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During the depression conditions for Mexicans in San Diego became worse as unemployment increased and it became harder to find and keep a job. Adding to the oppressive situation was a political campaign to force Mexicans to go back to Mexico. This was a nation-wide repatriation movement that broke up families, disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, and violated the civil rights of many U.S. born Mexican Americans. In the early 1930s more than a million Mexicanos were forced to leave the United States. The pressures to "get rid of the Mexicans" mounted because of the economic hard times during the depression. In the popular imagination, then as now, it was assumed that the Mexican population was taking welfare services and jobs from U.S. citizens. In reality, Mexican nationals were among the least likely to rely on county welfare, and the vast majority of them were already unemployed. Local governments passed laws making it illegal to hire non-citizens. Groups such as the San Diego based National Club of America for Americans, Inc. drafted anti-alien ordinances for local governments. In reality few Mexican immigrants took advantage of welfare or charity services and avoided contacts with officials.

Meanwhile thousands of the older children of the immigrants who were citizens of the United States were forced to make a decision whether to go to live in a country they had never seen, or to stay behind without their family. Women without their husbands and children in orphanages were forced to be repatriated as well as people who were mentally ill. Often employed healthy citizens were coerced into leaving by threats of physical violence and unemployment.

Once they arrived in Mexico the Mexican government tried its best to resettle them on agricultural lands, but the planning and resources for such an effort was inadequate. Most of the repatriados had a hard time adjusting to their new country. They encountered some discrimination against them by native Mexicans and found the government's promises of economic assistance unfulfilled. Most of the new colonies were economic failures.

In San Diego charitable organizations worked with the Mexican consulate to arrange the transportation of immigrants back to Mexico. In 1932 the Mexican government decided to use the Mexican warship ironically named "Progreso" to transport repatriados from San Diego and Los Angeles to Mexico. The plan was to land in the port of Topolobambo, Sinaloa and from there to distribute the repatriados to various land grants in the surrounding states. Far fewer than the envisioned 800 people took advantage of this "cruise." The consul estimated that only about 250 departed. One passenger, Jimeno Hernandez, a fourteen year old, wrote about his experienced on the ship. He recounted how the Mexican officials at Mansanillo extorted money from the passengers claiming that their baggage exceeded the limit.

Camille Guerin Gonzales, who has done the only study of repatriation from San Diego, found that the typical repatriado was a family of more than three people headed by a man of about 40 years old. Half of the repatriates were children. Very few extended family members traveled back to Mexico. About half of the San Diego repatriados ended up settling in the border states. Colonia Libertad, for example, in Tijuana was settled by repatraites from San Diego. For the next sixty years this colonia adjacent to the international boundary fence would be the jumping off point for generations of immigrants heading north.