Woody Guthrie Sang Against Dehumanizing the Immigrants Killed in a Plane Crash. ICE Is Doing It All Over Again.

Folk legend Woody Guthrie was so angered by the dehumanizing language used to describe Mexican immigrants in 1948 that he wrote a song about it. Telling the story of dozens of Mexican workers killed during a deportation flight crash, Guthrie called the tune “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).”

Artists from Pete Seeger to Bruce Springsteen to Dolly Parton have covered Guthrie’s song, which has been hailed as a timeless ode to the humanity of society’s most marginalized.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wasn’t listening.

In a social media post on Wednesday, ICE honored the deportation officer killed in the January 28, 1948, crash while describing the unnamed passengers as “illegal Mexican aliens.”

Whether intentionally or not, the post drew a backlash from commenters who pointed out the language used to describe plane crash victims on the 78th anniversary of their death. It’s the latest social media imbroglio for ICE, or its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which seems to court controversy with posts that echo the language of white nationalists.

The post about the crash anniversary may have been subtler. Still, it is a virtual repeat of the attitude toward immigrant laborers that so upset Guthrie decades ago, according to Tim Z. Hernandez, the author of two books about the famous plane crash.

“True to form of this administration, they are pulling from old rhetoric as a way to justify what they’re doing today,” he said.

Words like “alien” and “illegal,” Hernandez said, are “only meant to further strip the humanity of the people they’re targeting, because then it’s easier to justify when you’re not talking about human beings.”

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The flight that ended in a fiery crash took the life of Frank Chaffin, the deportation officer, along with 28 passengers being deported and three crew members. An Associated Press story at the time named Chaffin and the crew members but not the immigrant passengers.

The wire service reported that some of the people being deported had crossed the border illegally, while other had stayed past the duration of work contracts.

Guthrie responded to the omission of the deportees’ names in the AP story with his song, in which he imagined some of their stories.

“Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita / Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria / You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane / All they will call you will be ‘deportees,’” he wrote.

The immigrant victims languished in obscurity for decades until Hernandez unearthed their identities. Scouring old archives and cemetery records, he has been able to piece together much of the manifest.

In 2013, he helped unveil a memorial for the previously unnamed victims at a mass grave in a Catholic cemetery in Fresno, California. Two years ago, another marker was placed at the site of the crash.

Descendents of the victims and locals who witnessed the crash gather annually at the crash site on the anniversary to pay tribute, according to Hernandez.

A memorial marker with the names of the 32 people who died in a 1948 airplane crash at Los Gatos Canyon was unveiled on Sept. 28, 2024, near Coalinga, Calif. Photo: Juan Esparza Loera/The Fresno Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Hernandez took special care to include the stories of Chaffin and the crew members in his book, believing that none of their stories should be erased. He said he was saddened but not surprised to see the ICE social media post.

“Even if we disagree on how to protect the border, or the whole immigration process, even if we disagree on the logistics, what we should be able to come to an agreement on is that each of us are human beings and worthy of dignity,” he said. “When I see that dehumanization, that intentional kind of language, it makes me sad, because it’s people who fail to see other people as humans.”