In 1950, Nevada Democratic Senator Pat McCarran said he wanted to save the United States from communism and “Jewish interests.” His solution was passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, known as the McCarran Walter Act (MWA), and its complement, the Internal Security Act of 1950 (also known, confusingly, as the McCarran Act).
Both laws defined much of the legal framework for Cold War repression. They created an era of political trials and deportations, designed to terrorize progressive political leaders, enmesh them in endless legal battles, and where possible imprison and deport them. At the same time, mass deportations, like those of the early 1930s, grew exponentially, while contract labor schemes, once prohibited by Federal law, filled the country’s fields with braceros.
A week into the executive orders issued by the Trump administration, a similar set of McCarran-like measures are reviving this Cold War strategy. Anti-immigrant hysteria and repression have seemingly been a permanent part of U.S. public life, and the past election demonstrated clearly its prevalence in both political parties. But once in office, the Trump administration is acting on what many hoped were empty threats. Its blueprint for a new assault on migrants and political rights is not just a rightwing continuation of business as usual, but an effort that takes its cues from one of the worst periods in U.S. political history – the Cold War. Chief among the legal structures that defined that era were these two laws.
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