during its first year. The Mexican government offered train rides into the Mexican interior for nationals being returned from the San Antonio and Los Angeles districts, but this program was halted after only five months. Throughout the early 1950s, a special taskforce of 800 Border Patrol agents was assigned by the United States Attorney General to round up and ship home thousands of illegal immigrants in southern California. The task force moved to the lower Rio Grande valley, then to Chicago and other interior cities. The Border Patrol began expelling adult Mexican males by boatlift from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz in September 1954. The project was discontinued two years later after nearly 50,000 illegal aliens had been returned home. Various other flights, train trips, and bustrips originated along the border and terminated in the Mexican interior. In spite of the major successes in repatriation, many deportees simply turned around and recrossed the seriously undermanned border. Repatriation programs proved extremely expensive and were phased out primarily because of cost.

Significant numbers of illegal aliens began entering the U.S. on private aircraft in the late 1950s. In cooperation with other federal services, the Border Patrol began tracking suspect flights. During the Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960s, Cuban defectors living in Florida flew aircraft out over the ocean in an effort to harass their former homeland. The American government made this harassment illegal, and assigned the Border Patrol to prevent unauthorized flights. The Patrol added 155 officers, but discharged 122 of them when the crisis