum takes a critical look at the cycle of deportation and migrant workers in America. According to Pablo Espinoza, a trustee on the board of the California Museum, the exhibit has been ten years in the making. He said that, in terms of mass deportation, history is repeating itself. “Members of the board when I first started were like, ‘Oh that wouldn’t happen again,’” Espinoza said. “They obviously understood the value of it, but perhaps not the level of immediacy.” The name of the exhibit references ‘Operation Wetback,’ a mass deportation effort that started in 1954. The United States had depended on the use of Mexican workers to maintain its industry during World War II through its Bracero Program, and in the prosperous post-war era, the Eisenhower administration instituted mass deportation. Sean Manwaring, a curator at the museum, said that this pattern -  the first turn in the revolving door -  is emblematic of the treatment of immigrants in the United States. He said that workers were subjected to poor conditions and poorer compensation. “If you lost a finger, you were paid about $25 through the Bracero Program, that is what your lost digit was worth,” Manwaring said.  Sean Delizo, the education director at the museum, talked about the conditions immigrant workers were forced to live in. The exhibit has dioramas showing the living conditions of immigrants throughout the exhibit. An exhibit showing common items in a mid-20th century migrant worker’s home at the California Museum on Aug. 12, 2026.Ruth Finch/CapRadio “In the structure you can see the walls are plastered with newspaper and magazines as a means of insulating the house, because they were often living in the fields,” Delizo said. “They would have dust and dirt come through the walls.” Civil rights leader Dolores Huerta was on the advisory council for the exhibit. She said she was able to provide a lot of historical context for the exhibit, and that helping braceros was how she got her start in activism. “We were helping so many of these workers when they weren’t getting paid, they weren’t getting fed properly,” Huerta said. “They would be injured and they would send them back to Mexico without any medical care.” She said that the federal subsidies for contractors using braceros were often not used to house or feed the workers. “They got $1.75 a day for each worker whether they put them to work or not,” Huerta said. “Many people became very, very wealthy off the bodies of the braceros.” Dolores Huerta at a press conference on the California State Capitol steps on Aug. 10, 2026.Ruth Finch/CapRadio The revolving door swings into the present The exhibit also features the stories of people caught up in more recent waves of mass deportations. One story presented is that of Vilma Palacios, who was arrested by ICE in June 2025. She had just graduated from Louisiana State University’s nursing program. She said she was arrested when an unmarked car pulled her over and detained her. Palacios stayed in an ICE detention center for six months, trying to fight her case so she could stay in the United States. She and her family came to the United States from Honduras 15 years ago, when she was six.  “I volunteered a lot. I had just graduated from nursing school. I already had a job. I had everything, I had built this whole life,” Palacios said. “I had the bond hearing and the judge even though he wanted to grant me the bond… he just said I can’t grant you I don’t have the jurisdiction.” After hearing that from the judge, Palacios decided to submit to voluntary deportation to Honduras. The only person she knew there was her grandmother, who she was able to stay with. Palacios was able to get a job working as a nurse in Canada. She’s not able to re-enter the United States to see herself featured in the museum exhibit. “History just keeps repeating itself and the amount of people that have been ripped apart from their family, the pain, the trauma, the emotional rollercoaster,” Palacios said. “Individuals are just being targeted when all they do is go to this county to have a better life.” She related her decision to become a nurse to her decision to share her story in the exhibit and interviews.  “Nurses are there in front of the patient and their family through their whole care, and sometimes you’re able to create that difference in that person’s life and their experience,” Palacios said. “I’m hoping that in the future … our stories are able to create a difference in the administration and the law force and that they actually see these are real people that went through this.” In a tour of the exhibit, California Museum trustee Espinoza brought along his 10-year-old son, Nicolás. He talked about how knowing that the museum’s biggest audience was children, the exhibit was designed with interactive elements. Kids can touch the leather of bus seats used to transport workers, and the dirt of the fields that migrant workers tended. “It is a very strong exhibit that touches people’s hearts,” Espinoza said. “Yet the idea is not to deflate people.” Espinoza was a long-time TV journalist and a member on the board of the California Chicano News Media Association before joining the board at the California Museum. He said that he has seen firsthand the backslide of prejudice against immigrants over the course of his career. “We were, for the most part, successful to have the Bakersfield Californian and many other publications stop using the word illegal and use the word undocumented,” Espinoza said. “Fast forward now to 2026. Not only is the word illegal being used, ‘wets’ are being used by government officials.” Espinoza said that he wants this exhibit to inspire hope, and to reflect the hope he’s felt as an immigrant to the United States. He talked about his older son, Adrian, who died in 2024 and how the idea for the exhibit came to him while he was holding Adrian’s hand as he was touring an exhibit about Japanese internment. “When I became a citizen, I was holding him in my arms. I think he was three, I would tell him … What a privilege you have to have been born in this country,” Espinoza said. “I think he will be really proud of me because I would always tell him that this was a country of opportunity, that this remains a country of opportunity.”