Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed the 1950s mass-deportation program called “Operation Wetback” seemed acceptable based on photos he saw in the newspaper, ignoring the program's numerous deaths and the inhumane treatment of Mexican immigrants deported under the program.

During the November 10 Fox Business Republican debate, GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump advocated a controversial plan from the 1950s to deport a massive number of Mexican immigrants known as “Operation Wetback.” The plan forcibly removed thousands of immigrants using inhumane tactics that led to the deaths of a number of the immigrants. 

On the November 12 edition of his Fox News show, Hannity dismissed criticism of Trump's immigration plan to create a "deportation force" to deport immigrants, commenting he saw photos from “Operation Wetback” and claimed the immigrants in the images “didn't look like they were all that upset as they were walking back into Mexico”:

SEAN HANNITY: Oh, I saw the pictures and people didn't look like they were all that upset as they were walking back into Mexico when I saw some of the images in the paper today.

But the program, initiated by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, was described as inhumane and ended in multiple deaths due to exposure to extreme conditions. According to Mother Jones, the program used cramped buses, trucks, and boats to “round up undocumented immigrants and drop them off in Mexico by the busload,” leaving immigrants in rural areas without resources to survive. Reports found that 88 people died in one incident from heat stroke when abandoned in the desert, and in another incident multiple people drowned after jumping out of a ship. A congressional investigation of the program found immigrants were subject to conditions that were compared to an “18th century slave ship.”